Thunderbird Littering My Home

(thefoggiest.dev)

41 points | by speckx 2 hours ago

9 comments

  • miduil 51 minutes ago
    You can skip inotify tools altogether and do use systemd like this to trigger `rm -rf`:

        `~/.config/systemd/user/remove-thunderbird-dir.path`
    
       [Unit]
       Description=Watch for unwanted ~/thunderbird directory
       
    
       [Path]
       PathExists=%h/thunderbird
       Unit=remove-thunderbird-dir.service
       
       [Install]
       WantedBy=default.target
  • lomlobon 1 hour ago
    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
    • neuropacabra 1 hour ago
      I stopped using that software no matter how painful it was some games included. I wanted to play BG2 and the remake from GOG just litter the Documents folder even when running though Wine. Well, no game for then. Pity. I want my computer to serve me and to have my own files where yo want them.
      • yjftsjthsd-h 27 minutes ago
        Doesn't WINE let you pick folder mappings?
        • F3nd0 19 minutes ago
          It does. Run `winecfg` and see ‘Folders’ under the ‘Desktop Integration’ tab. Wine used to link these to directories in your home directory by default; not sure if that’s still the case, but you can definitely change it.
  • butz 6 minutes ago
    Is there any hope that Thunderbird might benefit from XDG config directories fix that Firefox recently implemented?
  • mzajc 8 minutes ago
    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.
  • daneel_w 21 minutes ago
    Try Betterbird. On the whole I find that fork a better experience than Thunderbird.
    • soperj 7 minutes ago
      What's better for you?
  • the__alchemist 1 hour ago
    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.
    • roelschroeven 14 minutes ago
      > 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)

      The Compose window by default uses Paragraph style. Change it to Text instead, that works like you want. You can change the default in the settings. Still not ideal because in some cases after certain types of formatting it still reverts to Paragraph style.

    • Saris 50 minutes ago
      Shift+Enter for a normal new line. No idea why it's like this.
      • F3nd0 13 minutes ago
        If my understanding is correct, enter by default starts a new paragraph (<p>…</p> in HTML). Holding shift makes it add a line break (<br> in HTML).

        I think maybe Thunderbird has a plain text mode where this doesn’t happen, but it’s been a while since I last used it, so I could be completely wrong.

        • Saris 2 minutes ago
          Ah that would make sense I suppose as it's sending HTML by default.

          It does have a plain text mode!

    • fph 1 hour ago
      What did you replace it with?
  • jvyden 18 minutes ago
    You're lucky you only get one. I get two, `~/thunderbird/` and `~/Thunderbird/`
  • sam_lowry_ 1 hour ago
    Most of the time, you can control where XDG puts its litter, cf. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_user_directories

    Just note that XDG_DESKTOP_DIR and XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR can not point to the same directory or chromium will disregard your config.

    P.S. Reader, if you can commit to chromium without much hassle, check this and fix: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Talk:XDG_user_directories

    • nixosbestos 53 minutes ago
      You (and other folks...) should probably click-through to the bugzilla links. Yes, normally. But, it looks like some legacy code path near the XDG stuff caused an accidental extra dir creation.

      (I was rolling my eye wading in, thinking that Thunderbird was doing XDG and maybe some distro just wasn't setting XDG_CONFIG_HOME correctly, etc, but alas, no it's a TB bug)

  • hungryhobbit 31 minutes ago
    Seems like with Claude you could have submitted a PR (to actually fix the issue) in the time it took to come up with the hack.
    • gruez 27 minutes ago
      But there's no guarantee that the PR would get merged.