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Thunderbird Littering My Home

thefoggiest.dev

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Re: Thunderbird Littering My Home

#31

Post by wps »

the__alchemist wrote: post #3

There are so many annoyances in TB. I stopped using it after a few days. My primary concerns: - Opening an email thread opens multiple (potentially many) tabs, and is difficult to nagivate or understand the flow of messages - I don't know how to write an email without it making the spacing between paragraphs/lines larger than I would like. (I.e. double-spacing) - Search is unreliable / broken.

I agree. I might swap over to a TUI mail client on my desktop. Don’t even get me started on the iOS Mail app.

Re: Thunderbird Littering My Home

#33

Post by create_accounts »

mzajc wrote: post #21

There's more! On my machine it creates an empty ~/.mozilla/extensions directory every time it starts, and I have no idea why it does that or how to make it stop.

there's a stupid solution that I put in practice out of helplessness. I remove the writing permission on ~ to my user, only sudo can write on ~, so some apps simply fail to launch

Re: Thunderbird Littering My Home

#34

Post by acabal »

Home folder litter is one of my top pet peeves in computing. In fact it's the only reason why I refuse to use snaps on Ubuntu. I don't even care about whatever technical stuff everyone argues about - but snaps create a permanent `~/snap/` directory and Ubuntu devs don't care. There's been a bug report on Launchpad for over a decade[1] and it's the second highest voted bug in Ubuntu history, but no, Ubuntu devs think littering the home folder with highly visible system-level machinery is totally unavoidable.

It's like putting your car's engine in the passenger seat - rude, intolerable, and plain stupid. What if Grandma was browsing her home folder and deleted `~/snap/` because she has no idea what it is?

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053

Re: Thunderbird Littering My Home

#36

Post by Retr0id »

lomlobon wrote: post #2

I've long given up on keeping a clean home folder because so many software do this and keeping it clean is a constant chore. Now I just make a real_home folder in my 'home' and put all my actual stuff there. They can use the ~ landfill

I just never look in ~

Re: Thunderbird Littering My Home

#37

Post by tomstockmail »

cassianoleal wrote: post #16
gruez wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's no guarantee that the PR would get merged.

Or worked

There's a patch in the bug report and it appears to be tagged for Thunderbird 153 release.

While I'm here I got to say, it's worrying seeing people not calling out what a bad solution the OP has suggested. Implementing a blind removal of a folder is not good practice. You will forget about this script/unit file. One day you may copy all your Thunderbird data to ~/thunderbird, think you're safe, then boom, it's gone.

Edit: Forgot a key point

Re: Thunderbird Littering My Home

#38

Post by PenguinCoder »

create_accounts wrote: post #33
mzajc wrote: post #21

There's more! On my machine it creates an empty ~/.mozilla/extensions directory every time it starts, and I have no idea why it does that or how to make it stop.

there's a stupid solution that I put in practice out of helplessness. I remove the writing permission on ~ to my user, only sudo can write on ~, so some apps simply fail to launch

So then you have to run those apps as root user, or does sudo to your own user work? I wouldn't expect it to with those perms set.

Seems more dangerous than just dealing with the cruft.

Re: Thunderbird Littering My Home

#40

Post by create_accounts »

PenguinCoder wrote: post #38
create_accounts wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's a stupid solution that I put in practice out of helplessness. I remove the writing permission on ~ to my user, only sudo can write on ~, so some apps simply fail to launch

So then you have to run those apps as root user, or does sudo to your own user work? I wouldn't expect it to with those perms set. Seems more dangerous than just dealing with the cruft.

I don't launch them as root. That defeats the purpose because they would write on the ~ folder. ZSH Terminal grumbles when launching but why the hell does it want to log my every command?

only 1 app has failed to launch and I barely need it anymore.

if it is crucial, I give myself permission to edit the folder so the application can create its folder for dumping rubbish

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