The new Thunderbird is bad, at first sight.

For one, I see no emails what-so-ever. I have no idea how to fix this.... It works to send and receive emails tho....so that's a total mystery. I also have no clue where to report this to Thunderbird...

I don't understand the big deal with the new UI. My Thunderbird looked almost identical. Simple, clean. Unified folders and all that. Now it is worse because the app does not respect me and my system.

I have a different theme/accent color for my system....but Thunderbird downgrades its release to not work well with the system it seems.

Also, a massive topbar with a huge search bar that makes it more difficult to grab the window and move it around. Plus why 2 search bars? Isn't the "filter messages" bar enough?

And of course the annoying GTK4 topbar that won't let me use the XFCE features like rolling up the window or maximize it to the topbar to save space...

Idk what's up with the people who think that improvements always should bring less features, less customization options, less compatibility with the system.... If anything Thunderbird should have made it more compatible with the system, like allow me to use the HUD and search through the menu like I can with 90% of all apps.

Overall a bad experience and now I have to get my emails back somehow.....

I start to hate more and more the Gnomes. They are the apple-fan-boys of Linux, thinking of how great it is to make everything more simplistic and unusable and geared to only the Gnome world. Linux is going to lose more of its uniqueness, defaulting to 1 theme and 5 accent colors, and 1 desktop environment, Gnome. And the rest will still be around, but small, and butchered by the GTK4 and such decisions, making the Gnome apps look like weeds in a field, not matching anything on other desktops and not working well on other desktops.

I bought a Dell Inspiron 7620 2-in-1 (mouthful) some 6-7 months ago. Took me many months to choose a laptop and this one was the best for me. It is a 16` 16:10 with a powerful CPU and a good GPU. The screen is amazing, the keyboard is very good, and the chassis is aluminum.

In these months I had to fix the touchpad because it was not working anymore, and that was a massive issue, but the worst is that the battery capacity dropped to 83% capacity in only a few months time.

Luckily the battery is big, 87W, but this rapid drop was unexpected.

You see, this laptop is really thin.

Almost as thin as a USB A port. Couple that with a powerful processor and video card, plus just 1 fan, and an aluminum body and you get a hot pancake.

When I stress the laptop a bit it is so hot you can barely touch it. 80-90C. And I had to render the TROM II documentary on this laptop. Got crazy hot, for many weeks on end.

Therefore, I highly suspect that the battery capacity dropped because of the heat. I cannot see any other reason.

But now is July and I am in Spain. Thus, it is hot as fuck. This is tomorrow:

So hot it is difficult to keep my own body cool, let alone this laptop.

So I decided to buy a laptop fan. This sort:

But the fan was barely creating any sort of air flow. I ordered two more...All under 20 Euros because I don't feel in the mood to spend more than that on a fan for the laptop....considering it has one inside-the-fucking-chassis!

After two weeks of use the temperature of the laptop would not go above 80-85C when I'd stress the laptop. So a 5-10C cooler. But I was not happy!

I said let's try something else. Let's order a fucking fan....you know a normal one. But a small one. And cheap as fuck. I spent too much time looking for one, but I eventually bought this one for 7 Euros:

Plus a metal laptop stand for around 10 Euros:

And guess what? With that setup my laptop is always cool. Even when I stress it it will stay at around 60-65C max. That's a massive improvement!


And I have to say that I never thought I'd be excited about a fucking fan. But this one, for 7 Euros....is my favorite fan ever. Why?

First the way it is designed. You can put this fan in many different ways.

You can put it sideways, upside down, or flat on the table.

You can even hang it on the wall...

And so it allows me to position it anyway I want. Like directly bellow the laptop:

Or behind it:

So it is extremely handy.

Best part? It has a rechargeable battery inside so you can use it for 1-3 hours on the battery alone. This is useful because now it is so hot I take it with me when I move with my laptop. Like put it in bed to blow air on the laptop while I hold it on my lap. It has 5 speeds and it is more powerful than you may think :). Plus it has a USB C connector so it is easy to find a replaceable cable when you need one.

Actually I was so impressed that I ordered one more, to blow air on my USB C dongle that is metal and I noticed it got extremely hot. I use one single dongle to connect my laptop to the charger, external monitor, projector, mouse, speakers, LAN, and more. I love it because I can plug/unplug with ease. But because it was getting so hot my LAN connection will drop several times a day.

Now that I got that cool fan, there is no drop anymore :).

Conclusion.

These special laptop fans are bullshit. At least those under 20. I tried several and they were very inefficient. And no, is not because they try to keep them silent and thus less powerful....the small fan that I got is also very quiet....but at least it works! Also, fuck you people who design such thin laptops and do not care much about the heat dispersal. Why the fuck you put a fan inside if it is so inefficient anyway? I guess they have to sell these laptops based on looks....I see....

Anyway, if your laptop gets hot, invest some 20 Euros and buy yourself a metal stand for it plus a mini fan. You can always repurpose that fan. And you can get a nice laptop stand.

I agree. I used Gnome for several years before switching to XFCE. Gnome feels like a great DE for people who do not do a lot of things on their computers. I normally have 5 or so workspaces and on each a dozen of apps open. Some apps are workspace-specific, some are available on all workspaces. You are right, multitasking when you do so much is a pain in Gnome. And I really really tried to like it.

Not to mention that you need a lot of extensions to make it useful.

Gnome does great in terms of animations and overall look, but not very practical and feels very non-customizable.

XFCE looks awful out of the box and the lack of animations is quite annoying. But you can make it look good - see our custom distro based on XFCE - TROMjaro. And if you give XFCE a try you will realize how sane it is. You can customize it a ton without being overwhelmed by thousands of options. You right click on panels and apps and you get sane options to move or tweak them.

As for workspaces I personally use them as "names" on the top bar and can switch between workspaces so fast, almost like tabs in a browser.

Not as fancy as Gnome, but boy this is really useful. And practical.

I've also added mouse gestures on my desktop via Easystroke so I can move windows on any workspace via these gestures. So easy.

So I'd say that Gnome looks fancy, and it is very cool for those who do not do a lot of work on their machines and have to switch between many work spaces and lots of apps. And I'd say XFCE is extremely underrated, perhaps because out of the box it looks terrible. Maybe try TROMjaro....see how it goes.

I hope I do not bother mentioning you people, but I want to get this documentary out.

In short, it is a 4 part 5 hours long documentary about our society. The culture that influences us, how money ruins many lives, how much we are wasting and destroying everything around. But in the end it is positive. We look at volunteers, non profit organizations, even FOSS and the fediverse.

I made this documentary only with FOSS and released it on Peertube. You can watch it for free on our website here tromsite.com/documentaries/tro…

Please help me spread it. And I am sorry if I bothered you but I'll only do it once, because I think it is too fucking important.

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