Thunderbird Snap for Ubuntu 24.04

[Schwarzer Kater]

But why should users fight the distro defaults if we don't agree with them, and feel obliged to perform major surgery to bend it to our will? Canonical have made certain design choices that I don't like, so I switched to another distro who's choices I do agree with.

Of course you are absolutely free to do so - use whatever is best for your needs and taste! There are a lot of "good" distributions out there IMHO.
Personally I have to "bend" every distribution to my will, some more and some less…

I will "jump ship" the moment it is not possible anymore to use *Ubuntu without Snaps, though - which I hope will never happen…

[TinyTim]

I have to defend Debian (stable) here - compared to *Ubuntu LTS there really is not much difference:

For "normal" users *Ubuntu LTS is still easier to use and maintain than Debian (Debian has become better in this regard during the last years, though).
For better or worse Ubuntu has a commercial background with Canonical, whereas Debian is community-driven.

I like them both.

For a bit more advanced users here is a how-to for a Debian (stable) installation with KDE Plasma :
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/...rog#post672034

Thank you for this valuable insight. Understanding the PPA & pkg mgr for Debian and Ubuntu, makes me lean toward Debian, because of control. Could you tell me which distro you think works the most favorable with Nividia proprietary drivers and kernel upgrade shim? Does Debian handle Nvidia/kernel well? I have yet to find one that does this better than Manjaro, but with rolling upgrades there is always risk.

[Schwarzer Kater]

OT:

[…]
Could you tell me which distro you think works the most favorable with Nividia proprietary drivers and kernel upgrade shim? Does Debian handle Nvidia/kernel well? I have yet to find one that does this better than Manjaro, but with rolling upgrades there is always risk.

I am sorry to have to tell you this, but I have had occasional problems with the proprietary Nvidia GPU drivers in any distribution during the last years.
There isn't one that works "better" with Nvidia in my experience, those cases are only experiences with individual setups.
But you are right: the risk that something does go wrong increases with the frequency of (kernel and other system components) updates like in a rolling release.

Debian does not include Nvidia drivers for as many different graphics cards as Ubuntu - the current Debian (stable) only provides the Nvidia 525.x driver. If your graphics card is not properly supported by this you are out of luck (or have to install the driver from another source which I would not recommend…).

The only real advice I can give you is to always use the Nvidia driver (matching for your GPU) that the distributions provide in their own repositories (and e.g. in *Ubuntu not to use the "nvidia-…-open" ones!) and to be ready to boot from a previous kernel when something has gone wrong…
And there always can be a certain amount of "trial-and-error", too: some of the newer Nvidia GPUs work better with the 535.x driver, some work better with the 545.x driver from *Ubuntu's repositories for example.
PS: This even happened in Debian (stable) with the default kernel today (https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comm..._update_error/)…

[Beerislife]

I bought the boxed set of BeOS in Akihabara way back wneh. I quite liked it but continued using Warp 4.5! I really miss that OS, but...

[NoWorries]

I usually install the mozillateam repo anyway and get updated Thunderbird from there...

Today I installed Thunderbird snap (1:115.8.1+build1+snap2) as a normal download and I had to do a lot of work to do to get it configured and working. I am not that happy with the changes. The most prominent problem is that I can only print to a pdf file and my printer is not listed as a print option in Thunderbird as previously.

Another change that I have to get used to is that details of emails can either be opened in a Thunderbird new tab or as a separate window. I still have to work out how to add another email source which I had in the previous version of Thunderbird

[NoWorries]

I am now appreciating the changes in the new version of Thunderbird. I have found Add-ons in Thunderbird by clicking the menu button with 3 horizontal bars on the top right of Thunderbird. I then selected Add-ons and Themes.

I have now added the following Add-ons

PrintingTools NG
Grammar and Spell Checker — Language Tool
Addon Compatibility Check for TB 102/TB 115

I can now print emails to my printer for my Wife and I have added an extra web site that I also use at times. So I am now very satisfied with Thunderbird 115.8.1.

[oshunluvr]

I bought the boxed set of BeOS in Akihabara way back wneh. I quite liked it but continued using Warp 4.5! I really miss that OS, but...

OS/2 Warp! I loved that OS. Man that was a long time ago. I used it until IBM drop consumer level support and then I went looking for alternatives. I found Mandrake with KDE 1.

