A recent update to Leap 15.5 which includes Thunderbird 128.4.3esr has overwritten all Thunderbird’s non-default user configuration, except the server config, with default values; even the server security-related port numbers have been changed though not the security protocol name (SSL/TLS).
This isn’t the first time it’s happened, and it’s really unacceptable IMO!!!
Is it possible to restore the pre-existing configuration file?
Does anyone know of a better email client? Kmail used to be very good until KDE apparently lost focus on ironing out the numerous bugs, or perhaps creating a less ambitious but reliable version. That was the original reason I migrated to Thunderbird but I’m losing patience with Mozilla now.
I haven’t reported the problem to T’bird so far because I’m not entirely sure whether it’s a Leap update issue or a T’bird issue, but I think the latter.
Some time ago the T’bird team also annoyingly reversed the position of the main and application menus so the standard menu bar (File Edit View … Help) was below the application menu bar rather than above.
Thanks for that, I run the Plasma GUI and had forgotten all about Evolution…
My current plan is to migrate the MailDir?? file structure Thunderbird uses for storage to something as close as possible to MailDir++ . Both Kmail and Evolution apparently use Maildir++ so changing to any compatible client agent should then only require a recursive copy.
Pluggable Stores explains why we need other pluggable stores. Maildir is the first pluggable mail store to be implemented as an alternative to mbox - the traditional format used by Thunderbird. Thunderbird’s maildir implementation allows a single unique filename per email (EML).
Note this is NOT full maildir in the sense that most people, particularly linux users or mail administrators, know as maildir. You cannot point a Thunderbird account to a mail server directory. You do not get message flags stored with emails. You only get a single file per message, and nothing more.
I’ve successfully migrated a Thunderbird folder containing subfolders to Kmail using BASH at the command line, and the next step is to write a script to move the whole 2.7 GB. The only problem is that the message filenames are still as generated by Thunderbird, but at least they’re unique.
Not all my settings were changed either. Font management in Thunderbird / Firefox seems to be an uncertain art, but I’d no sooner managed to configure the darker fonts I prefer when the update reset them to the defaults. It also changed the network security protocol port numbers to SSL/TLS without changing the name of the protocol, which is potentially more serious IMO.
Furthermore, I counted eight Thubderbird version updates in the 141 days between 17th July and 8th December: from version 115.12.2 to 128.5.0, about one every 18 days. All were via normal Leap updates.
This suggests to me that Thunderbird software is not very stable, and/or it’s poorly architected so difficult to change, and/or their testing & release processes are lacking.