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Betterbird .deb?
Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2024 6:54 pm
by MintHawk
Hello, everyone.
Would it be possible to create a .deb for the Betterbird mail client?
I can only find compressed tarballs and via Flatpak the links in the emails are not clickable.
Thank you.
Re: Betterbird .deb?
Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2024 12:25 am
by Stevo
There's two possibilities. One is quicker and easier, and just involves wrapping their already built Linux binary in a deb, like we already do for Mozilla's Firefox binaries. But this makes it limited to amd64 64-bit platforms only (admittedly the majority).
The other would take much longer. Since Betterbird consists of a set of patches to the Thunderbird source
https://github.com/Betterbird/thunderbird-patches/tags,
it might be possible to rebuild Debian's source with those patches to create packages for all our architectures.
Re: Betterbird .deb?
Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2024 7:14 am
by MintHawk
You 're the experts. I'm sure you will do your best, as always.
Thank you.
Re: Betterbird .deb?
Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2024 5:39 pm
by MintHawk
After not neing able to have my contacts automatically appear as I type the name of the recipient, and after trying to install various add-ons that did not work,
I switched to Evolution. I dodn't know...It seems that Betterbird is made for Windows. There are issues that have yet to be resolved in Linux...
Re: Betterbird .deb?
Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2025 1:44 pm
by rambo919
Any possible movement on this? Wait for the next MX?
Using it from the flatpak "kinda" works but attatchments could become a bother at some point and birdtray (even the unverified flatpak version) cannot for some reason browse in /home/user/.var/ so it cannot monitor the inboxes.
The reason for birdtray is while the system tray works the new mail indicator does not....
Re: Betterbird .deb?
Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2025 7:55 pm
by Stevo
What about trying the prebuilt binary (64-bit only) inside the "Linux Archive" links here?
https://www.betterbird.eu/downloads/index.php
Our MX Firefox equivalent doesn't have any problems with extensions.
Re: Betterbird .deb?
Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2025 10:46 pm
by RedGreen925
That works perfectly fine I have used it for a while. I put it in my home bin directory the .desktop file in the .local/share/applications works great. Now I check just over a year of use after switching from thunderbird a totally seamless process it uses the same directory with all of its settings. For every update downloaded you just need to move the extracted betterbird directory to replace the current one. After of course having shutdown the program first. If the OP wants to use it the desktop file I created for it just needs the changing of path to the one he will use.
Code: Select all
zeus@9600k:~$ cat .local/share/applications/betterbird.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Name=Betterbird
Categories=Network;Email;News;Office;
MimeType=message/rfc822;x-scheme-handler/mailto;text/calendar;text/x-vcard;
Exec=/home/zeus/bin/betterbird/betterbird-bin
Icon=/home/zeus/bin/betterbird/chrome/icons/default/default256.png
Re: Betterbird .deb?
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2025 3:22 am
by rambo919
OK when fooling around with the binary package.... I noticed I made a mistake based on the assumption that because it's a flatpak it will have it's own profiles folder.
Both binary and flatpak version also uses the default Thunderbird profile location they just duplicate the imported profiles. Birdtray does however work best with the binary package I think.
Re: Betterbird .deb?
Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2025 4:32 pm
by Artim
I realize using the binary probably won't update. Right now I have the Flatpak installed (my first time ever using Flatpak) and I'm curious about the binary:
1. - If I uninstall the Flatpak and unpack the tarball, will it retain the info because of the ~Thunderbird folder created by the Flatpak?
2. - If the MX Team ever actually packages Betterbird for MX, would I have to reinstall it (which would be fine and better anyway). And
3. - Is unpacking a tarball that big of a deal to do? I'm betting MX already has all the cool tools to do that with.
Re: Betterbird .deb?
Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2025 12:03 am
by Stevo
You should be able to right-click a tarball and choose to extract it in Thunar or Dolphin, If you're using another file manager, you might need to set it up manually.
An MX betterbird-bin package would update automatically, but you know...mo' packages, mo' problems, and less time for our limited volunteer packaging team.
Re: Betterbird .deb?
Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2025 12:28 am
by Stevo
They have an installer script that also installs a .desktop menu file for a user, not for the whole system. Has any one tried it?
https://github.com/Betterbird/thunderbi ... l-on-linux
Maybe MXPI could add that. I believe that running the installer again would update it, but don't know if BB itself checks for updates.