Ubuntu and Lightning – not working, application seems buggy?

I’ve switched over to running Ubuntu 8.10 full time at work now.  The only things I miss are TortoiseSVN and the application integration with the desktop (Thunderbird/W32 for example lets you drag attachments onto the desktop).  Oh, and I miss TimeSnapper (classic – free download) too, but will get off my chuff and work out an alternative using Xwd.

Anyway, at work we use the Lightning calendar plugin for Thunderbird, with the Google Calendar provider in order to collaborate on a calendar.  For the most part this works well as when not in the office you can fall back to Google Calendar.

I went down the path of installing Lightning into Thunderbird (download the XPI, browse to it etc…) but after the installation Lightning seemed broken.  The UI was mostly there but it looked buggy and nothing worked.  After hunting around for a reason, I came across this thread that suggested that the problem was that the libstdc++5 package had to be installed.

I was skeptical, but after reading half a dozen “me too” posts where the problem had been fixed I got stuck in.

1. Uninstall the Lightning plugin from Thunderbird
2. Open a terminal, and run this command: sudo aptitude install libstdc++5
3. Reinstall Lightning from the XPI you downloaded

Then things came to life nicely.  I was disappointed that the state of Lightning without libstdc++5 appeared to be a buggy application rather than a specific error.