7 ms·

Thunderbird Littering My Home

87 points by speckx 5mo ago

lomlobon 5mo ago
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
- neuropacabra 5mo ago
  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.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5mo ago
    Doesn't WINE let you pick folder mappings?
    - F3nd0 5mo ago
      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.
      - account42 5mo ago
        It's still the case for upstream Wine but not for some distributions. Notably Proton doesn't do that.
  - ryandrake 5mo ago
    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 :(
  - nosioptar 5mo ago
    Wouldn't it be possible to run the game in a container, so it has no access to your home dir? (I've only used lxc for stuff like WordPress, haven't ever used it for GUI stuff.)
  - account42 5mo ago
    Not sure what you mean with a remake but the "Enhanced Edition" of BG2 has a native Linux version that use XDG-complient configuration paths: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate_II:_Enhanced_Edition#Game_data https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate_II:_Enhanc... And for the original under Wine you can configure wine you not do that - or use Proton which doesn't link user directories by default.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- Retr0id 5mo ago
  I just never look in ~
the__alchemist 5mo ago
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.
- fph 5mo ago
 What did you replace it with?
 - sam_lowry_ 5mo ago
 mutt?
 - fph 5mo ago
 Mutts also litter your home.
 - the__alchemist 5mo ago
 Webmail (Fastmail's official webapp in this case)
- Saris 5mo ago
 Shift+Enter for a normal new line. No idea why it's like this.
 - F3nd0 5mo ago
 If my understanding is correct, enter by default starts a new paragraph (… in HTML). Holding shift makes it add a line break ( 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.
 - 5mo ago
hungryhobbit 5mo ago
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.
- gruez 5mo ago
  But there's no guarantee that the PR would get merged.
  - cassianoleal 5mo ago
    Or worked
    - tomstockmail 5mo ago
      There's a patch in the bug report and it appears to be tagged for Thunderbird 153 release. While I'm here I got to say, it's worrying seeing people not calling out what a bad solution the OP has suggested. Implementing a blind removal of a folder is not good practice. You will forget about this script/unit file. One day you may copy all your Thunderbird data to ~/thunderbird, think you're safe, then boom, it's gone. Edit: Forgot a key point
      - drabbiticus 5mo ago
        `rmdir` is not `rm -rf`. It only removes empty directories.
sam_lowry_ 5mo ago
Most of the time, you can control where XDG puts its litter, cf. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_user_directories 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 https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Talk:XDG_user_directories
- nixosbestos 5mo ago
  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)
- mxmilkiib 5mo ago
  https://github.com/mxmilkiib/dotfiles/blob/main/xdg/.config/user-dirs.dirs https://github.com/mxmilkiib/dotfiles/blob/main/xdg/.config/...
miduil 5mo ago
You can skip inotify tools altogether and do use systemd like this to trigger `rm -rf`: `~/.config/systemd/user/remove-thunderbird-dir.path` [Unit] Description=Watch for unwanted ~/thunderbird directory [Path] PathExists=%h/thunderbird Unit=remove-thunderbird-dir.service [Install] WantedBy=default.target
- projektfu 5mo ago
  So often the answer to "Can systemd just do that?" is "yes." But before AI, it was hard to surface the way to do it. Now I can get a lot done just by asking Claude for a few ways of doing something, and often the systemd answer is there.
  - m463 5mo ago
    I think it is because AI and systemd are colleages, growing to do anything and everything.
  - godelski 5mo ago
    For something like this I don't think you need to know much about systemd to figure it out, without AI. I promise it is worth the effort to learn some basics of systemd units. It then becomes easy to learn things like path triggers, timers, mounts, etc because they all follow the same pattern. The annoying (and nice) thing about systemd is that these files are a bit verbose. I'd suggest just dropping a few templates in your dotfiles. I do that (I even did that with cron). For this file, it's pretty straight forward to read. I'm telling you because I think it'll change your mind. The file name ends in ".path"[0] (it starts with `~/.config/systemd` so it is a user process with user permissions), meaning it monitors paths. Simple! Then what matters is what's in `[Path]`. `PathExists` is the path being monitored. `Unit` is what service runs. In this case whatever is in `~/.config/systemd/user/remove-thunderbird-dir.service` but guess what, `Unit` is completely optional here. It will default to that. You can probably guess `%h` means `$HOME`. The `[Install]` is necessary though, but that's going to be common and everywhere. Cumbersome? Yes. Annoying? Mildly, but it's worth it and just minorly inconvenient. Difficult? No. Powerful? YES [0] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd.path.html?__goaway_challenge=meta-refresh&__goaway_id=2c8512997d36560f15c0d8b9eb0650bd&__goaway_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fkagi.com%2F https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/syst...
daneel_w 5mo ago
Try Betterbird. On the whole I find that fork a better experience than Thunderbird.
- soperj 5mo ago
  What's better for you?
  - daneel_w 5mo ago
