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Comment by FreeHugs | Hacker News Reader

I have been using Thunderbird since forever and I am mostly happy.

I have 5 email accounts and access them all via Imap.

One thing that annoys me is that for some time now (after I upgraded to a newer Mint version? Not sure.) it is slow to start. Especially when I start it for the first time after a reboot.

Any ideas how to debug why it starts slow?

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To debug startup performance, I would see if having one account instead of five makes a difference. I haven't used Thunderbird for a long time but if the delay is due to slow responses from one mail provider in particular, perhaps you can set that account to be offline by default and explicitly take it online and check for mail after Thunderbird starts, while you check your other accounts.

Deleting old mail and "compacting folders" might help.

Vacuuming the sqlite files has helped me in the past:

    killall thunderbird
    find ~/.thund_folder/ -name \*.sqlite -print -exec sqlite3 {} VACUUM \;

Defragmenting the filesystem may still be a thing, depending on your set up.

In the past, the file "panacea.dat" could get corrupted, and this was result in a working albeit very slow Thunderbird; deleting it would make it run quickly again.

(But .. don't trust a stranger on the internet telling you to delete a file. Do your own research)

Thunderbird startup should not at all be affected by it's proximity to reboot. However, Thunderbird startup can be IO intensive so anything impacting IO will affect TB start time.

Have you tried running it using strace?

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