I got tired of the slow and feature-lacking KMail as an email client and decided to switch to Thunderbird.  While I found it a very nice client, it was lacking a system tray icon for notifying of new email.

So I searched the Mozilla addon’s site and found New Mail Icon for Thunderbird (also known as “MozTrayBiff”).  This seemed to be exactly what I needed.  However, after installing the XPI and then restarting Thunderbird I found that it did not work.  No system tray icon, even after enabling one to always be there, and no notification on the receipt of a new email.

I had a look around for a similar piece of software but could not find any.  I thought about switching my window manager from KDE to XFCE (where it is known to work) but I quite like KDE.  So I decided to recompile the XPI.

Once I had the relevant RPMS installed (such as MozillaThunderbird-devel), I managed to get it compiled, although I did have to modify a few paths to libraries and include files manually.

The end result was that it works.  The package can be downloaded from the link below.

New Mail Icon/MozTrayBiff - XPI of New Mail Icon compiled against OpenSUSE 10.3 with the latest KDE3 and Thunderbird 2 provided through OpenSUSE's download repository.

17 June 2008 was an historic day for Wine: it has taken 15 years, but finally Wine 1.0 has been released.  It’s the first stable release and hopefully not the last (contrary to The Register’s opinion, it still has a use) as it does indeed serve a purpose for Linux/UNIX who need to use Windows-based applications which are not available for their chosen Operating System.

So, what is Wine other than a drink?  Well, Wine stands for “Wine is not an emulator” and it is an implementation of the Windows API for Linux/UNIX (in conjunction with X Windows).  So, this allows Internet Explorer 6, for example, to be run in Linux.  This is very useful when developing websites and is one of my main uses of Wine.

Of course, it also allows Windows games to be run in Linux and their is a (paid) version of Wine developed by Transgaming, called Cedega, which is specifically developed for gaming compatibility.  There is also the possibility to vote on which games the company will work on compatibility with next.  For gamers wanting to switch to Linux this is a worthwhile investment in order to be able to play Windows-based games.