[solved] Thunderbird not in Neon in APT, only Snap/Flatpak? How to use .deb or migrate my configuration from APT to Snap?

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1

I am surprised that “apt search” is unable to find Thunderbird package in official Neon 24.04 User Edition noble repositories.

It installed Snap (Snap Store is controlled by a commercial company/is proprietary, can not be distributed without the Store :-1:) and so not picked up my TB configuration which I have at ~/.thunderbird/ from previous Debian based distribution.

Beside Snap/Flatpak, official TB download page fails to link to PPA and links to a Tar archive (so no way to keep up to date without repeated manual downloads):

~/snap/thunderbird/ contains something after I have created random account.

Maybe it can be symlinked somehow: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1506802/updating-thunderbird-from-apt-to-snap-removed-my-config

To tell the truth, I have been unpleasantly surprised seeing that big Snap installation without me requesting a Snap.

This worked :shamrock::

So to delete whole Snap including Snap Thunderbird and its configuration I have ran:
sudo snap remove --purge thunderbird && sudo apt purge snapd

Installed the Mozilla PPA repository and a TB .deb file:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa && sudo apt update && sudo apt install thunderbird=1:*

number 1 is seen in command “apt list thunderbird -a” and “apt policy thunderbird” output, possibly defining repository number preference.

Then running Thunderbid from applications menu, instantly picked up my TB configuration ~/.thunderbird/ created by apt package! :white_check_mark:

2

UPDATE:

One more step is needed to avoid damned proprietary Snapd + Snap TB version to be reinstalled during “apt full-upgrade”:

sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozillateam-thunderbird <<EOF
Package: thunderbird*
Pin: origin ppa.launchpadcontent.net
Pin-Priority: 900
EOF
3

There are currently a few so called transitional packages in the Neon repositories wich will pull in snaps. We can find these packages with

~$ apt --important --no-depends rdepends snapd
snapd
Reverse Depends:
  PreDepends: fwupd-snap
  PreDepends: chromium-browser
  PreDepends: thunderbird
  PreDepends: firefox (>= 2.54)

So at he moment there exist four packages that will install snaps, the firefox packages is a bit special since the transitional package will not be installed because the packages from the Mozilla-PPA are pinned to take precedence.

4

I am surprised that the APT version did not show up in Neon. Neon used to come with SNAP disabled and with the MozTeam PPA enabled by default. I admit the last time I checked was a long while ago; I have not installed Neon from fresh in about 4 years - just running the rebase updates. Has that changed?

5

No, neon has always had snap active but use the Mozilla repo, previously they did use the Mozilla ppa. I think the move happened circa the migration to 24.04, to the then-new official Mozilla apt repo, which doesn’t include tbird, at least the last time I looked. I dunno why, tbh.

I thought the PPA was maintained by some Mozilla folks, now I am not sure.

6

Curious. T-Bird shows up on my list as snap, flatpak and apt, and I never added any repo (I dont use TB). I did have to add the snap backend as it was not enabled by default in Neon in 22.04. I know this because I only recently added Snap to my system, not that I have anything installed mind you. I do use some Flatpaks now.

7

It is a bit convoluted. The flatpak and snap are obvious, since Tbird is available in both sources. In the standard Ubuntu repos, the apt package is basically a shortcut of sorts to install the snap version.

$ apt policy thunderbird
thunderbird:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 2:1snap1-0ubuntu3
  Version table:
     2:1snap1-0ubuntu3 500
        500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble/main amd64 Packages

If you were to add a different source, you would still see the snap-installing one, since the versioning and apt’s config make it the preferred packages, unless one creates an apt conf file overriding that.

An example:

$ apt policy thunderbird
thunderbird:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 2:1snap1-0ubuntu3
  Version table:
     2:1snap1-0ubuntu3 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble/main amd64 Packages
     1:140.9.0esr+linuxmint1+zena -1
         -1 http://packages.linuxmint.com wilma/upstream amd64 Packages