[fixed] Thunderbird no longer installed by default

@Patrick I don’t know if it’s been reported but I noticed XFCE releases are missing the thunderbird and enigmail packages.

Expected.

Used packaging bug breaking apt-get and https://twitter.com/Whonix/status/1064490863923933184 as justification to not re-add.

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Thunderbird voting showing how this shouldnt be something considered for non-trivial decisions. other word its not rational to make voting on for e.g “Do you want Tor or Clearnet in Whonix?” and if ppl voted 100% for clearnet then oh yeah then lets remove Tor.

i see what we have achieved through xfce is great except Thunderbird removal. (having Thunderbird without enigmail , better than none)

I don’t think the poll was about “Should we remove thunderbird from Whonix if users do not use it”. Maybe ask "Do you use webmail or Thunderbird with Whonix. Or maybe “Do you use anonymous email with Whonix?” would provide more precise feedback on user habits.

Edit: Polling user on whether they use webmail or Thunderbird might be a good idea. If a large majority use webmail we should try to better educate them on this?

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But when it comes on making decision based that statistic on removing or keeping Thunderbird then situation jumping into my argument. Because knowing just habits of people would be meaningless without a decision to take after that (even in the mind not in practice).

would be good but other than safe tips of using TBB what else we can add?

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I guess that would depend on what was found out by polling. In other words if a majority of users are using webmail why are they using it instead of an email client. It might not even be due to lack of knowledge of safe email principles. For example, it could be that the wiki instructions are to complicated for some users. But for the most part it wouldn’t surprise me if users don’t read the wiki because they don’t know about certain documentation or just don’t care to read it. If you look at support requests, its mostly questions that are already answered in the wiki. So inexperience and/or laziness likely plays a part?

  • Added by trivial decision to add by default (past mindset: “completness; perfection; let’s install all the Tor friendly software by default”).
  • Removed by trivial decision.

Obviously.

https://twitter.com/Whonix/status/1076236748676427779


Perhaps Email Overview is has room for improvement?

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yes very obvious. not our job to make laziness ppl active, thats up to them. but making decision based upon these laziness activities its horrible.

I see it as a major decision to have 0 email client. But in all cases and in order to continue a fairness comparison with other OSs then Whonix as disadvantage should change section “Email Client” to “No” in comparison with Tails here:

i dunno if @HulaHoop willing to add/reback Thunderbird+enigmail+Torbirdy in Whonix-KVM next builds.

To do so Patrick needs to reach consensus. I personally m in favor of including both and some other GUI management program for keys. Not that I personally need it but your newcomer is not going to sit and read thru gpg man to figure out how to import/sign/export keys.

Kgpg may cause downloading of tons of dependencies? So probably research for an alternative is needed.

HulaHoop:

and some other GUI management program for keys.

gpa already installed by default.

anon-meta-packages/debian/control at master · Whonix/anon-meta-packages · GitHub

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Since we dont need anymore enigmail , and Torbirdy not anymore maintained so what left is just Thunderbird. Do we have any problems/burdens of having Thunderbird again by default?

Note, that GitHub - Whonix/anon-apps-config is up to date regarding Thunderbird and now that

is also update to date, installing Thunderbird by default again.

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