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Primefalcon
July 7th, 2012, 08:26 AM
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEzNDc

basically they are pulling their paid developers off Thunderbird and going to let the "community" handle it.....

They are shifting their developers over their FirefoxOS by the sounds of it......

Disappointing considering Thunderbird was just made default over evolution in Ubuntu.... Honestly Thunderbird is a good RSS reader... but I think evolution is a better email client anyhow.

UPDATE BY JONO BACON: http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/07/11/thunderbird-and-ubuntu/

BigSilly
July 7th, 2012, 09:12 AM
Great. :mad:

Actually, at least on Linux there are a couple of choices. I'll probably switch to Kmail or something if I have to. But it's on my Windows install I'll struggle to find a replacement.

sffvba[e0rt
July 7th, 2012, 09:26 AM
http://www.jorgecastro.org/2012/07/06/there-is-no-need-to-worry-about-thunderbird/


404

PS - I am not so sure about the title of this thread :-/

KiwiNZ
July 7th, 2012, 10:25 AM
Thread titled edited to reflect topic

Primefalcon
July 7th, 2012, 11:13 AM
Thread titled edited to reflect topic
topic was a direct quote from the news source :-\"

Bandit
July 7th, 2012, 02:31 PM
Lets be perfectly honest here. There has not been any real changes to Thunderbird in 10 years. At least none I have noticed other then a few stability fixes. It still looks the same as it did in 2002. I would pull paid devs off it as well. Yes its a free email client, but its lags behind compared to Outlook or Evolution.

smellyman
July 7th, 2012, 03:45 PM
it fetches email....and stores it

when will email die?

pqwoerituytrueiwoq
July 7th, 2012, 04:04 PM
it fetches email....and stores it

when will email die?
when we no longer need a email address to have a account on web sites
**cellphones have email address 00000000@carrier.com is the typical format iirc

i have thunderbird open more than firefox, i know tb was going to get a built in im client in it, wonder if it will show up in the stable release...

hpfreak1
July 7th, 2012, 06:46 PM
"transitioning to a model of security and stability updates only."

Thunderbird has worked for me for the last couple of years. I don't think anything other than security and stability updates are necessary. I like Mozilla's software and I am happy to see it as a default mail client in Ubuntu. It meets my needs as a home user and is easy to set up. I hope Ubuntu continues to use it as their default. I like that it is integrated in the top panel.

As a Linux user since 2001 I also like Unity. As far as Unity is concerned I would like to be able to minimize applications by clicking on their icons in the launcher.

MadmanRB
July 7th, 2012, 08:22 PM
Lets be perfectly honest here. There has not been any real changes to Thunderbird in 10 years. At least none I have noticed other then a few stability fixes. It still looks the same as it did in 2002. I would pull paid devs off it as well. Yes its a free email client, but its lags behind compared to Outlook or Evolution.

Still rather use thunderbird then outlook live, and evolution is rather bloaty

jonathonblake
July 7th, 2012, 08:27 PM
I don't think anything other than security and stability updates are necessary.

As an email client, Thunderbird should be able to retrieve email.
The following sequence explains why Thunderbird is currently inadequate as an email client:

Setup twenty email accounts;
Ensure that each email account receives 25,000 emails per day;
Let the accounts cumulate email for ten, or more days;
Start Thunderbird;
Watch Thunderbird crash;
Restart Thunderbird;
Repeat that sequence until you understand why Thunderbird needs a user selectable setting for sequential email retrieval, with parallel email retrieval as the default;
Write the code that gives users the option to force sequential email retrieval;



but its lags behind compared to Outlook or Evolution.

The last time I looked at Evolution, it crashed when configured to retrieve email from two different accounts. Have the Evolution developers fixed that failure to retrieve email?

jonathon

Primefalcon
July 7th, 2012, 10:26 PM
I haven't had that issue.... what I like about evolution and wish Thunderbird would implement...

In Evolution when adding a group (a bunch of contacts under one name) to the to field to send you can remove individual emails from that group... which is pretty darned useful...

For example I get an email from friend A which I send on to my friends.... in Thunderbird unless I create separate groups with excluded users.. the person who sent me the email will also receive it again from me... not nice.... With evolution you can remove individuals from that 1 sending.. easily

jonathonblake
July 7th, 2012, 10:59 PM
In Evolution when adding a group (a bunch of contacts under one name) to the to field to send you can remove individual emails from that group... which is pretty darned useful...