    After four months of use I've had not a single hiccup or misbehavior with it, none of the sudden stalls or "beachballing" I had every so often with TB when fetching/sending despite running my own mail server inside my home network, nor any crashes (which to be fair weren't common with TB). I get the impression that the developers tread more carefully with feature updates. I perceive it as starting up and getting to fetch/process faster. I also appreciate that it's about half the size, as they provide a dedicated Arm64 bundle instead of a "universal" Arm+x86 flavor.
jvyden 5mo ago
You're lucky you only get one. I get two, `~/thunderbird/` and `~/Thunderbird/`
mzajc 5mo ago
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.
- create_accounts 5mo ago
  there's a stupid solution that I put in practice out of helplessness. I remove the writing permission on ~ to my user, only sudo can write on ~, so some apps simply fail to launch
  - PenguinCoder 5mo ago
    So then you have to run those apps as root user, or does sudo to your own user work? I wouldn't expect it to with those perms set. Seems more dangerous than just dealing with the cruft.
    - create_accounts 5mo ago
      I don't launch them as root. That defeats the purpose because they would write on the ~ folder. ZSH Terminal grumbles when launching but why the hell does it want to log my every command? only 1 app has failed to launch and I barely need it anymore. if it is crucial, I give myself permission to edit the folder so the application can create its folder for dumping rubbish
      - brontitall 5mo ago
        zsh wants to write a history file so you can recall previous commands. You can disable it or set to to write somewhere else
- TRiG_Ireland 5mo ago
  On mine, it also creates ~/Downloads/thunderbird.tmp directory.
butz 5mo ago
Is there any hope that Thunderbird might benefit from XDG config directories fix that Firefox recently implemented?
gsich 5mo ago
Another unit that requires mental load.
create_accounts 5mo ago
I cant stand apps littering my home folder, regardless of if they are invisible folders or whatever. I am looking forward to deleting my operating system, or just the user account, and only installing apps in a virtual machine
acabal 5mo ago
Home folder litter is one of my top pet peeves in computing. In fact it's the only reason why I refuse to use snaps on Ubuntu. I don't even care about whatever technical stuff everyone argues about - but snaps create a permanent `~/snap/` directory and Ubuntu devs don't care. There's been a bug report on Launchpad for over a decade[1] and it's the second highest voted bug in Ubuntu history, but no, Ubuntu devs think littering the home folder with highly visible system-level machinery is totally unavoidable. It's like putting your car's engine in the passenger seat - rude, intolerable, and plain stupid. What if Grandma was browsing her home folder and deleted `~/snap/` because she has no idea what it is? [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053
- andOlga 5mo ago
  This is why Linux needs a sensible, universal way to hide files that doesn't involve bloody renaming them (since that will just cause the original one to be re-created! What is that!?). Many file managers respect the .hidden file, which is a start! But it's not enough, shells and `ls` don't care. It's one of those many strange failures that make Linux on the desktop still painful to use.
  - poly2it 5mo ago
    On topic of hidden files: wherefrom is the pattern of treating configuration files as hidden? I'm referring to the pattern of `.configfile` -- I mean, for code projects, a local config file is a first-level construct. This leads to hidden files being not being a viable construct, as there is no longer any consensus on what should be hidden.
    - andOlga 5mo ago
      I don't know the answer to this, but I have to wonder if, for source files specifiically, .git is the culprit here... It's not part of your project, it's part of your repo. Which maybe makes sense if people ever divorced their source code from the repo but that's not a thing anymore. Others probably just copied it.
ddalcino 5mo ago
Reminds me of this other post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447935), which suggests the following solution: If you create your own `~/thunderbird` directory, then Thunderbird will stop littering your home directory.
- bkdbkd 5mo ago
  often my solution. I usually touch 'ForbiddenFolder', then chmod the file a-x. Yes, this does not unclutter the home folder, but it does keep a program from touching places I don't want it to. I don't care to have the machine rm -rf'ing on its own.
Grombobulous 5mo ago
If you don’t have any need for Windows/Mac support, I highly recommend moving to something that isn’t Thunderbird. My pick is Evolution but there are many other options.
- pschastain 5mo ago
  I've used Evolution for years but lately it's started choking on gmail OAuth support. The solution appears to be installing Gnome keychain support, which then messes with KDE Wallet. For now I'm just using the web and the mobile app
ellieh 5mo ago
Personally I have never been bothered by programs using my home folder. I don’t regularly ls the contents of it, and just browse by path from my shell anyway, so the clutter is barely visible to me
aniceperson 5mo ago
> Systemd user services need absolute paths no, you use the specifiwr %h instead of ~ here is the expensive list of specifiers https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd.unit.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/syst...
guilhas 5mo ago
The other day moved the Thunderbird folder profile to another PC, the password was not saved, and I ignored the password pop up a few times, then it started deleting the inbox emails And it is not the first time it feels unreliable I would like to think there is a good and reliable open source email client
virajk_31 5mo ago
At this point, atleast every major package should follow XDG specs

