suggestions on Thunderbird with Tumbleweed

I am now running Tumbleweed with KDE/Plasma, and for the most part, I am quite happy with using it. However, because it always advances to the most leading edge version of Thunderbird, which I use for most of my email, I am running into some consistent problems for which I would appreciate some advice. Those problems are mainly associated with the fact that the Thunderbird add-ons in the past have not always kept up with the leading edge development of Thunderbird, and so they failed to function.

Two of these add-ons are the provider for google-calendar, and the Owl add-on to connect with an exchange based mail server. Right now both of these are working, I think. I don’t actually use the owl add-on yet - my company is requiring me to switch to using either web-based mail or a client that supports connecting to an exchange-based mail server in January, so I am needing to switch to that next month. Right now they are still IMAP compatible, but they are removing IMAP compatibility from their servers, so I will need to make sure I am using a client that supports exchange. What I don’t want to do is find myself in a situation where I need to access email for work, and suddenly because I ran a Tumbleweed update, I have to access my email through a web browser instead of using my regular Thunderbird email client.

The calendar provider is less of a concern, but it is still something I would prefer to avoid.

So I am looking for a solution. It seems I could either put a lock on Thunderbird and make sure it only updates when the add-ons that I need are caught up to the latest version, or use another email client that doesn’t have the same issues. I am sort of new to Tumbleweed - a couple of years ago I ran Tumbleweed for about 3 or 4 months. At the time I tried to put a lock on Thunderbird for this very reason, and the lock caused some problems, but I don’t really remember what they were.

My preference in all honesty is to try another email client that is compatible with exchange, because the Owl add-on is a paid add-on and I would rather not have to hassle with that.

Any suggestions?

Locking the package is a viable solution, I assume you use gmail, i my self use the web client of gmail because it works a little bit better, in the past i have used thunderbird and even Kmail.
If the addon providers aren’t fast when it comes to updating their addons for the latest version of thunderbird i reccomend locking it using zypper addlock MozillaThunderbird

My company email is based on a microsoft exchange email server, which is different from both IMAP and POP, and there is no native support for it in Thunderbird. I have thought about migrating away from Thunderbird for some time. I found this link for setting up kmail with a microsoft exchange email account:
https://userbase.kde.org/Kmail/Configuring_Kmail/Accounts/Office_365

Wondering if anyone has a positive experience doing so?

A long time ago I had a similar problem and used DavMail to provide a POP2/IMAP interface to Thurnerbird for my work’s email. As I say, long time ago, can’t remember much about it. It’s here:

You might take a look at Evolution.

I started using it quite while ago as Kmail was in an unstable state and I didn’t like the way Thunderbird worked.

I have found it quite stable. I believe it will address Exchange although I have not had the opportunity to try it.

Bart