I’ve got Fedora WS on an oldish HP Elitebook. Ran fine just with Brave and Thunderbird for very light usage, but the other day when clicking the Thunderbird icon on bottom dock (dash to dock) it spins like usual but doesn’t run the program, eventually the spinning stops and that’s it, no Thunderbird. Tried updates, upgraded to F42WS, ran more updates so it’s all fully up to date, still same.
Any ideas appreciated
Can you go to the Software app, then search for Thunderbird and click “Open” there? After this, can you try opening the app from the App Grid?
Tried ‘Open’ from software app, nothing happens at all. no spinning on cursor/pointer at all. Tried several times.
App grid - cant see in there (I dont use that grid) but typed Thunderbird in which brought up icon and clicked that, again nothing happens 
thanks
Something had to happen with the app then. Did you installed it as a flat… you installed it as a flatpak, didn’t you? Yeah it’s a known issue. When I was starting to write “flatpak” it clicked with me that there were issues with Fedora flatpak.
Thanks. Yes it’s a flatpak from Fedora. on my main machine I have it installed from Flathub and that works flawlessly.
Any ideas what my options are please? Is it possible to switch to different installation type?
You can either wait for the fix or remove Fedora flatpak and install Flathub one. I don’t think you will be able to migrate your user settings tho, as some user noted that it didn’t worked for them.
any idea how long the fix might be? Days, or months?
Perhaps install BetterBird if you really want a local email client and aren’t intimately tied to Thunderbird.
Tried starting it from the command line to see what it’s whinging about?
Sadly I do not know, however, you can “watch“ this topic Thunderbird crashes after recent upgrades - #3 by vinzentm and wait for good news 
If some reply helped you, can you mark it as a “Solution“? (it’s a checkbox to the left of the heart icon)
Thanks but not sure what you mean by “If you really want a local email client”. Thunderbird is a local email client, isn’t it?
I wouldn’t know how to start something from command line 
Yes - i meant that if you absolutely want a local email client that lets you view your email via IMAP or POP, then BetterBird is an alternative to Thunderbird. Some would say better than thunderbird, but I can’t comment as I use neither to any extent.
To start it from the command line, have a look at the properties of the GUI icon you use normally, copy them into the clipboard, open a terminal and paste.
For example, using VS Code an example; you can see when I click the icon, it actually executes /var/lib/snapd/bin/code. One of the benefits of running something from the command line is that it gets to spit out all the output that is normally lost when running from and entry ion the start menu, or an icon on the desktop. In your case, TB may well tell you why it cannot start.
Well that sure was another mind bomb for me 
thanks
PS I viewed that other thread and commented that I just checked for updates and lo and behold, there’s one for TB. Ran it and all working again now.
I haven’t tried Betterbird, I do detest TB but can’t find anything that can do what I want (as close to Mac Mail as possible). The search facility is utterly defunct, but again, I have to work with what I can!
Have a gander at Betterbird. It’s a fork of Thunderbird with (apparently) many things fixed, improved and “made better”.
Might be hand y to have it in your pocket anyway, in case this happens again.
