dimkr wrote: Tue Jul 09, 2024 7:26 pm
mikewalsh wrote: Tue Jul 09, 2024 6:38 pm
this IS quite correct for a mainstream distro on a FULL install.....but Puppy is a bit different.
Different and not in a good sense, it's a distro that runs everything as root and has no security updates of any kind. You should be more careful, not less.
I think it would be best to provide a script that downloads and extracts the official Thunderbird tarball to create a "portable", rather than publishing a prebuilt SFS. That would be smaller to download, easy to audit and easy to maintain over time (if the person who created the SFS doesn't publish updated versions when new Thunderbird versions come out).
@dimkr :-
Yes, I know I often come across as rather flippant about it all. For that, I should perhaps apologise; I suppose I'm becoming somewhat blasé, given that I've had a full decade of utterly trouble-free computing with Puppy. And to someone like yourself, who takes the exact opposite view - AND goes the 'extra mile' to update/upgrade and keep everything as secure as you possibly can (which IS appreciated) - that WAS rather "begging" a response, wasn't it? 
I concur with your statement about SFS packages. These do indeed need to be constantly updated/re-packed & re-published, because of their read-only nature.....which is why I gave up on SFSs some time ago. Yes, it's the traditional Puppy package format, I know.......but It's continuous, never-ending work with them things (especially with browsers).....and I do have a life outside this forum, such as it is..!
For the portable browsers/email clients, I always use the official sources. Anything Mozilla-related has always had a built-in, fully-functional updater which works perfectly. So; Thunderbird is obtained from here:-
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/
115 IS the current ESR release, and despite that the last published build here is 115.9.0, we are in fact presently at 115.12.2:-
.....and it quietly keeps itself up-to-date in the background.
I know bigpup and I both espouse the same point of view, i.e., "If it works, leave it alone". For non-critical, largely isolated and/or standalone stuff with no online interaction this DOES hold water......but when it comes to internet-facing stuff like browsers/mail-clients/messenger clients of any stripe, even I'm not that daft! Thanks to Mozilla's updaters, AND latterly @fredx181 's extremely useful updater scripts that he contributed for most of the Chromium-based portables.....which also 'pull' from the official sources (thanks, Fred!), these portable apps are pretty much self-maintaining. Some run the updater automatically, some need to be run by the user as-and-when......but it all happens in-situ, right there in the portable directory. No need to mess about with un-loading/downloading/re-loading and/or re-installing a more current standard package.
I know some Puppians turn their noses up at these things, much preferring to install apps the traditional, 'standard' way, but with help & contributions from several people over the last 5 years, between us we've managed to hone the portable browsers and such-like into safe, user-friendly AND convenient applications.
Just wanted to set the record straight. You know - as well as I do - that repository builds of these items are often one or maybe two versions behind, because they change so frequently; with the way we've tried to approach things, the newest, current, up-to-date builds are only ever a click & a couple of minutes away... 
There ARE viable options to many of the tried & tested, time-honoured methods that have served the Linux community well for the last 3 decades or more. Unfortunately, an often hide-bound mentality refuses to accept that any other method CAN work.....along with a certain geekish 'snobbery' that STILL exists among some Linux veterans.
I find it pays to remain open-minded. I know - for some folks - these are perhaps too MUCH like the Windows 'portable apps' (upon which they were modelled). But where's the harm in paying homage to a basically brilliant idea.....especially if it proves beneficial to the whole community? 
(*shrug...*)
Mike. 