87 points by speckx 5mo ago

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

neuropacabra 5mo ago
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.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5mo ago
  Doesn't WINE let you pick folder mappings?
  - F3nd0 5mo ago
    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.
    - account42 5mo ago
      It's still the case for upstream Wine but not for some distributions. Notably Proton doesn't do that.
- ryandrake 5mo ago
  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 :(
- nosioptar 5mo ago
  Wouldn't it be possible to run the game in a container, so it has no access to your home dir? (I've only used lxc for stuff like WordPress, haven't ever used it for GUI stuff.)
- account42 5mo ago
  Not sure what you mean with a remake but the "Enhanced Edition" of BG2 has a native Linux version that use XDG-complient configuration paths: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate_II:_Enhanced_Edition#Game_data https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate_II:_Enhanc... And for the original under Wine you can configure wine you not do that - or use Proton which doesn't link user directories by default.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
Retr0id 5mo ago
I just never look in ~

the__alchemist 5mo ago

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.

fph 5mo ago
What did you replace it with?
- sam_lowry_ 5mo ago
  mutt?
  - fph 5mo ago
    Mutts also litter your home.
- the__alchemist 5mo ago
  Webmail (Fastmail's official webapp in this case)
Saris 5mo ago
Shift+Enter for a normal new line. No idea why it's like this.
- F3nd0 5mo ago
 If my understanding is correct, enter by default starts a new paragraph (… in HTML). Holding shift makes it add a line break ( 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.
 - 5mo ago

hungryhobbit 5mo ago

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.

gruez 5mo ago
But there's no guarantee that the PR would get merged.
- cassianoleal 5mo ago
  Or worked
  - tomstockmail 5mo ago
    There's a patch in the bug report and it appears to be tagged for Thunderbird 153 release. While I'm here I got to say, it's worrying seeing people not calling out what a bad solution the OP has suggested. Implementing a blind removal of a folder is not good practice. You will forget about this script/unit file. One day you may copy all your Thunderbird data to ~/thunderbird, think you're safe, then boom, it's gone. Edit: Forgot a key point
    - drabbiticus 5mo ago
      `rmdir` is not `rm -rf`. It only removes empty directories.

