Thunderbird Flatpak got updated to 115 Supernova

I like the new logo, similar to the firefox logo

I've been using Thunderbird as my daily driver for a while now.

Great automation and filtering. -10$/year add-on for a complete MS suite interop for work.
Customized the theming.
Tracker blocking.
Calendars
First class Linux support

It's just as good as every other email client but without them reading it. :)

Can you elaborate more on the add-on, what's it called? I just started using Thunderbird again but at the moment only for my personal addresses.
- Probably referring to OWL plugin. However your admins can allow IMAP access to outlook365 and with tbsync, you get full integration for free. OWL is good tho too
- Probably owl.
OWL is good, I use it, but its calendaring leaves a lot to be desired. :/
- That's true, I'm just happy it shows my appointments.
How does the tracker blocking work? It blocks remote content by default, but does it block tracking pixels when I load images? I also installed the ublock origin addon, but it keeps saying that it didn't block anything
- By not downloading anything except text and Html the sender can't tell whether you opened it or not. However, pressing tracked links will track you if you don't have some privacy thingy on your browser.
What's the addon?

Finally! I have a lot of good will towards this project and understand there can be setbacks, but having been lead to believe that the Flathub version would be the flagship release channel, and then waiting for almost a month for the big new release without explanation of the delay it's not been a great look to be honest... hopefully they can seriously sort this out in future.

I'm not fully sure, as I've only read this somewhere, but it seems like other release channels are also somewhat delayed. I think I'm on beta even and somehow didn't get the update automatically (macOS btw)

finally

My thoughts exactly. Been checking daily.

Change notes

https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/115.0/releasenotes/

Eek! I hold judgment on the new interface... it's a bit... flat and colourless. Anyway, thank you Thunderbird team for keeping it alive and well all these years. It has served me well and never lost a single message, unlike some other mail clients I could mention but won't.

There are themes for the colorless. I personally help with a donation every now and then.
I add the phoenicity icons and such to liven things up a bit. They work perfectly well.

ELI5 ... Whats the advantage to using Flatpaks? Are they similar to containers?

Generally speaking, the advantages of Flatpaks are:

-The developers only need to maintain and release one version

-It's sandboxed, for each app you can decide which parts of your filesystem are exposed, which env variables, which types of inter-process communications, etc

-You kinda avoid dependency hell. You can use old unmaintained packages because Flatpak will provide old versions of their dependency if they're needed, while at the same time avoiding unnecessarily duplicated packages

-All installed apps are in your .var folder instead of being system-wide. Every app has its own folder with its own .config and .local/share inside, with their respective config files and data

-It supports partial updates

-It doesn't require root permissions to use

-It lets you use the most recent software even in really old LTS systems like Debian, and the Flatpaks updates are usually as quick as rolling release distros

-You don't need to abuse PPAs or the AUR

-It makes your system updates actually faster since you'll have less system packages, and you'll be able to update your big apps separately

I may be missing some, but those are the most important to me
- But they don't adhere to the system theme at all so every time I launch a flatpak it is white if it uses GTK; and they are annoying to launch via command line.
- Thank you! This definitely makes sense to explore further.

Not going to install flatpak tb, gimme the full version on my package manager...

I'll stick with Mutt.
look at me, I like being a contrarian outcast

Your meds pal, take them
- I totally agree being a contrarian outcast, but not because of what I commented earlier. Why would I use flatpak thunderbird when there is version in my repos which just needs to be updated?

Flathub still shows the old version and the github page has been archived. The main site doesn't even have an option to choose your download package.

I've already installed 115 but this doesn't seem new user friendly.

Ya I’m confused why the GitHub repo isn’t updated to 115 and it’s archived…
- I believe it's mentioned in an issue in the official Thunderbird repo that from now on the Flatpak is maintained by the main Thunderbird dev team, so the Flatpak repo is archived and all Flatpak packages from now on will be uploaded directly by the devs.

For those using tbsync with TB, and any companion extension, like its provided for exchange (office 365 and the like), TB broke tbsync and its companion extensions.. That said, there's an issue, and apparently some developer releases for those wanting to try....

It's been several times TB breaks extensions with such changes. TB devs don't have to care, but that means for the users, to be extra careful, and to avoid upgrading until finding out required extensions have caught up...

For some reason it doesn't start on arch linux with sway

flatpak mask org.mozilla.Thunderbird until the "hide title bar" flag works again. I'm not losing two lines of display space to eye candy.

i though mozilla abandonned thunderbird and it became community driven?

Yes, that happened more than 10 years ago. But nobody being paid to do maintenance led to accumulation of cruft. About 3 years ago Thunderbird was spun out to MZLA Technologies Corporation, owned by the Mozilla Foundation (being a corporation makes employing people possible iirc). Now they have many full time employees and try to make Thunderbird more accessible, more consistent while still keeping all the current users happy.

(That's from my memory of news articles and a podcast they made.)

I'm really happy with the new design since it allows for more customizations (density etc).