OT: Old Mozilla to new Thunderbird, how to get emails over?

Joerg Inscribed thus:

I'm not going to comment about a new PC ! However "Logging in as SUDO" sounds a bit like you have the wrong Linux distribution for your needs.

What rubbish ! 75% of my clients are businesses, and they don't use any M$ software at all ! The rest are a mixture and generally smaller organizations. It all down to what people actually need their systems to do.

I agree Linux is not for everyone.

No, that actually was recommended to me by numerous Linux experts (Ubunutu as well as this "work around"). The notion was that one does not write into library directories that came with a CAD program. An assumption that is wrong.

It's 0% of my clients ;-)

The most mundane thing that wouldn't work under Linux was a USB button (really, just a lone push button).

So, it's going to have to be Windows for me and my client. However, as another poster wrote the fact that Windows only knows two permission levels (admin and limited) does suck. You are constantly modifying account types. Doesn't take much time but it's a hassle.

I don't know about the gazillion distros and quite frankly don't want to. It should be possible to pick one and work with it. However, I have seen numerous cases where people either spent hours looking for a work-around, hacking a driver or resigning to the fact that this, that and the other thing couldn't be used anymore under Linux. Mostly this was sound cards, modems and WLAN adaptors. Plus the occasional not-so-usual USB gizmo.

What I mean is this: When trying gEDA and in particular gschem under Ubuntu I could not write to library directories of that software. When asking in a forum experienced Linux users and programmers told me "You aren't supposed to do that". Which simply is not true for CAD.

Only over my dead body :-)

Joerg Inscribed thus:

It does help to be able to choose hardware that is well supported !

I suspect that the problem with directories was down to the way Ubuntu tries to control what a user is allowed to do. I tried gEDA for a while and decided that Eagle was better, primarily because I was more familiar with it. I don't recall that I had any problems with manipulating library's or their contents.

But at the end of the day its down to "what works" for you ! At least you tried with an open mind, which few new users actually do.

Many Windows users are really looking for a free look a like. I find that "older" people are far more willing to learn something new and generally have a much better experience because of it.

Joerg Inscribed thus:

Mmmm !

AFAIR it wasn't just Ubuntu. Many in the forum used Linux'es of other flavors. They said you can't write there unless logged in as root. Well, I guess in Linux that would still be much safer than in Windows because that small community isn't much of a hacker target.

I wanted to ditch Eagle because it has no hierachy, which gEDA has. Main reason why I stayed with Eagle was that gschem does not handle refdeses and auto-annotation properly for analog design. When I tried to discuss that in the newsgroup I was pretty much blown off, even by the big brass there. So I concluded that gEDA is more something for hobbyists, not for me.

KiCad was IMHO a whole lot better and had a more professional feel to it. Except that it also botches auto-numbering and for some reason has an ugly drawing frame hardcoded in (which drags the professional look of it down several notches).

Yeah, I am over the hill when it comes to "older" :-)

Ok, guys, here is a P.P.S. for those who run into the same issues:

Thunderbird 3.0 repeatedly "forgot" the email directory I had given it. Blank screen, trundling, trundling ... long story short it's outta here and I loaded the old version 2.0.0.6 -> Problem gone. So far ...

I did have one incidence of "Unable to write the email to the mailbox" which seems to be a TB bug but one more reboot made that go away.

So don't ditch your old install files for software. Older can sometimes mean better.

On a sunny day (Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:49:38 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

I will add in your quotred text what I use in Linux fro some apps:

version too, called 'minefield', it crashes all the time hence the name I guess.

version, it runs in wine, some funny messages about VB errors, do not know how to use it yet.

even using it now to write this from my newsreader NewsFleX.

I have open office in Linux, actually it works...

Try Opera.

And on the same box the webserver, mail server, ftp server, name server, home automation, media centre with satellite recording, 2 soundcards..., PCB, and you do not even notice it, also security cam recording and h264 encoding, video editing, up 24/7 for 9 years, as server for 4 years, 950 MHz Duron. Can you imagine WHY I burned my MS xp disk?

An OS should never be a purpsose in itself, just an interface to the hardware. :-)

On a sunny day (Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:57:40 -0800) it happened Joerg wrote in :

You are doing something wrong. Anyways I am always root, so I am not bothered by any of that shit. Real men are root.

Well, if you run Linux in some virtual thing, then you never get the power of Linux. The purpose of an OS is an interface between apps and the hardware. That is already a barrier, adding an other layer on top of that sucks even more. The extra PC will save you money in the end because then you can sell that MS windows box. Lots of idiots wanna buy one it seems.

Linux version too, called 'minefield', it crashes all the time hence the name I guess.

version, it runs in wine, some funny messages about VB errors, do not know how to use it yet.

even using it now to write this from my newsreader NewsFleX.

So do I but only for word processing, on some PCs here. Its database isn't useful. Incompatible with just about anything. Then, the Open Office Calc part cannot do VBA yet that's sort of an industry standard out here. Yeah, everyone seems to say Python is better and yada yada yada. But whatever is popular in industry is the name of the game.

Joerg Inscribed thus:

Yes, the hierarchy is missing in Eagle. The gEDA group tend to be a bit touchy, sensitive may be a better word. :-)

I took one look at that and instantly hated it.

That makes two of us... ;-)

LOL, had to laugh. I am right now struggling to change the permission of a folder in windows XP and I can tell you it is a real pain. In Linux, as root you just right click the folder and select properties. XP is real clunky in this repsect.

Cheers

Ian

Like I said, install Cygwin. Painless.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Ian Bell Inscribed thus:

I feel your pain. :-) Linux is far more intuitive.

It's often also the software that's clunky. Thunderbird seems to require users to be logged in as administrator or it may say "cannot write email to file". Just had that happen. For some reason Microsoft does that right, never happened with any of their programs (so far).

The difficulty seems to be more on the part of people who program Windows. NTFS has permissions, although this fact appears to have escaped the attention of many developers who think that the world still uses Win95 and therefore it's perfectly reasonable to assume that the user can write to the directory where the application is installed.

That's just a permission issue, akin to the fact that modern versions of Windows don't let normal users write to System32. You can change the permissions.

There's a difference between "aren't supposed to" and "can't".

Without knowing the details of the discussion, I don't know if they were simply trying to help you do things the right way, or just being obtuse.

A CAD program really ought to allow the use of multiple library directories rather than requiring users to modify system directories.

For a start, it's possible to use Linux with its root filesystem on a read-only device (e.g. with the write-protect jumper fitted to the drive). Admittedly, this isn't common, particularly for a desktop system, but it offers far more protection against viruses and the like than permissions alone (even a malicious kernel module can't write to a drive which is physically write-protected).

A more realistic issue is that modifying system directories can interfere with package management. E.g. if you upgrade a package, your custom libraries may be removed along with the old version (unlikely) or (more likely) left sitting in a directory which the new version ignores.

Consequently, software shouldn't rely upon users modifying the system directories, but allow customisation through /etc (for system-wide configuration) and $HOME (for per-user configuration).

If a particular package doesn't allow this, you can always change the permissions to allow modifying the installation directories, but this should be the last resort rather than the first.

On a sunny day (Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:15:03 -0800) it happened Joerg wrote in :

And all that from somebody who insists on a manual gear in a car. Why do you not simply change the permissions so it can write to that directory?

You just have no clue about how Unix works. Get a good book.