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Upon upgrading from Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04.1 LTS the Thunderbird package was changed from APT to SNAP.

The initial installation on the PC was Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop, and upgrades have been performed over time.

After the upgrade I had to address the following to allow Thunderbird SNAP to access my profile and my existing emails:

The Thunderbird SNAP which got installed by the upgrade is a beta version:

$ snap list thunderbird
Name         Version    Rev  Tracking     Publisher   Notes
thunderbird  132.0b5-1  539  latest/beta  canonical✓  -

The Beta version displays the following warning upon starting:

Warning! Beta can be unstable, and there is potential to lose data.

During the upgrade I didn't knowingly select to install a beta version of Thunderbird, and therefore accept the potential to lose data.

Looking under Software & Updates -> Developer Options the Pre-released updates (noble proposed) option isn't checked: Pre-released updates (noble proposed) option

Is there a rationale anywhere for why an upgrade would install a Beta (potentially unstable) version of a package?

Chester Gillon
  • 573

1 Answers1

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user535733 made the following helpful comment:

Since your Question states that you encountered other (unusual) problems, I would consider this just another curious and frustrating element of your much-harder-than-usual transition that most other people won't encounter. Most folks are automatically added to the Stable channel (currently 128.3). If it worries you, then tell snapd to switch you to Stable.

Checking a different laptop which had had also updated from Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04.1 LTS showed that the other laptop was tracking the stable channel for Thunderbird. Albeit on the laptop I had never run Thunderbird since hadn't setup any profiles on it. This answers my question in that by default a Ubuntu upgrade doesn't install a BETA version of Thunderbird snap. I.e. I probably inadvertent did something on my desktop to cause the BETA version to be installed.

On the desktop which had BETA version installed had 132.0b6-1 installed so there was an update to the BETA version since I asked the question:

$ snap list thunderbird
Name         Version    Rev  Tracking     Publisher   Notes
thunderbird  132.0b6-1  540  latest/beta  canonical✓  -

Checked the available channels:

$ snap info thunderbird
name:      thunderbird
summary:   Mozilla Thunderbird email application
publisher: Canonical✓
store-url: https://snapcraft.io/thunderbird
contact:   https://www.thunderbird.net/contact/
license:   unset
description: |
  Thunderbird is a free email application that’s easy to set up and customize
  - and it’s loaded with great features!
commands:
  - thunderbird
snap-id:      k1Ml1O9GzSO2QftV0ZlWSbUfQ78nN460
tracking:     latest/beta
refresh-date: today at 14:20 BST
channels:
  latest/stable:    128.3.1esr-1 2024-10-11 (532) 157MB -
  latest/candidate: 128.4.0esr-1 2024-10-26 (545) 157MB -
  latest/beta:      132.0b6-1    2024-10-21 (540) 159MB -
  latest/edge:      ↑                                   
installed:          132.0b6-1               (540) 159MB -

Changed to the Stable channel, as suggested by Channels in the SNAP documentation:

$ snap refresh thunderbird --channel=latest/stable
thunderbird 128.3.1esr-1 from Canonical✓ refreshed

Confirmed that was now using the stable channel:

$ snap list thunderbird
Name         Version       Rev  Tracking       Publisher   Notes
thunderbird  128.3.1esr-1  532  latest/stable  canonical✓  -

On the first attempt to run the stable version of Thunderbird got a dialog with:

A newer version of Thunderbird may have made changes to your profile which are no longer compatible with this older version.

Followed the Mozilla support suggestion in Getting "A newer version of Thunderbird may have made changes to your profile..." when trying to open a profile. to allow a downgrade:

$ thunderbird -p --allow-downgrade

Started Thunderbird 128.3.1esr (64-bit) and it was able to access my profile which had last been used with 132.0b6-1.

Chester Gillon
  • 573