Hi luther,

you could try the following commands.
Code:
mkdir -p /home/knoppix/Downloads
wget -O /home/knoppix/Downloads/thunderbird-24.2.0.tar.bz2 http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/24.2.0/linux-i686/en-US/thunderbird-24.2.0.tar.bz2
tar xjvf /home/knoppix/Downloads/thunderbird-24.2.0.tar.bz2 -C /home/knoppix
/home/knoppix/thunderbird/thunderbird
I hope that helps.