sam_lowry_ 5mo ago

Most of the time, you can control where XDG puts its litter, cf. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_user_directories 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 https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Talk:XDG_user_directories

nixosbestos 5mo ago
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)
mxmilkiib 5mo ago
https://github.com/mxmilkiib/dotfiles/blob/main/xdg/.config/user-dirs.dirs https://github.com/mxmilkiib/dotfiles/blob/main/xdg/.config/...

miduil 5mo ago

You can skip inotify tools altogether and do use systemd like this to trigger `rm -rf`: `~/.config/systemd/user/remove-thunderbird-dir.path` [Unit] Description=Watch for unwanted ~/thunderbird directory [Path] PathExists=%h/thunderbird Unit=remove-thunderbird-dir.service [Install] WantedBy=default.target

projektfu 5mo ago
So often the answer to "Can systemd just do that?" is "yes." But before AI, it was hard to surface the way to do it. Now I can get a lot done just by asking Claude for a few ways of doing something, and often the systemd answer is there.
- m463 5mo ago
  I think it is because AI and systemd are colleages, growing to do anything and everything.
- godelski 5mo ago
  For something like this I don't think you need to know much about systemd to figure it out, without AI. I promise it is worth the effort to learn some basics of systemd units. It then becomes easy to learn things like path triggers, timers, mounts, etc because they all follow the same pattern. The annoying (and nice) thing about systemd is that these files are a bit verbose. I'd suggest just dropping a few templates in your dotfiles. I do that (I even did that with cron). For this file, it's pretty straight forward to read. I'm telling you because I think it'll change your mind. The file name ends in ".path"[0] (it starts with `~/.config/systemd` so it is a user process with user permissions), meaning it monitors paths. Simple! Then what matters is what's in `[Path]`. `PathExists` is the path being monitored. `Unit` is what service runs. In this case whatever is in `~/.config/systemd/user/remove-thunderbird-dir.service` but guess what, `Unit` is completely optional here. It will default to that. You can probably guess `%h` means `$HOME`. The `[Install]` is necessary though, but that's going to be common and everywhere. Cumbersome? Yes. Annoying? Mildly, but it's worth it and just minorly inconvenient. Difficult? No. Powerful? YES [0] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd.path.html?__goaway_challenge=meta-refresh&__goaway_id=2c8512997d36560f15c0d8b9eb0650bd&__goaway_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fkagi.com%2F https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/syst...

daneel_w 5mo ago

Try Betterbird. On the whole I find that fork a better experience than Thunderbird.

soperj 5mo ago
What's better for you?
- daneel_w 5mo ago
  After four months of use I've had not a single hiccup or misbehavior with it, none of the sudden stalls or "beachballing" I had every so often with TB when fetching/sending despite running my own mail server inside my home network, nor any crashes (which to be fair weren't common with TB). I get the impression that the developers tread more carefully with feature updates. I perceive it as starting up and getting to fetch/process faster. I also appreciate that it's about half the size, as they provide a dedicated Arm64 bundle instead of a "universal" Arm+x86 flavor.

jvyden 5mo ago

You're lucky you only get one. I get two, `~/thunderbird/` and `~/Thunderbird/`

mzajc 5mo ago

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.

