Comparison to Thunderbird

[bigdog]

Hi,

I was looking for a 64bit version of Thunderbird so came across FossaMail. I was wondering how it compares to Thunderbird in terms of security patches etc? Thunderbird is at 45.7.1 with a fix being released just a few days ago, how does the latest version of FossaMail compare to this?

Thanks

[GreenGeek]

FossaMail 27 is roughly equivalent to Thunderbird 38 but built with Pale Moon Goanna engine. And there's an update coming to change the FM version # to 38 (see announcement on this forum), mostly for extension compatibility. I'm not aware of specific differences because I rarely ever run TB.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

There are rarely ever any sec items as far as the front end code goes.. It is all in the backend components which are shared with Pale Moon.

[bigdog]

Not to ask a stupid question or start anything, but would that make FossaMail more susceptible since it doesn't have the latest patches?

Thanks

[New Tobin Paradigm]

No because front end code rarely has any kind of sec issue because it is all xul, javascript, and css. Not impossible but so undeniably improbable..

[bigdog]

Thanks for the clarification. I read some posts that indicated that it was not as up to date and comparing just version numbers I was a bit confused.

[Moonchild]

Thanks for the clarification. I read some posts that indicated that it was not as up to date and comparing just version numbers I was a bit confused.

"Some posts" are written by people who likely don't know, then, and didn't bother to ask, before writing their posts.

[kovacslt]

I compared Thunderbird and Fossamail on an old netbook (Acer aspire-one D257).
With 2GB RAM, running on Xubuntu 16.04 -32 bit on that machine:
Fossamail 38 takes 23 seconds to start up (with all bells and whistles I installed: language pack (also for lightning), Cassic TB2 theme, contact photo, Sogo connector)
Thunderbird with the same bells and whistles (except that it has a somewhat more recent lightning) starts up in 29 seconds.
TB requires approx. 191 MB RAM, while Fossamail takes 199MB RAM.

Clicking on different mails (whithout attachment) on the list, TB looks to need 0.5 - 0.7 seconds to display that mail, with Fossamail this seems instant.
Tha same applies to change mail tab to calendar tab and back.

This is just a quick and dirty test, but I found, that Fossamail starts up slightly faster, but works way much faster once started, than Thunderbird.


Of course, on a modern i7 machine I would not expect to see that difference...

[bigdog]

Thanks again for the explanation. I've been using Thunderbird for awhile but when I asked about a 64bit version I was basically told 32bit is good enough so went looking for a replacement. I wasn't sure how FossaMail compared to the current build in terms of patches/fixes so want to ask first.