Direct link to said better features, for the lazy: https://www.betterbird.eu/#featuretable
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
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Im lzy, ty
What fool put a background logo over a non-mobile friendly page?
In any event, this feature set looks nice.
I came here because of the clickbait title, ready to lambast thunderbird for the empty promises... But it turns out that they're pretty clear on the specifics of what separates them from Thunderbird.
But I'm not gonna let that righteous indignation go to waste, so instead I'm gonma rip Sourav Rudra('s writing skill) a new one. Prepare your (writing skill's) ass for a kicking Sourav.
Betterbird: A Thunderbird Fork That Promises Better Features
Better features?! Can I also have updated elements and improved aspects? Maybe superior components too??? Ah. A girl can dream.
Vague buzzwords and nothing more. "Better features" is not only subjective, but also vague enough to be almost entirely meaningless. Let's hope the rest of the article does better.
Thankfully, the author included a shortlist of "Must-Know Bits." I'm sure that's a good summary of what's to follow.
— Features many long-requested features.
I'm glad they're finally listening to my request of compatibility with the Lovense remote control vibrator app's API. Now I can feel good about receiving emails instead of stressed! They sure took their sweet time, it's been long [time units] since I requested it!
How long and who requested? Or better yet, what features????? Why should I care???????? Please, give me somethinbg concrete to grip onto!
— A more streamlined alternative to Thunderbird.
Streamlined! Wow! Is it also more efficient, and higher quality? Will they make it sustainable? Maybe it can also be more ethically sourved.
Could you be more vague please? This almost accidentally told me something about the changes they've made.
— Highly customizable, thanks to Add-ons and Themes.
Like Thunderbird? Like the addons you can find at the official Thunderbird site at addons.thunderbird.net?
Do they also plan to send and receive email in betterbird? Will it work with a graphical desktop environment? Will it be computer software? Or does the failure to mention these assumed "features" imply that it will diverge from Thunderbird in these key aspects?
Deeply shit lead-in. The rest of the article stands in stark contrast, being actually specific and informative. It's like ol Sourav wrote an actually good article, then some idiot editor slapped it in ChatGPT and told it to fart out a title, subtitle, and highlights list. And then ChatGPT ignored all that and made the most generic tech article heading of all time.
FWIW, itsfoss.com: you should fire that editor for being a completely incompetent moron.
The homepage of their website also has a very 'holier-than-thou' feel to it, it's not horrifically bad, but something about how it's written makes me feel like I'm being preached to by a televangelist.
Looking at the linked-from-the-“due to differences”-link emails… jesus christ… so that’s what people mean by Mozilla prioritizing greedy money…
If you read the developer's background and reasons for the fork, it's actually a lot more....... cringe.
Pretty much, the guy lost his shit because Mozilla is woke / SJW / DEI and all the lovely buzz words used by certain people.
That would make sense. I'd like some links.
Got that vibe when he said he was ousted by weaponized cancel culture
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Ngl that link puts me slightly off. It reads exactly like what people booted for very good reasons say
The following paragraph shows how so-called cancel culture was used weaponising [...]
And in the email, Mozilla talks about him violating their "inclusivity" policy... we also don't know what was reported, only the reasons stated.
Not saying that it wasn't unjust, just that we only have 1 perspective and it's written in a way that raises some red flags.
Pretty bad when one side's perspective makes them look awful and the other side is the one accusing them of being awful 😬
I agree that I'd be very curious as to what the violations actually are, but...
- No specific instances of violations are referenced in the CPG emails
- There's no language in the CPG emails regarding prior warnings
- Suspension from the council is clearly out-of-process
Mozilla doesn't do loose coupling of UI and core, huh?
Is there a way to use this as a drop in replacement easily? Like maybe move my Thunderbird profile folder into a Bettterbord folder, or maybe an automatic import option?
This looks promising but I don't really want to set up my email accounts and settings from scratch.
As per the FAQ they seem to share the exact same profile so you can seamlessly switch between them (provided both are the same dot release).
Edit: in case that doesn't work, run betterbird -p and select the right profile. For me it chose the wrong one.
I just gave it a try and it does not pick up my existing Thunderbird data automatically, or prompt to import it.
Booooo
The instructions change if you're using flatpak. I was only able to get it to work with a manual import
I'm on Windows on this PC, so nothing being isolated here.
for TB -> TB-flatpack simply pasting from ~/.thunderbird/ to
~/.var/app/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/.thunderbird/
did work for me. I might try betterbird sometime.
Same here :(
One bug that irks me is deleting an email on a folder with sorting such as grouped sorting and Thunderbird loses the sorting settings, then I have to reapply the sorting settings again.....gah
Thunderbird, and probably betterbird, is too bloated for my taste.
all you really need is a steady hand and a magnetized needle. kernel is bloat
Does it have the new UI update that came with Thunderbird recently? Didn't see any screenshots of the UI on their website.
It does
The only reasons I sometime back looked into betterbird was thunderbird breaking TbSync and its companion "Provider for Exchange ActiveSync", which I really need for work, and because of their tray support (I don't like the modern way which rejects the benefits of the tray functionality, or notification area which is how it's also called now a days).
For the first thing, I was able to live with thunderbird by reverting the upgrade and keep its package from upgrading at all, until the two extensions I required eventually supported the new thunderbird version which broke them. I looked into betterbird as an alternative since someone suggested it given betterbird wasn't moving as fast at that time as thunderbird was, and at that moment they were not breaking the extensions I'm force to use if wanting to use thunderbird as email client at work.
For the tray, ohh well, it doesn't work on wayland if you don't use gnome or kde (I use wayfire), so it couldn't help me at all. I found a bug reported on mozilla (not sure why not also on betterbird) which matches my case, so no luck with their tray support, :(
Other than that I really didn't find a compelling reason to use betterbird instead of thunderbird. But if I were a gnome or kde user, perhaps its tray support might be compelling enough.