this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Thunderbird 115 has been out over a week now and the lack of packaged versions, especially Flatpak, is beginning to raise eyebrows. Gotta admit, I've been curious at the lack of a Flatpak version since the day they announced it's "availability".

An article:

https://www.webpronews.com/thunderbird-leaves-linux-users-waiting-for-much-hyped-version-115/

Linux Cast episode:

https://invidious.protokolla.fi/watch?v=G-OvQw2JRWI

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[–] loganmarchione 20 points 1 year ago

The Thunderbird team periodically does this and holds back upgrades for existing installs.

The Flatpak author is waiting for Thunderbird’s approval before publishing 115.

https://github.com/flathub/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/pull/306#issuecomment-1632388273

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think a week is that long to wait for an open source project like this. I suspect as soon as they released 115 they got a deluge of bug reports that are probably keeping them occupied.

Granted, I'm not personally affected because I use Arch btw. But on a serious note, it makes sense to me that "bleeding edge" distros where users expect the latest versions quickly would package Thunderbird for their repos, whereas those on more stability-focused distros would wait the couple of weeks for the Flatpak.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Fair point.

[–] axzxc1236 5 points 1 year ago

I think thunderbird always delay major version upgrade until <version>.2.

If you observe their changelog:

115.0: only offer binary download, not as upgrade

102.0: only offer binary download, not as upgrade

102.1.2: only offer binary download, not as upgrade

102.2: no such disclaimer

They also has the same disclaimer for 91.x, that's how Thunderbird decided to distribute update.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been checking for the Flatpak daily 😭

This is where you can track the issue

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Same. What up???

[–] mrpibb 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m using Evolution as I prefer their interface. I’m curious to give the new Thunderbird a try when there’s a flatpak.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same here, actually. I switched to Evolution a year or so ago from T-bird and I'm curious if v115 will leapfrog Evolution. I'm optimistic that it will.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Do you know if they'll include EWS support? That's been keeping me using Evolution.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Eh, I don't at flatpak or snap unless I have no other choice, but i get why it would be annoying to have the delay.

That being said, I wouldn't be concerned until almost a month. It's a big update that's going to need more debugging than usual. Makes sense to hold back for a bit.

[–] teolan 3 points 1 year ago

They do progressive roll-out. With last year's update the Flatpak also waited for the to say "this is stable enough, ship it"

[–] mothringer 2 points 1 year ago

I know Gentoo has it masked for testing with this note, which is probably the same reason why other distros without the same mechanism don't have it at all:

Testing. An upgrade from 102 isn't recommended due to downgrading most likely not being possible. Back up your profile before attempting. Fresh install should be fine. Bug #910229

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yes I actually checked whether my flatpaks were updating properly the other day because of this. I think being the official package if anything I would have expected Flathub to have it first, or at least within a few hours. I understand that things don't always go to plan but starting to get a bit impatient here with the lack of explanation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm on it now on arch. TBH it's kinda making my life harder because some things I'm used to using have moved. I'm sure I'll see the advantages of it at some point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think they said in the release article that they were going to roll 115 out slowly because it's such a big change.

[–] danielfgom 1 points 1 year ago

It's in the Snap Store as a release candidate. But sure if it will let you install it but Canonical seems to have it and be in the verification stage before releasing to stable.