I guess because for the mainstream users of Ubuntu, it works fine (that is, you use unity and don't change any defaults in Thunderbird). And no non-mainstream user is bothered enough to get involved in Ubuntu development and submit a patch with an alternative. If someone modified the Ubuntu package, created the alternative theme and enabled it by default for Unity, and they were persistent and pro-active enough to get the patch accepted by Ubuntu, then this will be fixed.
This is not a characteristic of Ubuntu, it is how free-software works: either fix it yourself or convince someone (with nice words, arguments or money) to do it for you or be lucky and patient enough so that someone else will do it. If everybody takes the last option, then nothing changes. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to thunderbird in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1004841 Title: Thunderbird Icon set is broken (ugly, black and white icons) Status in “thunderbird” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Since Oneiric the standard theme in thunderbird is broken. In Oneiric (and Precise) some of the coloured Icons were replaced by black&white pictograms, but not consistently all. For example the Lightning Icons still remain coloured, as they were before. I don't know why some Icons were replaced by pictograms (is this because of a new GTK-Theme?) , this is only in the Linux version of TB, the Windows version still has the coloured icons. It would have been better if the old standard theme remains untouched, and a new theme would have been created for the new black&white pictograms. See attached screenshot for the weird icons. Possible work-around: Download Thunderbird from mozilla, extract a file called omni.ja and overwrite the copy at /usr/lib/thunderbird/. Not sure if this has undesired effects (it may delete all your email, so be careful!), but it works for me. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1004841/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