There is an extension for Thunderbird that enables one to do that. However, it doesn't work with the current version of Thunderbird.

jonathon

Primefalcon
July 7th, 2012, 11:10 PM
There is an extension for Thunderbird that enables one to do that. However, it doesn't work with the current version of Thunderbird.

jonathon
you know the name of the extension? and I suppose that'll be one benefit of security only updates no more (hopefully) extension incompatibilities.

nll
July 8th, 2012, 12:09 AM
It's really sad. I use Thunderbird a lot for mail and RSS. I hope this decision doesn't hurt it.

aysiu
July 8th, 2012, 12:31 AM
I dug Thunderbird for a long time until I started working at places that used Exchange email. Thunderbird's integration with Exchange is ****-poor, even with workarounds and extensions.

Yes, I know Exchange is Microsoft's own proprietary thing, but Evolution seems to be fine with at least some Exchange versions, and Android can do Exchange just fine, too.

karmila
July 8th, 2012, 05:44 AM
As a Linux user since 2001 I also like Unity. As far as Unity is concerned I would like to be able to minimize applications by clicking on their icons in the launcher.

There is a PPA with patched Unity so you can do that (and couple more behaviour if you want to use them)
See the article here (http://www.webupd8.org/2012/07/disable-global-menu-autohide-behaviour.html).

sffvba[e0rt
July 8th, 2012, 05:55 AM
As much as I hate to admit it the default gmail interface you get in your browser rocks pretty hard. I hate being tied to having the net available at all times to get to a mail but I know you can set it up to have a local copy of mail (but I don't know how well that works).


404

Max Blyss
July 8th, 2012, 07:50 AM
Man, I love T-Bird... I hope they don't screw it up!

ade234uk
July 8th, 2012, 10:12 AM
What I would love to see is a simple cross platform email client that is also portable. Web mail is great, but is a lot nicer to have your email saved on your desktop. I used thunderbird portable but is crashed on numerous occasions in Windows. It also worked in Linux via Wine.

Primefalcon
July 8th, 2012, 10:46 AM
What I would love to see is a simple cross platform email client that is also portable. Web mail is great, but is a lot nicer to have your email saved on your desktop. I used thunderbird portable but is crashed on numerous occasions in Windows. It also worked in Linux via Wine.
Linux itself can be portable, install it to a usb stick, give yourself room to save preferences and such... setup your email on the stick, and just boot from that on the go whe you want to check email :-).....

I actually wish I knew about that at one stage (had internet off for a year or more) :-( unfortunately when I really could of used that I was a Windows newb, though I had an aunt that allowed me to check email on her computer.. but it would of been nice to boot to usb sync mail and read it such at home, write up email to send at my convencience and then just take it over to sync send and receive mail

Paddy Landau
July 8th, 2012, 10:48 AM
In Evolution when adding a group (a bunch of contacts under one name) to the to field to send you can remove individual emails from that group... which is pretty darned useful...
You can do this in Thunderbird, but it takes a couple of steps.

Create your email to your group. Instead of sending, choose File > Send Later (or Shift+Ctrl+Return). Go to your Outbox, and drag the email to the Drafts folder. Now edit the email and you can amend the recipients as required.


Web mail is great, but is a lot nicer to have your email saved on your desktop...
You can get the best of both worlds. Use IMAP with Thunderbird. In the account settings: Synchronisation & Storage > Disc Space > Synchronise all messages locally regardless of age.

That way, you can use TB when you are at your computer, and webmail when you are away. It works well.

ade234uk
July 8th, 2012, 10:56 AM
You can do this in Thunderbird, but it takes a couple of steps.

Create your email to your group. Instead of sending, choose File > Send Later (or Shift+Ctrl+Return). Go to your Outbox, and drag the email to the Drafts folder. Now edit the email and you can amend the recipients as required.


You can get the best of both worlds. Use IMAP with Thunderbird. In the account settings: Synchronisation & Storage > Disc Space > Synchronise all messages locally regardless of age.

That way, you can use TB when you are at your computer, and webmail when you are away. It works well.

Will take another look at this. All my years using computers I have never bothered looking at how IMAP works.

The other thing that has never been developed is a way to export all your emails to html format along with their attachements so you have a proper hard copy.

