Thunderfork: Canonical’s Chance To Expand Its Ecosystem With Thunderbird

Now it is not exactly the best PR move to stand on the proverbial shoulders of giants, only to take that enormous effort and repackage it. Canonical has already suffered this once with its move to Unity. Of course they have completely recovered from it and Unity is now an accepted and familiar desktop environment.

Really? No....I mean Really?

they have completely recovered from it and Unity is now an accepted and familiar desktop environment?

How many thousands, probably tens of thousands, abandoned Ubuntu over this nightmare? Not saying I haven't editorialized my share of stuff over the years but holy friggin' cow...Unity is now an accepted and familiar desktop environment?

I stopped reading the article right there. The smell of grape Kool-aid was becoming overpowering.

BTW, I purposely mis-spelled Kool-Aid in the title just to stay on the safe side of trademark issues.

Da**ed shame we have to be so paranoid in this copyright/IP world. Just sayin'...

Thunderbird has been the neglected stepchild for how long? The Mozilla foundation is very well-funded, sitting on literally millions of dollars -- and yet Firefox struggles with ancient and bizarre defects, it's on an insane and user-unfriendly speed-release cycle, they don't like Linux users, and haven't put any serious energy into Thunderbird ever. Maybe it's too late as The Masses flock to Gmail and Teh Kloud. I think they should have been nicer to Linux people, then they could have attracted some good talent.

I think gmail has impacted the email client market deeply. While some may have some privacy concerns, I use Gmail exclusively for personal and business email. I do have thunderbird installed but use it only to back up my gmail. And yes, the mozilla folks have been brutal to the Linux community. Backing up Gmail to Thunderbird is two-click easy in Windows but the last time I checked, there was no such opportunity for Linux users...and it's been a while since I checked. My method is clumsy but it works.

Gmail has surpassed both Hotmail and Yahoo in users a while ago. In fact, I forwarded an article not long ago about employers making judgments about you based on your email address. Hotmail and Yahoo users were considered "technically inept" compared to Gmail users. Not saying I agree, just passing along the observation. Now that I think of it....the Yahoo email interface does look like it was designed to make a 14 year old girl feel right at home.

> ...Backing up Gmail to Thunderbird is two-click easy in Windows but the last time I checked, there was no such opportunity for Linux users.

Offlineimap. Setup took a while, but it works. We use gmail to back up my wife's email and use offlineimap to keep a local copy.

However, she can't stand the recent changes to gmail, so I've set up fetchmail and squirrelmail on one of our home machines for her use. And she's set up and account with no-ip.com she can reach it from outside the house. She loves it so far.

I use gmail as a spam bucket, I have several accounts, and it works well. Thanks Google, the service is exemplary.

funny....that's what I use hotmail for. Seems that they excel in the transport of that potted meat.

I use an old yahoo mail account for my spam.

As for Firefox, im pretty much going to be dropping it soon, as it has become fairly obvious that Linux is now a second class citizen at Mozilla. As for Thunderbird which is my email client of choice well its always been the black sheep at Mozilla.

Backing up Gmail to Thunderbird is two-click easy in Windows but the last time I checked, there was no such opportunity for Linux users...and it's been a while since I checked.

I use an extention < ImportExportTools > and this does just what I want it to do. For a full backup............well, zip the folder !

"As for Thunderbird which is my email client of choice well its always been the black sheep at Mozilla."

Which is a d@mn shame. It's a good program that deserved more attention.

OTOH, I continue to find that the benefits of FF/Iceweasel (same for Opera) is that they are not so intrinsically tied into Google -- with its various ever-present privacy issues -- as is Google's Chrome browser.

Outside of Thunderbird, the article got it a bit wrong on at least ONE thing abt Baboontu: "they have completely recovered from it and Unity is now an accepted and familiar desktop environment."

I for one still doubt that LUnity is really "accepted and familiar"!

2c