[Schwarzer Kater]

Crap…
Today I entered thunderbird in Konsole of a Kubuntu 24.04 daily live ISO and all I got was: "Command '/usr/bin/thunderbird' requires the thunderbird snap to be installed. Please install it with: snap install thunderbird"

I suspect if you apt install thunderbird you will also get a fake package that will install the Snap…

Looks like I really will have to extend my scripts for 24.04 in good time to get the regular Thunderbird from Mozilla…

[oshunluvr]

Keep up the good work!

[Montmorency]

Crap…

Crap indeed.

[Beerislife]

OS/2 Warp! I loved that OS. Man that was a long time ago. I used it until IBM drop consumer level support and then I went looking for alternatives. I found Mandrake with KDE 1.

Very similar! I used eComStation 1.0 and 1.1 for a while but was frustrated with the lack of proper multimedia support so ran Mandrake and sometimes RedHat via a LAN cable (I think) from a different PC!

In the end I realised the writing was on the wall so removed OS/2 completely and went full on Linux!

[Schwarzer Kater]

Regarding the Thunderbird Snap in Kubuntu 24.04 LTS (still development branch):

At present apt policy thunderbird in Konsole says

thunderbird:
Installed: 1:115.8.1+build1+snap2
Candidate: 1:115.8.1+build1+snap2
Version table:
*** 1:115.8.1+build1+snap2 500
500 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

And apt list --installed thunderbird

thunderbird/noble,now 1:115.8.1+build1+snap2 amd64 [installed,automatic]

Entering whereis thunderbird shows

thunderbird: /usr/bin/thunderbird

Furthermore sudo apt install thunderbird results in

thunderbird is already the newest version (1:115.8.1+build1+snap2).

Entering thunderbird shows

Command '/usr/bin/thunderbird' requires the thunderbird snap to be installed.
Please install it with

snap install thunderbird

What the… ?!?

snap list does not show it and Thunderbird also is not present in the Application Starter :

Name               Version          Rev    Tracking         Publisher   Notes
bare               1.0              5      latest/stable    canonical✓  base
core22             20240111         1122   latest/stable    canonical✓  base
firefox             124.0.1-1        4033   latest/stable/…  mozilla✓    -
firmware-updater    0+git.90251bb    121    latest/stable/…  canonical✓  -
gnome-42-2204      0+git.510a601    172    latest/stable/…  canonical✓  -
gtk-common-themes  0.1-81-g442e511  1535   latest/stable/…  canonical✓  -
snapd              2.61.2           21184  latest/stable    canonical✓  snapd​

Neither there is a thunderbird directory in /snap or a thunderbird in /snap/bin/ - logical if the Thunderbird Snap is actually not installed.

I wonder why apt policy thunderbird says otherwise?
-> Among others because a "fake" thunderbird package is installed to /usr/bin/ (in fact a shell script), but not the Thunderbird Snap itself to /snap/bin/ .
Only if you actively sudo snap install thunderbird the Snap gets installed and is listed in the Application Starter afterwards.


The "good news" is that as of now the Thunderbird Snap does not come preinstalled in Kubuntu 24.04 LTS, so [but] the user can still choose another solution…

-> My solution would be to install the "traditional" Thunderbird from Mozilla.org to /opt and its .desktop file to /usr/local/share/applications/ .
This way Thunderbird will not cause any trouble at all when you do a release-upgrade e.g. from 24.04 LTS to 24.10 (in contrary to third-party PPAs) and can simply be used alternatively with or without the Thunderbird Snap.
I have begun working on the script for this and it should be released in the Coding/Scripting section and on my GitLab page after some thorough tests and during the end of the Kubuntu 24.04 LTS' Beta phase.

[Schwarzer Kater]

As of today the Thunderbird Snap is also preinstalled by default in Kubuntu 24.04 (development branch).
And I have had hope…

[Schwarzer Kater]

OK, here is the first version (Beta, but already tested about 30-35 times…) of the "install traditional Thunderbird" script for people who want to use the "traditional" Thunderbird from Mozilla.org additionally to or instead of the Thunderbird Snap in 24.04:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/...al-thunderbird

[Schwarzer Kater]

By the way: in the meantime the "fake" Thunderbird .deb in 24.04 has become the same nuisance as the "fake" Firefox .deb has been since (K)ubuntu 22.04 LTS and now directly installs the Thunderbird Snap if you try to install it with apt.