Using similar programs on windows and linux

[ilugd]

I am planning to install ubuntu on my home system.
The system in my office has windows xp on it.
I would like a way in which I can download my email through pop3 to a usb drive. (some soft of portable software) The tricky part is that I want to be able to use the program in linux too without wine. Eg, maybe since thunderbird has ports for both windows and linux, maybe I could download the mail while using my office system into the usb drive (with thunderbird portable). since thunderbird portable doesn't exist for linux, how do i open the messages in linux? The usb drive will then be used on my linux system and mozilla will load its profile from the usb drive. Is it possible? Once the mail is done, I also want to find a way to use some pim similarly.

[anantkhaitan]

Thunderbird has a profile where it stores it mails perhaps this is true for portable thunderbird too.. So download the message at your office and copy <profile>/Mail/*.* to /home/<username>/.thunderbird/<profile>/Mail in Ubuntu

[ilugd]

thanks. But what i want is that I should be able to install the linux thunderbird too in the usb drive. Is there a portable thunderbird for linux?

i think i should use a java mail client. that would be the simplest

[gxsaurav]

No need for portable Thunderbird on Linux, do this

1) Install Portable thunderbird on your Pen Drive, now use that to access your mails. All the mails will be stored to a single folder in the "data" folder of portable thunderbird, under the profiles folder. Do this in Office

2) Then come home, & mount the pen drive. Now Open Thunderbird in Linux & change the path of the "profiles" folder to that of the pen drive

3) Do this every time u come back to home..Plug the pen drive & then work on Thunderbird, make sure the pen drive is always mounted at the same mount point of /dev/sda*

[ilugd]

oh, thanks. That should work great. But unless the pen drive is always available, thunderbird will not open. But that should not be a problem for me.

Thanks saurav.