[HN Gopher] Thunderbird Littering My Home
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Thunderbird Littering My Home
Author : speckx
Score : 71 points
Date : 2026-06-08 17:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thefoggiest.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (thefoggiest.dev)
| lomlobon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Doesn't WINE let you pick folder mappings?
| F3nd0 wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.)
| Retr0id wrote:
| I just never look in ~
| the__alchemist wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| What did you replace it with?
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| mutt?
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Webmail (Fastmail's official webapp in this case)
| Saris wrote:
| Shift+Enter for a normal new line. No idea why it's like this.
| F3nd0 wrote:
| 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.
| Saris wrote:
| Ah that would make sense I suppose as it's sending HTML by
| default.
|
| It does have a plain text mode!
| thesuitonym wrote:
| 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.
| emaro wrote:
| 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".
| Saris wrote:
| 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.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| > 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.
| wps wrote:
| 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.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| 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
| nixosbestos wrote:
| 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)
| miduil wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I think it is because AI and systemd are colleages, growing
| to do anything and everything.
| hungryhobbit wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| But there's no guarantee that the PR would get merged.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Or worked
| tomstockmail wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| `rmdir` is not `rm -rf`. It only removes empty
| directories.
| daneel_w wrote:
| Try Betterbird. On the whole I find that fork a better experience
| than Thunderbird.
| soperj wrote:
| What's better for you?
| daneel_w wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| You're lucky you only get one. I get two, `~/thunderbird/` and
| `~/Thunderbird/`
| mzajc wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| butz wrote:
| Is there any hope that Thunderbird might benefit from XDG config
| directories fix that Firefox recently implemented?
| gsich wrote:
| Another unit that requires mental load.
| create_accounts wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| ddalcino wrote:
| Reminds me of this other post
| (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.
| Grombobulous wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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/syst...
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