Primefalcon
July 8th, 2012, 10:58 AM
I second IMAP with Gmail I use it with evolution/thunderbird myself both and it works great, I sign alll outgoing messages and can encrypt as well... through gmail!

Paddy Landau
July 8th, 2012, 10:58 AM
Will take another look at this. All my years using computers I have never bothered looking IMAP.
It took me several years to try, but having done it, I'll never go back to POP3.

Paddy Landau
July 8th, 2012, 11:03 AM
The other thing that has never been developed is a way to export all your emails to html format along with their attachements so you have a proper hard copy.
Why would you want to? Just don't delete the emails that you want to keep. I have a special "Keep" email folder in Thunderbird for long-term email storage.

You can, if you want, save emails in files (File > Save As), but unless you are transferring emails from email client to another without an import option (assuming you do not use IMAP), I don't see the point.

jonathonblake
July 9th, 2012, 04:09 PM
you know the name of the extension?

I've forgotten what it was called. :(

I used it once or twice, but found it easier to simply edit the To/CC/BCC entries.

jonathon

mike acker
July 9th, 2012, 05:53 PM
when we no longer need a email address to have a account on web sites
**cellphones have email address 00000000@carrier.com is the typical format iirc

i have thunderbird open more than firefox, i know tb was going to get a built in im client in it, wonder if it will show up in the stable release...

we have to get rid of FAX first ( tee hee )

e\mail is a universal standard. social networks fall short of this because they are all trying to be piggy

Primefalcon
July 9th, 2012, 05:58 PM
we have to get rid of FAX first ( tee hee )

e\mail is a universal standard. social networks fall short of this because they are all trying to be piggy
google fell on their fae when they tried to kill email.... lets face it though... waves failure was mostly due to how google handled it.....

=>google unveils wave

=> everyone excited

=> google says only 3 people may use wave (exageration maybe but.... and locks down invites)

=> everyones sad that they cant use wave

=> years go by.. people slowly forget wave.....

=> google releases wave to the masses

=> people who may have noticed wave got released, struggle to remember what it was....

=>google cant understand why it failed.....

davetv
July 10th, 2012, 03:35 PM
Anybody read anything about this? Anybody got any thoughts? http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/mozilla-does-the-unthinkable/3719?tag=nl.e011 ... I use TB on Win7 systems, various VM's (and OS's) at work... and love it! I sync VM's mail easily. (I develop for multi-platforms). Tis a sad day. I hope it gets continued by the OS community.

Elfy
July 10th, 2012, 03:39 PM
Yep - merged :)

QIII
July 10th, 2012, 03:44 PM
I'm not quite sure why everyone is getting their panties in a wad over this.

It fetches, stores and sends email. It does that well.

It is mature and it's time for it to go out on it's own to fame and fortune.

I'm not sure why the author of that piece is having a hatd time wrapping his head around what Mozilla said about it.

"Did you hear about Mozilla and Thunderbird?"

"Yup. How are your wife and kids?"

davetv
July 10th, 2012, 03:53 PM
TB lets me sync stored mail on VM's using files and scripts trading on multiple VM OS platforms. I have no other methodology for doing this.... yet .... but TB is pretty ubiquitous and I know that what languishes dies!

jonathonblake
July 10th, 2012, 04:14 PM
I'm not quite sure why everyone is getting their panties in a wad over this.

Becuase whilst there are, at least in theory, active developers for it, there is a sense that it might be able to:
Fetch email;
Store email;
Send email;




It fetches, stores and sends email. It does that well.


If only that were true.

And yes, I did file bug reports.
The developers response was that it was not designed to retrieve email!



It is mature and it's time for it to go out on it's own to fame and fortune.

I guess maturity means:"The developers are tired of trying to find more ways to avoid making an email client do what it is supposed to do, and they'd rather not spend their time actually writing code that enables that basic functionality."

jonathon

QIII
July 10th, 2012, 04:23 PM
While it is tempting to assume that our own experiences reflect that of all others...

Paddy Landau
July 10th, 2012, 04:37 PM
It fetches, stores and sends email. It does that well.
And some people are also saying, well, they use Webmail, so what's the problem?

The problem is that Thunderbird has fantastic add-ons, which make it well worth using. In fact, I also use Webmail — but when I'm at my computer, I use Thunderbird (with IMAP) for my email needs. With TB, I can do things like mass-mail with fine-tuning; use GPG (some people send me signed emails); work more efficiently with folders than my webmail can; have a backup of all my emails on my computer; tailor my stationary; and more.

