I want to be able to read RSS feeds in my thunderbird but unfortunately, when I try to create a new account, there is no option for the 'RSS news and Blogs'. Some suggestions say that I need to uninstall and reinstall thunderbird but instead of doing standard install, I need to do a custom install and include rss. How do you do custom install of thunderbird on linux?

Umm I don't think you need to create a new account for RSS. If you open mail account settings dialog from the tools menu, there should be a item called RSS in the left-side list, under your mail accounts, over the local directories. I've never added it, it was there from the beginning. Click the RSS item, select the options you want (how often to get new feeds etc.), then click the button to edit the feeds you want to get.

You shouldn't need to install it in any special way on Linux; there should be no "removed" features, everything comes in the package what should come, and if you need more, you get addons from the web. But RSS should really be there from the beginning, and it's not something you add as a new account.

I got this from http://kb.mozillazine.org/RSS_basics_-_Thunderbird and it says:

Creating an RSS News & Blogs account

Before you can subscribe to any RSS feeds, you first need to create an RSS account. To do so:

1. Go to the "File" menu and select "New -> Account". Alternatively, you can go to the "Tools" menu and select "Account Settings", and click on the "Add Account" button.
2. In the dialog box that pops up, select "RSS News & Blogs" and press the "Next" button.
3. Enter an account name, press the "Next" button, and finally press the "Finish" button. This new account will now appear in the folders pane in the main Thunderbird window.

Note: if the option to create an RSS account does not even appear, it is probably because you chose a "Custom" (rather than "Standard") install of Thunderbird, and you did not select to include RSS Support in your installation. In that case, you should uninstall Thunderbird and reinstall it, making sure to include the RSS option this time.


In the note it says that I need to reinstall it using 'custom' installation and I should now include RSS support. I tried to completely remove and reinstall it using synaptic but I still was not prompted for the custom install.

What I want to do now is to do a manual install. I have downloaded the source files from mozilla and extracted it to a directory. Can you please help me on how to proceed with the manual install? thanks...

I'm also having this problem.
have you found a solution yet?

I still haven't figured this out..