In discover I see two versions of Thunderbird. What is the difference between these?
Probably one of those is Fedora Flatpak (packaged by Fedora) and the other is Flathub. If you click one it should show you which is which in the opening page.
In terms of which one you should install, I always go with Flathub packages.
This is so user unfriendly. You get a mix of rpm and flatpak (from flathub and fedora) plus you get the ESR vs. latest version…
How should the average user decide which one is the right one?
If I enable flathub I get two more.
Name Description Application ID Version Branch Remotes
Thunderbird … Thunderbird is a free and open source email, newsfeed, cha… …g.mozilla.thunderbird_esr 153.3.1esr stable flathub
Thunderbird Thunderbird is a free and open source email, newsfeed, cha… org.mozilla.thunderbird 156.0.1 stable flathub
Thunderbird Thunderbird is a free and open source email, newsfeed, cha… …t.thunderbird.Thunderbird 156.0 stable fedora
Thunderbird Thunderbird is a free and open source email, newsfeed, cha… org.mozilla.Thunderbird stable fedora
This is why I never use it. Can’t tell what’s what without digging into each one.
What’s the last flatpak one, the one from fedora repo? It’s called “stable” but doesn’t carry a version number.
I solve the problem by running sudo dnf install thunderbird and go with whatever I get from the rpm repo. It has never failed on me.
Ditto. Pretty sure I only open Discover when someone posts a question like this.
[vek@newbox ~]$ flatpak remote-info f
fedora fedora-testing flathub
[vek@newbox ~]$ flatpak remote-info fedora org.mozilla.Thunderbird
Thunderbird - Thunderbird is a free and open source email, newsfeed, chat, and
calendaring client
ID: org.mozilla.Thunderbird
Ref: app/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/x86_64/stable
Arch: x86_64
Branch: stable
License: MPL-2.0
Collection:
Download Size: 160,4 MB
Installed Size: 327,2 MB
Runtime: org.fedoraproject.Platform/x86_64/f41
Sdk: org.fedoraproject.Sdk/x86_64/f41
Commit: 0401e06e7bc07e250f649e3139ec379dd357b6202b803d94426ee26cb733b112
End-of-life: Renamed to net.thunderbird.Thunderbird
End-of-life-rebase: app/net.thunderbird.Thunderbird/x86_64/stable
Subject: Export org.mozilla.Thunderbird
Date: 2025-03-30 07:28:25 +0000
For the sake of accuracy,
net.thunderbird.Thunderbirdis the app ID used by Fedora for the release version. Upstream (Flathub) usesorg.mozilla.thunderbirdfor the same version, and both Fedora and Flathub useorg.mozilla.Thunderbirdfor the ESR version.
(The Flathub refs have since changed, but AIUI Fedora still uses org.mozilla.Thunderbird for ESR and net.thunderbird.Thunderbird for latest release.)
For Firefox and Thunderbird I stick with the rpm packages you get from dnf: a) they are widely used, and b) you get Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) protections. In the past I have worked on projects with contributors spread around the globe where flatpak’s help avoid distro-specific differences so stuff works the same for everyone.
I disabled Fedora Flatpak in Discover. So I only get Flatpak from Flathub or from RPM offered in Discover. But I never use Discover. I install via terminal, like @augenauf does.
Yes, at least on Flathub, they’ve added the “esr” suffix in the app id, which makes the two variants distinguishable, at least when using the CLI. It would have made sense to use “Thunderbird (ESR)” or similar in the name metadata as well, so that one can tell which is which in GUI apps too.
On Flathub that has been done (see the “Thunderbird ESR” entry in @anothermindbomb 's screenshot.)
I’ve missed that, thank you.
What about the poor guys that run atomic-desktops ?
My attempt there failed using dnf. So I picked the one that didn’t say “Renamed to net.thunderbird.Thunderbird”.
Btw blaming this on Mozilla or flatpak or both as a number of answers did is putting the blame in the wrong location imho. The two packages listed were both flatpak. Both flatpaks from Fedora Flatpaks. I see this more as bad package management from Fedora Package Management.