Out of curiosity, I tried to get Thunderbird to behave properly on a Fairphone 4. Maybe it would be an idea to make a one-click-install that does all this for a newbie. openSUSE software catalogue has a one-click yaml installer script which sets everything up. Just an idea to make it user friendlier to get common software working out of the box so to say for a newbie to make it easier to adopt Ubuntu Touch.
Step 1: Installing Thunderbird inside a Libertine container
For those of you newbies wondering how to get Thunderbird Mail client working in desktop mode on Ubuntu Touch, this is one way that seems to work well. Thunderbird has so far not crashed a single time. However the Ubuntu Terminal app and nano crashed several times during this test. This markup was written in nano and copied to this forum spot to test the interoperability between different windows in desktop mode. Copy-paste functionality between windows seems to be a bit glitchy at the time of writing.
I messed around with settings until I got something that would work in desktop mode for Fairphone 4 running channel 24.04/daily.
Installing Thunderbird as DEB
Install Libertine Tweak Tool from Openstore.
Activate lirsh command with Libertine Tweak Tool.
Open a terminal window and type:
lirsh
fakeroot
We need command add-apt-repository command from package software-properties-common.
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install software-properties-common
On my Fairphone 4 I was also obliged to install package apt-utils that for some reason
did not install correctly by itself.
apt-get install apt-utils
At this point it was possible to issue terminal command:
add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
cat <<EOF | tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/thunderbird-ppa
Package: thunderbird
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam
Pin-Priority: 1001
Package: thunderbird
Pin: release o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: -1
EOF
apt-get update
apt-cache policy thunderbird
# apt install thunderbird
DEBIAN_FRONTEND="noninteractive" apt install thunderbird
exit # jump out of fakeroot
thunderbird --version
Now you can test if terminal command thunderbird launches something.
On my Fairphone 4, I saw a shaddow window but nothing more.
I remembered reading that you have to force Xwayland in some way.
# lirsh
GDK_BACKEND=x11 thunderbird
On my Fairphone 4, the zoom factor is quite big. Let's try to lower the zoom.
One way to lower the zoom is to edit Libertine container noble file ~/.Xdefaults
and adjust Xft.dpi: 120 from default value Xft.dpi: 197.
Exiting lirsh and re-entering lirsh should activate the new DPI setting.
Then re-launch thunderbird from command line and see if the zoom factor is better.
# lirsh
GDK_BACKEND=x11 thunderbird
Now the window looks a bit better with not such a large zoom factor in desktop mode.
The other way is to use a scaling factor directly before launching thunderbird.
Try this and see if the zoom factor is lower with standard setting Xft.dpi: 197.
# lirsh
GDK_DPI_SCALE=0.6 GDK_BACKEND=x11 thunderbird
Once the scaling is okay for your eyes you can create a thunderbird-launcher.
# lirsh
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
echo "GDK_DPI_SCALE=0.6 GDK_BACKEND=x11 thunderbird" > ~/.local/bin/thunderbird-launcher
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/thunderbird-launcher
On my Fairphone 4, Libertine container noble folder ~/.local/bin
was not in my Libertine container variable $PATH:
# lirsh
echo $PATH
Editing Libertine container noble file .bashrc should do the trick.
Added the following lines at the end of .bashrc:
if [ -d ~/.local/bin ]; then
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
fi
if [ -d ~/bin ]; then
export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi
Exiting lirsh and re-entering lirsh should activate the new setting.
exit # jump out of lirsh
lirsh
echo $PATH
thunderbird-launcher
This command should open thunderbird inside lirsh with desired zoom.
Step 2: Making a Thunderbird Mail main menu item shortcut
Now that this is working, let's try to create an Ubuntu Touch shortcut
in the main menu. This can be done manually of course. In this example,
I will piggy-back on what is already available.
Open another terminal tab (without lirsh environment).
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps
wget -O ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/thunderbird.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Thunderbird_2023_icon.svg
wget -O ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/index.theme https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spk121/hicolor-icon-theme/refs/heads/master/index.theme
sed -i "s|^Comment=.*$|Comment=Ubuntu Touch Icon Theme|g" ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/index.theme
echo "Update icon caches (maybe obsolete)"
touch ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor
update-icon-caches ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor
# or
touch ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor
gtk-update-icon-cache ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor
echo
echo "We can re-use the thunderbird.desktop file that is in the Libertine container"
cp -v /userdata/user-data/phablet/.cache/libertine-container/noble/rootfs/usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop
echo
echo "Using scaling factor GDK_DPI_SCALE=1.2"
echo "to achieve similar scaling as with"
echo "Libertine container 'noble' GDK_DPI_SCALE=0.6"
sed -i "s|^Exec=.*$|Exec=bash -c \'GDK_DPI_SCALE=1.2 GDK_BACKEND=x11 /userdata/user-data/phablet/.cache/libertine-container/noble/rootfs/usr/bin/thunderbird\' %u|g" ~/.local/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop
echo
echo "Ubuntu Touch does not seem to find the thunderbird icon"
echo "by itself."
echo " Icon=thunderbird"
echo "Icon has to be specified exactly with path to show in main menu."
echo " Icon=/path/to/scalable/svg"
sed -i "s|^Icon=.*$|Icon=/home/phablet/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/thunderbird.svg|g" ~/.local/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop
echo
echo "Trigger main menu update"
mv ~/.local/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/tmp.desktop
mv ~/.local/share/applications/tmp.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop
echo
echo "You should now see Thunderbird Mail"
echo "in Ubuntu Touch main menu."
echo
echo "Done."
Now there should be a visible "Thunderbird Mail" launcher in Ubuntu Touch main menu.
Try hitting the "Super-key" (sometimes this key has four windows left of the space bar, sometimes it can have an apple design or command key) on your external wired PS-2 keyboard (or wireless keyboard)
and type thund which should be enough to make Thunderbird Mail laucher visible.
If all went well, you should now be able to set up any mail account and optionally
create an OpenPGP encryption key to be used when sending encrypted email to somebody else
whatever email provider they use, given that the recipient has a mail reader that can use your public OpenPGP key to decrypt the email message you sent them. If they also use Thunderbird Mail client, OpenPGP encryption will work in the same way on their system. Several other mail clients, such as Evolution Mail client support OpenPGP encryption in a similar way but it might require more to configure it than in Thunderbird, which is more user friendly in this particular aspect. Of course, the email meta data will most probably not be encrypted. If you wish to avoid email metadata you might want to use tuta-mail or proton-mail or any other mail that never leaves the email provider. If somebody knows how to get a mail reader for tuta-mail or proton-mail to Ubuntu Touch, I am sure some users would appreciate that.
Having Morph browser open with several tabs and Thunderbird Mail open at the same time uses 5.9Gi RAM memory, reports terminal command free -h.
