From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint
On Sat, 9/19/2026 1:01 PM, Edmund wrote:
Betterbird bugs, it doesn't wanna start anymore.
AI tells me it is probably due to the fact it is using thunderbird settings and - surprise surprise - that creates problems.
I look at it when en news mint release comes and I do an install without Thunderbird.
BTW in the repositories I can choose ONE flatpack install, not a normal one.
I don't see a Betterbird in Synaptic, but then I don't have
any PPA added to Synaptic to change the situation either.
You could open a Terminal and use a command line invocation, to
see if there is any useful output from flatpak during the launch.
For example, if the eu.betterbird.Betterbird flatpak executable
was missing, then flatpak could likely tell you that.
This is just to illustrate some command line invocations. You don't
have to do these exact ones. It's to show how you can run it from Terminal. Right now, flatpak run eu.betterbird.Betterbird is plenty, because I tested that and it works.
https://github.com/flathub/eu.betterbird.Betterbird
"You can work around this issue by giving the Betterbird flatpak access to your complete home directory
temporarily: by starting Betterbird using
flatpak run --filesystem=home:rw eu.betterbird.Betterbird every time.
permanently: by giving Betterbird the filesystem=home permission using the Flatseal app
or by running
flatpak override --user --filesystem=home eu.betterbird.Betterbird (once is enough).
If the Betterbird code is erroring out, there may not be printf statements
from Betterbird into the Terminal window.
I think if I installed that here on my LM223, I'd probably have to do it
with flatpak commands and via listing in flatpak, what versions or whatever were available. As I'm not seeing an entry in Synaptic right now (fresh install).
But in any case, running it from the command line in a Terminal,
is one thing you can do with any of the versions, as a start at debug.
If the program is actually crashing, it has its own crash reporter, but
whether that process would be visible in "top", it might be hidden by
flatpak. I don't know the details of how anything works, in flatpak.
1. [ ] eu.betterbird.Betterbird.Locale
2. [ ] org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default
3. [ ] org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default
4. [ ] org.freedesktop.Platform.Locale
5. [ ] org.freedesktop.Platform.codecs-extra
6. [ ] org.gtk.Gtk3theme.Mint-Y-Aqua
7. [/] org.freedesktop.Platform
8. [ ] eu.betterbird.Betterbird
Installing 7/8 ...
I tried flatpak run eu.betterbird.Betterbird and
the output to Terminal wasn't all that impressive.
Summary:
I think to debug this, I'd need something other than a Flatpak method.
I'm not sure I can get the traction needed.
And as it should be a multi-process application (more than one row in "top"),
I might not even be able to attach to something useful to debug.
And I hope you don't have some Thunderbird processes still running at
the same time as Betterbird processes. If there is a lock file, indicating
one program is in control of the profile folder, a second candidate is
not going to like that, and will bail on the lock. That's assuming a Flatpak even uses a lock file.
You could drop this question into alt.comp.software.thunderbird where
Jorg might see it, but Jorg appreciates bug reports over on his own setup, rather than chasing stuff in a.c.s.t . And at this point, we don't have enough info to even file a bug report, as we have no idea at what level this is fouling up. Is flatpak busted ? As an example.
That's why I'd rather find a way of running a .deb if I could.
*******
OK, you could use the Linux archive and unpack it in your Downloads folder.
And this should not interfere with your other setup. It's a parallel portable path.
Using archive manager, you unpack the .tar.xz . I tend to keep these in my Downloads folder, as I'm that lazy. I picked three files here, to show you we're in an executable folder. And many of the files will need 755 permissions to be executable (that's if the tar screwed up and they were 644 by accident).
https://www.betterbird.eu/downloads/
https://www.betterbird.eu/downloads/LinuxArchive/betterbird-153.3.0esr-bb9.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.xz
libxul.so 196,090,664 bytes
betterbird 5,544 bytes <=== cd to the unpacked "tar" folder and run this as .\betterbird
betterbird-bin 573,264 bytes <=== This is what it calls, you could attach to this process.
You could edit the betterbird script 5,544 bytes, to inject the
command to trace betterbird-bin .
But even without modification, if you CD to the unpacked .tar.xz file,
and do ./betterbird , you may get more useful output. For example, it is
likely to complain about a dependency, it has quite a selection of .so
in the directory as well, so if anything is missing, it might only be
one item at most. It looks to be designed to be pretty self sufficient.
Only some last moment version screwup might need fixing, if any.
Anyway, I hope that gives you some leads on debugging and collecting
what info you can, before bugging Jorg. When dealing with a small shop,
you wanna throw them a bone, ya know -- give them what debug info you can.
Paul
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