(Some people, of course, live where reliable always-on Internet is not realistic; for them, webmail is not a suitable replacement.)

If TB continues to be leading-edge, developers will maintain their superb add-ons. If not, they will leave, and people like me will have to find replacements.


And yes, I did file bug reports.
The developers response was that it was not designed to retrieve email!
I think your story would be interesting. Please share!

DingusFett
July 11th, 2012, 01:28 AM
As an email client, Thunderbird should be able to retrieve email.
The following sequence explains why Thunderbird is currently inadequate as an email client:

Setup twenty email accounts;
Ensure that each email account receives 25,000 emails per day;
Let the accounts cumulate email for ten, or more days;
Start Thunderbird;
Watch Thunderbird crash;
Restart Thunderbird;
Repeat that sequence until you understand why Thunderbird needs a user selectable setting for sequential email retrieval, with parallel email retrieval as the default;
Write the code that gives users the option to force sequential email retrieval;



Sounds like a legit every-day use... I've never had a problem with Thunderbird using 3 email accounts that admittedly don't see a huge amount of traffic, but your situation above is hardly standard and I think would cause issues for more programs, never mind the fact you'd need good hardware and internet connection to try to bring down ~5,000,000 emails successfully.

neu5eeCh
July 11th, 2012, 01:48 AM
Obviously Mozilla has their reasons for "dumping" Thunderbird, but their self-congratulatory rationales were eye-rollingly annoying and not to be believed. I doubt many on the Windows or Mac side care one way or the other. They have other better and stronger options. If anything, this hurts the Linux ecosystem the most. I just hope Mozilla doesn't make a similar announcement concerning Firefox on the Linux platform.

fballem
July 11th, 2012, 02:47 AM
The last time I looked at Evolution, it crashed when configured to retrieve email from two different accounts. Have the Evolution developers fixed that failure to retrieve email?
jonathon

I currently have Evolution configured for five e-mail accounts and it works flawlessly for me. I don't have the same volumes as you do, but it might be worth another look for you.

I happen to prefer it over Thunderbird, but then in Windows, I was an Outlook user, so I find the integrated Calendar an essential requirement for me.

Regards,

SeijiSensei
July 11th, 2012, 04:31 AM
I'm trying to comprehend how any user could even keep up with 25,000 messages per day on 20 accounts. Even if the person spent all 24 hours each day reading email, he or she would need to read nearly 60 messages each second!

So if the complaint is that Thunderbird isn't capable of handling mail volumes like these, my reaction is that the program is designed for humans who aren't capable of handling mail volumes like these either.

jonathonblake
July 12th, 2012, 07:24 AM
you know the name of the extension?

The NotTo extension theoretically will remove addresses for To/CC/BCC that are in the NotTo space.

The MaileMerge extension theoretically allows for custom messages that are sent en masse.

jonathon

Paddy Landau
July 12th, 2012, 11:33 AM
The MaileMerge extension theoretically allows for custom messages that are sent en masse.
+1 for Mail Merge (https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/mail-merge/). I have used it for ages and it works perfectly.

Primefalcon
July 12th, 2012, 02:04 PM
The NotTo extension theoretically will remove addresses for To/CC/BCC that are in the NotTo space.

The MaileMerge extension theoretically allows for custom messages that are sent en masse.

jonathon
Thx a bunch:-)

I do like evolution better overall, it just seems a better mail client... however thunderbird like firefox has a ton of extensions

cybergalvez
July 13th, 2012, 01:33 AM
So I wonder if ubuntu will switch back to evolution now?

Primefalcon
July 13th, 2012, 02:40 AM
So I wonder if ubuntu will switch back to evolution now?
who knows they've been switching the default applications rather rapidly of late 11.04 => rhythmbox 11.10 => banshee 12.04 => rhytmbox

personally rhythmbox was the better choice anyhow...

epikvision
July 14th, 2012, 12:14 AM
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57469229-93/mozillas-thunderbird-not-dead-but-sort-of-on-life-support/

Well, I'm stricken by this news. I was just starting to like Thunderbird for its open source nature and elegant design... What do you guys think?

