Thunderbird in Ubuntu and win7 ... at the same time

J

JokerJones

Active Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2012
Messages
56
Reaction score
0
HI, ok, so being quite irritated in the direction Microsoft is going as seen by win8, I thought that if I was going to have to learn a new way of doing things my option might as well be free.

So I have Installed Ubuntu 13.4 dual booting with Win7, and while I am loving the Linux experience, I do have one concern. Well, I guess more of a very noob question.

I use Thunderbird on my win7 installation, and have it on Linux too. The thing is I want to know if it is possible to synchronise the folders so that I dont have some email on win7 Thunderbird and some on Linux Thunderbird??

Is it possible to move the files so that both can access the same emails?
 
Why don't you rather share the same profile between the two instances? Create the profile in the windows system and on the linux one just point it to the location on the windows partition?

This just seems way less complicated to me.
 
Yeah what ponder said.

Use one profile directory for both instances.
 
I don't know if this has gotten any better, but I used the same-profile trick back in the day, and it gave me a lot of problems.

Better to use IMAP.
 
Yup, use IMAP and you're sorted. I run a similar setup, except across a windows desktop and two linux machines, all with the same accounts simultaneously.
 
Thanks for the advice, I also looked at the following links:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Sharing_a_profile_between_Windows_and_Linux
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Roaming_profile
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/mi...d-firefox-profiles-between-linux-windows.html
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_mail_storage_location_-_Thunderbird

It all sounds really unnecesselery complicated. So I went with the IMAP suggestion. So now I have POP3 on my Win7 and IMAP on the linux. It seems to be a simple elegant solution ... so far.
 
JokerJones said:
So I went with the IMAP suggestion. So now I have POP3 on my Win7 and IMAP on the linux. It seems to be a simple elegant solution ... so far.
Click to expand...

You should be running IMAP on both, a mix of pop3 & imap does not make sense in my book.
 
Really? Does it matter that much?

The reason I left it diferent was that I already had it as POP3 on my windows instalation, but I thought that by making it IMAP on the linux instalation would allow me to at least not download messages in different places. I am really not keen to go back to the windows instalation and change something that is working perfectly at the moment and change all the Thunderbird settings there to IMAP.

Wont that cause more headaches than it solves? It sounds like I am missing somethng here.
 
IMAP will sync things like Read/Unread etc.

Either way it's going to be downloading messages, whether doing so openly or simply to a cache folder.
 
JokerJones said:
Really? Does it matter that much?

The reason I left it diferent was that I already had it as POP3 on my windows instalation, but I thought that by making it IMAP on the linux instalation would allow me to at least not download messages in different places.
Click to expand...

You don't seem to understand the difference between the two. Let me explain:

POP3 is a protocol used when a mail client moves mail from a server-side mailbox to a local mail store. In other words, the mail is no longer stored on the server. Only new mails will arrive on the server, and as soon as the mail client checks in, it will download them and then remove them from the server. So your mail exists *only* in the client-side mail store.

IMAP is a protocol where the mail stays on the server. It's a way to access a server-side mailbox, with some extra features like folders and subscriptions and a few things. It maintains the status of each mail - new, read, replied, forwarded, etc - and keeps the mail on the server. The mail client (Thunderbird) connects to it, downloads the mail, but leaves it on the server. Thunderbird, in effect, syncs your mailbox with the server. If you delete something locally in Thunderbird, it gets deleted off the server.

Thus, you can have more than one mail client configured for the same IMAP mailbox. I do this, since I have my personal account set up in Mac Mail.app on my laptop at home, and in Thunderbird on my PC at work. When I send a personal mail from my work box, it shows up in my Sent Items on my laptop at home. Ditto phone.

What you want is IMAP. The bad news is, since you've already configured POP3, your mail is no longer on the server, so you'll have to move it back. I suggest the following routine:

1. Disable the POP3 account in Thunderbird.
2. Configure the same mailbox with IMAP
3. Move the mail back (drag & drop)
4. Configure the same mailbox on another server.
 
i've been sharing profiles between multiple linux distros and windows for years

works with no problems
 
Thanks friends for all the info and advice. So far its all working fine.
 
I'm not sure what you did in the end.

But if you pointed to an already existing profile you would not have needed to set anything up.

It would have been as if you were using the originally setup account.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X