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Is Windows/Linux Dual Boot with a shared profile possible with Thunderbird?

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  • Èsì tí ó kẹ́hìn lọ́wọ́ Zenos

trevva
trevva
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Hi,

I have a dual-boot windows/linux laptop with installations of Thunderbird in each partition. I would like to use the same profile across both OSes. Is this possible?

I have read quite widely and everyone seems to say yes - just use the same profile via the profile manager. I have tried that, and there are clear problems popping up - while the settings are carried across between the two, the contents of the downloaded IMAP folders are not visible on both platforms. Lots of the information posted on this topic is also old - the threads start drying up around 2010, and there is very little new information. Some people suggest using a FAT32 partition to store the data, but I struggle to see why that would make a difference.

Any thoughts?

Mark

Bonus info: Windows partition has NTFS . Linux has ext4, and can read the NTFS partition. I would store the profile on the NTFS partition, and read it from Linux.

Hi, I have a dual-boot windows/linux laptop with installations of Thunderbird in each partition. I would like to use the same profile across both OSes. Is this possible? I have read quite widely and everyone seems to say yes - just use the same profile via the profile manager. I have tried that, and there are clear problems popping up - while the settings are carried across between the two, the contents of the downloaded IMAP folders are not visible on both platforms. Lots of the information posted on this topic is also old - the threads start drying up around 2010, and there is very little new information. Some people suggest using a FAT32 partition to store the data, but I struggle to see why that would make a difference. Any thoughts? Mark Bonus info: Windows partition has NTFS . Linux has ext4, and can read the NTFS partition. I would store the profile on the NTFS partition, and read it from Linux.

All Replies (1)

Zenos
Zenos
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I think you're safer with FAT32. But I understand a modern Linux can work with NTFS. Well reading is one matter; can it reliably write onto an NTFS partition? What about those nasty "additional" data streams used in NTFS?

The main limitation to your shared profile is that add-ons with binary components are compiled for each platform, so are not shareable. Lightning and Enigmail are two that I know of.

Some add-ons (Signature Switch? Stationery?) seem to store the absolute pathnames to their resources and that will give you a headache, as "C:\" won't mean anything to Linux. And vice versa. But you may be able to coerce it into using relative pathnames. The things I expected to be problematic when moving a profile from Windows to Linux (e.g. file line endings: CRLF vs LF etc) simply weren't issues.

I don't understand why IMAP connected accounts are being difficult for you.

But shucks, why keep Windows? ;-) LMDE all the way for me, where I have a say in it.

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