Primefalcon
July 14th, 2012, 12:34 AM
So I wonder if ubuntu will switch back to evolution now?
jono did a post on that: http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/07/11/thunderbird-and-ubuntu/

Elfy
July 14th, 2012, 08:23 AM
merged

MadmanRB
July 14th, 2012, 07:54 PM
I mean it doesnt matter as there are alternatives to thunderbird that are not evolution.

Paddy Landau
July 14th, 2012, 07:55 PM
I mean it doesnt matter as there are alternatives to thunderbird that are not evolution.
With the same add-ons for the same capabilities? If you can show me one that fulfils my needs, I'll be excited!

Primefalcon
July 14th, 2012, 09:46 PM
kmail
claws
alpine
Sylpheed
balsa

thunderbird and evolution are the big 2 though afaik

a good list of clients here though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Linux_email_clients

cybergalvez
July 14th, 2012, 10:23 PM
jono did a post on that: http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/07/11/thunderbird-and-ubuntu/

Well at least we know it will be supported during the present LTS cycle, that sets my mind a ease a bit

mr john
July 15th, 2012, 08:23 PM
Thunderbird would only have worked for me if they'd introduced decent Exchange and Global Address Book capabilities. Until that happens it's Outlook for me at work. I'd have switched to a complete open source office solution, but the open source email clients cant do what I need. Evolution worked a bit for that but the exchange plugin was not reliable enough.

zerubbabel
July 16th, 2012, 06:53 PM
Thunderbird would only have worked for me if they'd introduced decent Exchange and Global Address Book capabilities. Until that happens it's Outlook for me at work. I'd have switched to a complete open source office solution, but the open source email clients cant do what I need. Evolution worked a bit for that but the exchange plugin was not reliable enough.

You might want to look at SOGo (http://www.sogo.nu/english.html), which provides an open-source alternative to Exchange, with both a Thunderbird-like web interface and the ability to use Thunderbird itself as a front end.

neu5eeCh
July 16th, 2012, 07:54 PM
Thunderbird would only have worked for me if they'd introduced decent Exchange and Global Address Book capabilities. Until that happens it's Outlook for me at work. I'd have switched to a complete open source office solution, but the open source email clients cant do what I need. Evolution worked a bit for that but the exchange plugin was not reliable enough.

Interesting that you should write this. The link below comes from today (I think) and, in my opinion, puts the lie to the notion (the absurdity) that Mozilla really has nothing more to add to Thunderbird.

http://www.thepowerbase.com/2012/07/fail-client-how-linux-fails-at-the-corporate-desktop/

Another blogger suggested that Ubuntu take up Thunderbird development. He made a compelling argument.

http://www.thepowerbase.com/2012/07/thunderfork-canonicals-chance-to-expand-its-ecosystem-with-thunderbird/

Though I can already hear all the objections. It does seem that if Canonical really wants Ubuntu to compete for the corporate desktop, it's going to have to offer something besides a pretty little launcher and blurry lenses( that even come with a porno filter).

Docaltmed
July 17th, 2012, 01:48 AM
Maybe this will force the Evolution devs to start supporting things like, I dunno, html-based email.

Or, maybe, god forbid, get the program to resize its screens to fit a netbook display size, something they have repeatedly -- and pointedly -- refused to do.

I'm not holding my breath, though.

mr john
July 17th, 2012, 05:56 AM
You might want to look at SOGo (http://www.sogo.nu/english.html), which provides an open-source alternative to Exchange, with both a Thunderbird-like web interface and the ability to use Thunderbird itself as a front end.


I'm sure that would be nice, but I don't have access to that Windows server at work, only the Ubuntu and FreeBSD servers which dont handle internal/external emails. Any email client I use has to have compatibility with the existing server setup. This has stoppped me installing Ubuntu on some work machines.

ade234uk
August 4th, 2012, 05:10 AM
Why would you want to? Just don't delete the emails that you want to keep. I have a special "Keep" email folder in Thunderbird for long-term email storage.

You can, if you want, save emails in files (File > Save As), but unless you are transferring emails from email client to another without an import option (assuming you do not use IMAP), I don't see the point.

I have actually just purchased a USB pen and I am going to be putting Thunderbird Portable on to it. I also found an extension that allows you to save multiple messages in .eml format, instead of having to save them one at a time.

I have tried Thunderbird Portable through Wine before and it worked without any problems, however if there are any issues I could always run it in a Windows VM.

Best of both worlds. Portability with the option to save locally.