I'm a long time Thunderbird user. Once every one or two years I looked if there was a better free & libre alternative supporting Windows, having a GUI, and an integrated calendar. Each time I came to the conclusion that Thunderbird was still the top contender. This blog post fills me with hope that Thunderbird has a future.
The Future of Thunderbird
31–40 of 473 posts
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#32After all those horror stories of people getting locked out of Google, I started using Thunderbird as my email backup. Took a while to get all my emails but now that they have been downloaded, I just run it as a backup tool to fetch the emails. If I had to ask, more than improving the UI (which is an initiative I have nothing against), improving the performance (mainly search) should be accorded high priority.
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#33The Future of Thunderbird can only be summarized as having no future with Mozilla.
> Throughout the years, Mozilla’s focus shifted a lot, investing less and less resources into the development of Thunderbird. On July 6, 2012, the Mozilla Foundation announced that it would no longer be focused on innovations for Thunderbird, and that the future Thunderbird development would transition to a community-driven model.
So it isn't a priority and isn't as interesting to Mozilla? As far as Mozilla is concerned; it is dead. This also happened to Servo and it ended up getting severed from Mozilla, since they see it as another cost they cannot maintain.
> In 2023, Thunderbird is pretty well sustainable, with a healthy donation flow, more services in development to increase our revenue stream (stay tuned!)
Thank you Google!
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#34> Why does Thunderbird look so old
UI isn't a fashion show. I'd much rather have a UI that looks older but is comfortable to use than something trendy.
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#35> “Why does Thunderbird look so old, and why does it take so long to change?” ~ A notable percentage of Thunderbird users Honestly this doesn't seem like the main issue with Thunderbird; the main issue is that the UI is very slow, it tends to use a lot of CPU and memory just sitting there and a lot of operations block the UI. This got a lot worse with 102. 102 unfortunately is so low in responsiveness that it's liter…
I remember the times when I was the only Thunderbird user in an Outlook infested company. I remember it was crazy fast, especially real-time search folders were a game changer for me, so I could filter messages however I liked and let them appear in multiple folders without affecting performance. I haven't used it in a while, but if it's true, it's a pity that once so useful and fast piece of software deteriorate so…
I remember it was crazy fast
I remember Thunderbird as being both fast, and uniquely able to run on pretty much any hardware.
I used it on an eeePC 701 with no problems, even though the machine had only a 900 MHz processor, 512MB of RAM, and a 4GB disk.
Sad to hear it's gone all bloatware since those days.
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#36> “Why does Thunderbird look so old, and why does it take so long to change?” ~ A notable percentage of Thunderbird users Honestly this doesn't seem like the main issue with Thunderbird; the main issue is that the UI is very slow, it tends to use a lot of CPU and memory just sitting there and a lot of operations block the UI. This got a lot worse with 102. 102 unfortunately is so low in responsiveness that it's liter…
Yes, I love the UI of Thunderbird and its superior UI is the only reason I still use it despite the horrific performance issues.
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#37> “Why does Thunderbird look so old, and why does it take so long to change?” If it works...
For me it doesn't really work. Searching any large folder completely stalls the UI for a few seconds. How can it be so slow to go through a bit of text?
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember the times when I was the only Thunderbird user in an Outlook infested company. I remember it was crazy fast, especially real-time search folders were a game changer for me, so I could filter messages however I liked and let them appear in multiple folders without affecting performance. I haven't used it in a while, but if it's true, it's a pity that once so useful and fast piece of software deteriorate so…
I remember it was crazy fast I remember Thunderbird as being both fast, and uniquely able to run on pretty much any hardware. I used it on an eeePC 701 with no problems, even though the machine had only a 900 MHz processor, 512MB of RAM, and a 4GB disk. Sad to hear it's gone all bloatware since those days.
It really has. Thunderbird has become slower and slower and prone to lockups. The UI and feature set is still great but the performance is really horrific.
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#39> “Why does Thunderbird look so old, and why does it take so long to change?” ~ A notable percentage of Thunderbird users Honestly this doesn't seem like the main issue with Thunderbird; the main issue is that the UI is very slow, it tends to use a lot of CPU and memory just sitting there and a lot of operations block the UI. This got a lot worse with 102. 102 unfortunately is so low in responsiveness that it's liter…
That's also the main problem I have with it. The UI is what it is, but it has the considerable advantage that I'm already used to it. I'm not really clamoring for a different UI, there's bigger problems.
Unfortunately, it has some serious performance bugs. It often sits there idle on a brand new laptop eating 50% or 70% of a core. Doing who knows what, without giving any indication or any sort of pause button to the user.
I almost have to keep Thunderbird closed to save my battery. Sometimes I think if I wrote a shell script that suspended the main process four of every five minutes, it'd make for better background task scheduling than whatever must be going on.
The software is burning hundred of billions of CPU cycles running in circles for hours and hours, when it's supposed to be sitting idle.
Re: The Future of Thunderbird
#40> Why does Thunderbird look so old UI isn't a fashion show. I'd much rather have a UI that looks older but is comfortable to use than something trendy.
> UI isn't a fashion show.
Yes, it is. At least, it is for UI designers.