I've long given up on keeping a clean home folder because so many software do this and keeping it clean is a constant chore. Now I just make a real_home folder in my 'home' and put all my actual stuff there.
They can use the ~ landfill
I stopped using that software no matter how painful it was some games included. I wanted to play BG2 and the remake from GOG just litter the Documents folder even when running though Wine. Well, no game for then. Pity. I want my computer to serve me and to have my own files where yo want them.
Unfortunately, many applications now treat your filesystem as a dumping ground for their dependencies and caches and config files and temporary data and all kinds of other non-userdata trash they create. This ship has long since sailed :(
It does. Run `winecfg` and see ‘Folders’ under the ‘Desktop Integration’ tab. Wine used to link these to directories in your home directory by default; not sure if that’s still the case, but you can definitely change it.
There's more! On my machine it creates an empty ~/.mozilla/extensions directory every time it starts, and I have no idea why it does that or how to make it stop.
There are so many annoyances in TB. I stopped using it after a few days. My primary concerns:
- Opening an email thread opens multiple (potentially many) tabs, and is difficult to nagivate or understand the flow of messages
- I don't know how to write an email without it making the spacing between paragraphs/lines larger than I would like. (I.e. double-spacing)
- Search is unreliable / broken.
> I don't know how to write an email without it making the spacing between paragraphs/lines larger than I would like. (I.e. double-spacing)
The Compose window by default uses Paragraph style. Change it to Text instead, that works like you want. You can change the default in the settings. Still not ideal because in some cases after certain types of formatting it still reverts to Paragraph style.
- You can do Shift+Enter to get a `br` without breaking the paragraph.
- You can change the format from "Paragraph" to "Body Text" to remove the margin. Note that Thunderbird changes new lines back to "Paragraph" automatically, so you need to frist write your email, then format it as "Body Text".
- Or, you can disable the "Use Paragraph format instead of Body text by default" option in the settings, to always have "Body text".
I've always wondered why HTML editors tend to work this way (Wordpress is the same), instead of having a single enter key be a line break and a double enter key be a paragraph.
Thunderbird does have a plain text mode, and you set it to be the default. Nice thing about TB is that defaulting to plain text doesn't lock you into plain text like a lot of other editors out there--If you add any formatting it silently switches you to HTML email.
You (and other folks...) should probably click-through to the bugzilla links. Yes, normally. But, it looks like some legacy code path near the XDG stuff caused an accidental extra dir creation.
(I was rolling my eye wading in, thinking that Thunderbird was doing XDG and maybe some distro just wasn't setting XDG_CONFIG_HOME correctly, etc, but alas, no it's a TB bug)
You can skip inotify tools altogether and do use systemd like this to trigger `rm -rf`:
I've long given up on keeping a clean home folder because so many software do this and keeping it clean is a constant chore. Now I just make a real_home folder in my 'home' and put all my actual stuff there. They can use the ~ landfill
I stopped using that software no matter how painful it was some games included. I wanted to play BG2 and the remake from GOG just litter the Documents folder even when running though Wine. Well, no game for then. Pity. I want my computer to serve me and to have my own files where yo want them.
Unfortunately, many applications now treat your filesystem as a dumping ground for their dependencies and caches and config files and temporary data and all kinds of other non-userdata trash they create. This ship has long since sailed :(
Doesn't WINE let you pick folder mappings?
It does. Run `winecfg` and see ‘Folders’ under the ‘Desktop Integration’ tab. Wine used to link these to directories in your home directory by default; not sure if that’s still the case, but you can definitely change it.
There's more! On my machine it creates an empty ~/.mozilla/extensions directory every time it starts, and I have no idea why it does that or how to make it stop.
Try Betterbird. On the whole I find that fork a better experience than Thunderbird.
What's better for you?
There are so many annoyances in TB. I stopped using it after a few days. My primary concerns:
I agree. I might swap over to a TUI mail client on my desktop. Don’t even get me started on the iOS Mail app.
> I don't know how to write an email without it making the spacing between paragraphs/lines larger than I would like. (I.e. double-spacing)
The Compose window by default uses Paragraph style. Change it to Text instead, that works like you want. You can change the default in the settings. Still not ideal because in some cases after certain types of formatting it still reverts to Paragraph style.
Shift+Enter for a normal new line. No idea why it's like this.
The default paragraph style has some margin.
- You can do Shift+Enter to get a `br` without breaking the paragraph. - You can change the format from "Paragraph" to "Body Text" to remove the margin. Note that Thunderbird changes new lines back to "Paragraph" automatically, so you need to frist write your email, then format it as "Body Text". - Or, you can disable the "Use Paragraph format instead of Body text by default" option in the settings, to always have "Body text".
Good to know.
I've always wondered why HTML editors tend to work this way (Wordpress is the same), instead of having a single enter key be a line break and a double enter key be a paragraph.
If my understanding is correct, enter by default starts a new paragraph (<p>…</p> in HTML). Holding shift makes it add a line break (<br> in HTML).
I think maybe Thunderbird has a plain text mode where this doesn’t happen, but it’s been a while since I last used it, so I could be completely wrong.
Thunderbird does have a plain text mode, and you set it to be the default. Nice thing about TB is that defaulting to plain text doesn't lock you into plain text like a lot of other editors out there--If you add any formatting it silently switches you to HTML email.
Ah that would make sense I suppose as it's sending HTML by default.
It does have a plain text mode!
What did you replace it with?
Webmail (Fastmail's official webapp in this case)
mutt?
Most of the time, you can control where XDG puts its litter, cf. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_user_directories
Just note that XDG_DESKTOP_DIR and XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR can not point to the same directory or chromium will disregard your config.
P.S. Reader, if you can commit to chromium without much hassle, check this and fix: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Talk:XDG_user_directories
You (and other folks...) should probably click-through to the bugzilla links. Yes, normally. But, it looks like some legacy code path near the XDG stuff caused an accidental extra dir creation.
(I was rolling my eye wading in, thinking that Thunderbird was doing XDG and maybe some distro just wasn't setting XDG_CONFIG_HOME correctly, etc, but alas, no it's a TB bug)
Is there any hope that Thunderbird might benefit from XDG config directories fix that Firefox recently implemented?
You're lucky you only get one. I get two, `~/thunderbird/` and `~/Thunderbird/`
Another unit that requires mental load.
Seems like with Claude you could have submitted a PR (to actually fix the issue) in the time it took to come up with the hack.
But there's no guarantee that the PR would get merged.
Or worked