How to Migrate Thunderbird Snap to Mozilla (UM 20.04)

After various old (example) and new (I'll spare you) hassles with the Thunderbird Snap, I want to try migrating my 8GB of saved emails and config settings to a Mozilla release channel that will auto-update via the Mate Software Updater app or some other automatic method. I've read many posts about why Snap is good or bad, and hope we won't have to re-litigate all that here. I just want to migrate and see if it works better for me. If it doesn't, hopefully it will be easy to go back to the Snap. :pray:

It looks like Snap mail & config stuff is all in:
/home/me/snap/thunderbird
I've backed that up on another partition, but is there anything else to do before uninstalling the Thunderbird Snap?

What's the current recommendation for then installing a non-Snap current Mozilla version of Thunderbird that will auto-update via the Software Updater app or the best alternative method? Will getting updates require manually doing something like apt-get update instead of some "push" automatic method?

Once I get non-Snap Tbird working, will it be obvious how to port the config and mail files over? As I recall, the Mozilla version used an alphanumeric Profile subdirectory in this directory:
/home/me/.mozilla/thunderbird
So presumably I could just launch and exit the new Tbird installation, then move everything into the directory structure it created?

System:
MacBook laptop - 13" Mid-2010 A1342-7,1
Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS MATE 1.24.0 5.4.0-70-generic x86_64
3.6GB RAM, Core2duo P8600 2.4GHz, GeForce 320M

Hi :slight_smile:
If inside your current snap folder you have those folders for Thunderbird, you should also put them inside your home directory after the non-snap install :

.config
.local
.cache 

I done once what you want to do with a software named "barrier". Copying those folders made the needed to migrate from snap version to the ppa installed one without loosing the config.
To play it secure, you can give a try of your project on a VM or on a other test machine, or, with a new test user.
I would like to help more, but I'm "evolution" email client user. Good luck :slight_smile:

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Make sure you backup your address books too: Address book> Tools>export>.csv file
Remember to back up your calendar appointments.

I use the ubuntuzilla version of Thunderbird, and recommend it. (This is the unmodified Mozilla release binary of Thunderbird, packaged into a .deb by the Ubuntuzilla project.)

https://sourceforge.net/p/ubuntuzilla/wiki/Main_Page/#installation

repository: deb http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ubuntuzilla/mozilla/apt all main

echo -e "\ndeb http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/ubuntuzilla/mozilla/apt all main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list > /dev/null

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2667CA5C

sudo apt-get update

Install your desired package, with the following commands:

sudo apt-get install thunderbird-mozilla-build

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Hi Olek :slightly_smiling_face:
Thanks for confirming that the Snap folders will be the only ones needed. I'll certainly be backing them up before the uninstall! :+1:
I won't bother to do a test run, since I already have a backup of the entire home partition. Sure glad I installed MATE with multiple partitions!

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Good idea. They'll be handy for archive & potential import elsewhere too.

Thanks for the reco. I'd seen that online, but got the impression FOSS devs have moved from Sourceforge to Github and that utuntuzilla was an initiative from some years ago. Does seem great to have auto-backups, but I also wondered how secure it is coming from a 3rd party rather than Mozilla. I'll look into it further now, knowing you're using it for current Tbird updates. Thank you very much for the detailed installation commands! :+1: :smiley:

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Developers moved, but that does not mean Sourceforge is no longer any good. Personally I find Github extremely confusing. I have used Ubuntuzilla for years (at least 10), and Sourceforge for even longer. I had problems with Gmail with regular Thunderbird as Gmail said it was un-secure, but the Ubuntuzilla version was good. I use the Thunderbird version, and the Firefox ESR version. I used to also use the Seamonkey version, but Seamonkey became outdated and has few usable addons. The one drawback to Ubuntuzilla is the updates come a few days later, and you will get messages to update your Thunderbird to the newer version until then.

I am not trying to tell you to use Ubuntuzilla but I am telling you there is nothing to fear. Good luck whatever you decide.

By way of update: I've managed to get Tbird mostly working again, though unfortunately I'm unsure of exactly how. My impression is that the Ubuntu team really want everyone to abandon Tbird. It has plenty of things I don't like, but with years of familiarity and ~8GB of saved email I'm very reluctant to switch. I did find that somehow there were two Tbird installations, and when I deleted the non-Snap one most things started working again. Then in a subsequent Ubu-M update and reboot, a little more started working. Right now it basically works other than some attachments inexplicably not being detachable, so I'm getting them via browser to Gmail (hassle).

So I may try to tolerate glitches with Tbird in Ubu-M, look into Evolution and any other apps that Ubu-M better supports. Or I might have to abandon the MATE interface I quite like, and look into repos that seamlessly support Tbird w/auto update. Are there any? Maybe Debian?

Anyway, wanted to update this in case it could be useful for anyone else encountering Tbird issues and reluctant to switch.

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