i should be working (but i'm fixing my computer).

Well, it's going too far to say the OpSu build is fixed.  Mentioned before, I rolled back to 3.0.  I tried 3.1 from the Mozilla repository again -- still crashes.

...

But, I've always been puzzled why distros maintain their own Mozilla respoitories anyway.  There is allegedly some "integration" involved, but the only integration I am personally aware of is the part that prevents Firefox and Thunderbird from actually checking for updates and installing them -- you need to get them from the repository.

So, anyway, Thunderbird 3.1 was running just fine on my Jolicloud install -- who'da guessed, since it is actually the version I installed from the Ubuntu Jaunty repositories.  And, I added the Lightning calendar add-on.  And, I liked what I got.

Because as mentioned before, Google seems to do things right.  Once we add the Lightning plugin and the Google Calendar sync plugin and the Google Contacts sync plugin, Guess What?  Yes, we have a nice cloud version of Thunderbird, which is a more robust version much like the earlier Mozilla suite that morphed into SeaMonkey, that forked into Thunderbird -- and I don't understand the philosophy behind it all, but here's the thing:

Having my synchronized email/contacts/calendar all in one App is Really, Really Good.  (Too bad it takes so many steps to get there ...)

So, let's recap what I've got:

1. Thunderbird IMAP to my main ISP email.
2. Thunderbird IMAP via DavMail to my main office MS Exchange email/contacts (and calendar, though we don't use the calendar).
3. IGN calendar sync to my Google Calendar sync to my Thunderbird (use the "private link" provided by Google for two way sync from Google to Thunderbird.  I do not two-way sync to IGN because I can't risk screwing it up, so I do my calendaring via RDP connection to the Windows server  ...
4. Blackberry contacts sync to my Google Contacts and Google Calendar.

And in some weird roundabout way, then, everything syncs back to Outlook and re syncs back to my Blackberry Enterprise connection.

Which is all a royal pain in the tush to set up, but the result is really nice.  Thunderbird makes a nice front end for the calendar and contacts; Google has a super interface for the contacts (and I especially like the way it will merge duplicates).

But, the current lightning plugin would not work in my Thunderbird 3.0 and my OpSu repo version (11.2) crashed immediately on any effort to read an actual email.  What to do?

Actually, I had faced this conundrum with various programs before, including Thunderbird, Firefox and OpenOffice.  When all else fails, an option is to retrieve the program direct from the vendor (eg. Mozilla) website.  These programs are each self contained and don't require configure/make/make install.

So, I downloaded the Thunderbird direct from Mozilla, dropped it into the /opt directory via su Konqueror and ran the thunderbird script from normal user.  Eureka Houston, we have ignition.  So, I just made a .desktop application link via dolphin.  I'll put that one in my panel and I'll remove the OpSu version so I don't inadvertently run the wrong version.