> Now they're focusing on Exchange support when the best email servers on the planet have nothing to do with Microsoft?
People don't want Exchange because they like Exchange. For people who like Microsoft, the very last thing they care about is that their email client communicates with their server over Exchange.
This feature is for the unfortunate Linux fans, like you, who are stuck with a job that requires them to interact with a Microsoft server. That's not dumb, that's a smart move on the TB side (well, lucky, perhaps, that people are willing to work on it, more than being smart) to allow users to use TB in the first place. If you don't use Exchange you won't mind the support (barring perhaps reduced development elsewhere), but it will let many people use TB where they otherwise _could not_ without plugins.
Well, I guess lack of exchange support in Thunderbird might blog migrations to Thunderbird / Linux on the desktop in places using Exchange.
If users are already using Thunderbird, switching from Exchange to a regular mail server might be more easy: the UI doesn't change.
(now, I don't see many places using Exchange switching to Thunderbird, but that certainly opens a migration path)
Because you couldn’t.
There was a TB extension “OWL” but it wasn’t good enough for me, still lacked things like the contact cards with data from your Active Directory install, and other default Outlook features.
So the point for me is now you could take that path - maybe.
Thunderbird had a great looking (in my opinion) proposed new UI from the designer for the Supernova project, but it never actually shipped in 115 which was a real shame. I'd say they got about half-way there when they cut the release.
There's some more context here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36670946
I'm hoping in due course we'll start to see more of the original design start to be realised.
And the PWA is VERY feature incomplete:
It’s the UX that is a damn travesty.
It’s not big things. It’s spacing, fonts, choice of pictograms and their locations. Some is opinion, and some is just functionally better.
In fact, I stand by that if I were them, I would be pushing as hard as possible for an Outlook Theme for people just coming in or back. Office 365 is too common to ignore - considering the native Exchange support post here.