Downgrading Firefox 3.5 and Thunderbird 3.0

[Nathan Grennan]

On 05/11/2009 05:07 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
> OK, first off, why in $DEITY's name are we including Firefox 3.5b4 and
> Thunderbird 3.0b2 in Fedora 11? These are unstable branches of the
> browser and email client, and as such are supported by almost none of
> the myriad of extensions available for the 3.0 and 2.0 versions,
> respectively.
>
> I was more than a little disappointed when I upgraded my laptop to the
> F11 Preview to discover that only two out of seven of my Thunderbird
> extensions and three of my thirteen Firefox extensions remained functional.
>
> I understand that Fedora is a development OS, and I think it's a great
> idea to have a firefox35 package and a thunderbird30 package, but these
> SHOULD NOT be the defaults.
>
> Taking away the full functionality of a developer's web browser and
> email client is an incredible step backwards for Fedora 11. The default
> install of Fedora 11 should include the latest STABLE versions of
> Firefox and Thunderbird, and then provide an OPTION to replace them with
> the unstable development branch.
>
> I would understand if Firefox and Thunderbird were in their release
> candidate phase, and we could reasonably expect that within three months
> that they would hit final release. Firefox has no definitive (or even
> approximate) release date scheduled, and Thunderbird is only in its
> second beta. There is little-to-no guarantee that either of these
> products will be deemed stable before Fedora 12, and I think it is a
> severe mistake to make them the default before then.
>
> If nothing else, consider this an open request to the Firefox,
> Thunderbird and Lightning maintainers to provide a compatibility package
> that can downgrade and replace the unstable and non-extensible versions
> currently in the distribution.
>
>

   I was just thinking the same thing yesterday. After trying to use 
thunderbird 3.0b2, I have found it unusable.

   I have tried a fresh .thunderbird directory and switching to the i586 
version from the x86_64 version. It is still horrible. I do have huge 
folders with 10k+ messages in them. Thunderbird 3.0b2 seems to scan all 
folders and download all messages. With the fresh .thunderbird I started 
with a 32mb .thunderbird folder, but after leaving it over night with 
just one of my three accounts it was up to 2gb.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=493000