create_accounts 5mo ago
there's a stupid solution that I put in practice out of helplessness. I remove the writing permission on ~ to my user, only sudo can write on ~, so some apps simply fail to launch
- PenguinCoder 5mo ago
  So then you have to run those apps as root user, or does sudo to your own user work? I wouldn't expect it to with those perms set. Seems more dangerous than just dealing with the cruft.
  - create_accounts 5mo ago
    I don't launch them as root. That defeats the purpose because they would write on the ~ folder. ZSH Terminal grumbles when launching but why the hell does it want to log my every command? only 1 app has failed to launch and I barely need it anymore. if it is crucial, I give myself permission to edit the folder so the application can create its folder for dumping rubbish
    - brontitall 5mo ago
      zsh wants to write a history file so you can recall previous commands. You can disable it or set to to write somewhere else
TRiG_Ireland 5mo ago
On mine, it also creates ~/Downloads/thunderbird.tmp directory.

butz 5mo ago

Is there any hope that Thunderbird might benefit from XDG config directories fix that Firefox recently implemented?

gsich 5mo ago

Another unit that requires mental load.

create_accounts 5mo ago

I cant stand apps littering my home folder, regardless of if they are invisible folders or whatever. I am looking forward to deleting my operating system, or just the user account, and only installing apps in a virtual machine

acabal 5mo ago

Home folder litter is one of my top pet peeves in computing. In fact it's the only reason why I refuse to use snaps on Ubuntu. I don't even care about whatever technical stuff everyone argues about - but snaps create a permanent `~/snap/` directory and Ubuntu devs don't care. There's been a bug report on Launchpad for over a decade[1] and it's the second highest voted bug in Ubuntu history, but no, Ubuntu devs think littering the home folder with highly visible system-level machinery is totally unavoidable. It's like putting your car's engine in the passenger seat - rude, intolerable, and plain stupid. What if Grandma was browsing her home folder and deleted `~/snap/` because she has no idea what it is? [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053

andOlga 5mo ago
This is why Linux needs a sensible, universal way to hide files that doesn't involve bloody renaming them (since that will just cause the original one to be re-created! What is that!?). Many file managers respect the .hidden file, which is a start! But it's not enough, shells and `ls` don't care. It's one of those many strange failures that make Linux on the desktop still painful to use.
- poly2it 5mo ago
  On topic of hidden files: wherefrom is the pattern of treating configuration files as hidden? I'm referring to the pattern of `.configfile` -- I mean, for code projects, a local config file is a first-level construct. This leads to hidden files being not being a viable construct, as there is no longer any consensus on what should be hidden.
  - andOlga 5mo ago
    I don't know the answer to this, but I have to wonder if, for source files specifiically, .git is the culprit here... It's not part of your project, it's part of your repo. Which maybe makes sense if people ever divorced their source code from the repo but that's not a thing anymore. Others probably just copied it.

ddalcino 5mo ago

Reminds me of this other post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447935), which suggests the following solution: If you create your own `~/thunderbird` directory, then Thunderbird will stop littering your home directory.

bkdbkd 5mo ago
often my solution. I usually touch 'ForbiddenFolder', then chmod the file a-x. Yes, this does not unclutter the home folder, but it does keep a program from touching places I don't want it to. I don't care to have the machine rm -rf'ing on its own.

Grombobulous 5mo ago

If you don’t have any need for Windows/Mac support, I highly recommend moving to something that isn’t Thunderbird. My pick is Evolution but there are many other options.

pschastain 5mo ago
I've used Evolution for years but lately it's started choking on gmail OAuth support. The solution appears to be installing Gnome keychain support, which then messes with KDE Wallet. For now I'm just using the web and the mobile app

ellieh 5mo ago

Personally I have never been bothered by programs using my home folder. I don’t regularly ls the contents of it, and just browse by path from my shell anyway, so the clutter is barely visible to me

aniceperson 5mo ago

> Systemd user services need absolute paths no, you use the specifiwr %h instead of ~ here is the expensive list of specifiers https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd.unit.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/syst...

guilhas 5mo ago

The other day moved the Thunderbird folder profile to another PC, the password was not saved, and I ignored the password pop up a few times, then it started deleting the inbox emails And it is not the first time it feels unreliable I would like to think there is a good and reliable open source email client

virajk_31 5mo ago

At this point, atleast every major package should follow XDG specs