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Thunderbird Unseats Evolution In Ubuntu 11.10

Posted by Unknown on from the outlook-clones-no-longer-cool dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Coinciding with the recent release of Mozilla Thunderbird 5 and its 400 performance and stability fixes, Canonical has decided that it's now fit for adoption in Ubuntu — and as of version 11.10, Thunderbird will replace Evolution as the default mail program. You can download the second alpha of Ubuntu 11.10 today and give Thunderbird a whirl."

7 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. BFT by cadeon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've always hated evolution. Thunderbird is much cleaner.

    1. Re:BFT by poetmatt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      absolutely. I also agree with the commenter below, get rid of empathy and go back to pidgin, and then we'll be a step closer to ubuntu not being crap.

    2. Re:BFT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful
      Ok I am receiving contradictory information and I am definitely confused...

      Coinciding with the recent release of Mozilla Thunderbird 5 and its 400 performance and stability fixes, Canonical has decided that it's now fit for adoption in Ubuntu

      That suggests they have some stringent standards, especially considering the number of people who have been using Thunderbird for years without issue.

      They have such stringent standards... and yet ... they really think that going with PulseAudio instead of ALSA by default is the smoothest, most problem-free experience they could deliver to their users? PulseAudio works okay I suppose, right up until you want to do anything even slightly unusual such as run a program as a different local user without crippling its audio for no good reason. Then it fails. Then they tell you running it as a system-wide daemon is not recommended. Then it's a big pain in the ass for no good reason where ALSA would have just worked. Then it's "no, we know how you should and should not be using your programs and listening to your audio, and I'm sorry but you have deviated away from how we want you to do things". No, I'm not accepting that. If I wanted that, I'd use Windows or OSX.

      Maybe you guys like artificial restrictions, maybe you like moving from a system that worked to a more complex system that sometimes works, but I just don't see the damned point. Are you afraid to hurt the PulseAudio developer's feelings or something?

      NOTICE TO ALL DISTRO DEVELOPERS: Alsa has had DMIX for close to ten years now. It has been enabled by default with ALSA for at least seven years now. With DMIX there is no longer ANY GOOD REASON to use these idiotic software sound daemons. They are redundant layers of trash. They are adipose code that can only introduce bugs and bloat. They add restrictions where there were none before, as side-effects of their design. They are a step backwards. They are a devolution.

      The 0.001% of users who really need to play sound remotely over a network, and absolutely cannot accomplish that task by downloading/streaming an mp3 or other audio file, is NO GOOD REASON to make a useless sound daemon the default setup for everyone. This kind of decision-making just blows my mind.

      Compared to that unnecessary bloat, why are they so strict about Thunderbird? Makes no sense. Have they an axe to grind or something?

    3. Re:BFT by cadeon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because, Evolution has been a part of the default GNOME suite for a very long time, so as more functionality was built, developers could assume Evolution was there.

      Oops.

  2. About time by sakdoctor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I like "close to how I set things up anyway", so that I don't have to fight against stupid defaults all the time. Purge evolution, purge empathy, install thunderbird, install pidgin. Done. That was the appeal of Ubuntu.

    Though they've jumped the shark with unity, so ... I'll switch to Debian now I guess.

  3. Thunderbird is the best for Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The only decent mail client on Linux is Thunderbird. Everything else crashes, locks up, and doesn't set up as easy.

    I've tried 'em all and every major release, I try them again - same result every time so far: crap.

    1. Re:Thunderbird is the best for Linux by ChrisMP1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Everything else crashes,

      I use Mutt. It's never crashed for me.

      locks up,

      I use Mutt. It's never locked up for me.

      and doesn't set up as easy.

      I use... ah hell, carry on. I would probably crash if I lost my muttrc...

      --
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