System Requirements

The requirements for installing Thunderbird are almost identical to those for Firefox (see Chapter 1).

Operating Systems

Windows

Thunderbird supports the following operating systems. If you are using Windows, you should probably consider using XP because it is the recommended system according to the Mozilla reference page.

• Windows 98

• Windows 98SE

• Windows Me

• Windows NT 4.0

• Windows 2000

• Windows XP

Mac

OS X is the only operating system that is supported. You can use Mac OS X 10.1.x or Mac OS X 10.2.x and beyond.

Linux

Note that Linux distributors may offer distribution packages that contain different requirements than the ones listed here:

• Linux kernel 2.2.14The following libraries or package minimums are needed:

  • glibc 2.3.2

  • gtk+ 2.0

  • XFree86 3.3.6

  • fontconfig (also known as xft)

  • libstdc++5

• If you are using Red Hat Linux 8.0 and later, Thunderbird has been tested and should work with no problem.

Hardware

Listed next are the minimum recommended configurations and recommended configurations according to the Mozilla website.

Windows and Linux

Minimum recommended configuration:

• Pentium 233 MHz with 64 MB RAM and at least 52 MB of available hard drive space. For Linux, the Mozilla site recommends an Intel Pentium II or AMD K6-III+ 233 MHz CPU.

Recommended configuration:

• Pentium 500 MHz or greater and 128 MB of RAM or greater. Remember, it never hurts to have more RAM.

Mac

Minimum recommended configuration:

• PowerPC 604e 266 MHz with 64 MB RAM and at least 72 MB of available hard drive space.

Recommended configuration:

• PowerPC G4 that is at least 667 MHz or greater with 256 MB RAM or greater.

Don't forget that if you elect to save your email messages to your hard drive, you have to budget additional storage space to accommodate all your email messages and attachments.