Everytime I click an email link, it loads some email program which is not setup, When I hit cancel, the PC locks up and I have to unplug it from the wall.
The program may be thunderbird or something that comes with Ubuntu.

The caps lock key can be turned on and off and that is it, nothing else you can do .

use your package manager to uninstall all the email programs, until you can figure it out how to change the settings.

What desktop are you using? It should have a place where you can specify defaults for browser, email, etc.
Find that and set the default for email to an email client that is installed.

How do you send email?

In the meantime...don't click on email links

i suspect your machine doesn't really lock up, it's some sort of keyboard input stealing problem.

but yeah, just uninstall them all.

Latest Ubuntu version.

Yes, probably stealing keyboard input? The mail program is grey in the background and infront is cancel and something else button.
But it accepts no input, can do anything at all. So far the only thing can do is unplug the PC.

that is definitely not the only way. You may try Ctrl-Alt-F1 for example to switch to a console and check what is running. Also you may restart your GUI from there - if you find no better way. Unplug is *not* recommended at all.

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I use outlook or gmail.
I uninstalled thunderbird, now when I click on an email link, nothing happens, which is good.

Fun when you can mark a thread as solved simply by deleting Thunderbird. Wonder how anyone can use that, for me it is junk software, makes my computer unusable.

Actually I use thunderbird without issues and I think your problem is not [strictly] related to thunderbird, but something else. Probably something [else] is misconfigured, not installed properly or who knows?? What you experienced was just a symptom, what you made as solution was just a palliative treatment. You did not find the real problem (and also did not solve it) - just that annoying symptom disappeared.

I understand it is completely acceptable for you, just I wanted to say it does not mean thunderbird is useless (or junk).

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I figured my response would stir up someone. It solved the problem. The program has a defect if say when it loads itself and you can not click cancel without disabling the PC.
I never plan on using thunderbird, somehow it got installed. SO many programs are not made properly. They work ok with one configuration and fail with another. I never set up thunderbird, so maybe unconfigured, it loads when click an embedded email, and you click cancel it does that.

no, it did not solve the real problem, although the issue you experienced has now gone. I still think it is a focus handling issue, not related to thunderbird at all. Thunderbird is just an app which may put the X system into deadlock, because of that bug (which is actually in X, not in the mailer).
It looks like uninstalling that app solved this issue, because you cannot invoke thunderbird any more, but actually there can be other apps which may cause similar issues (= deadlock in X because of improperly handled focus/window management).

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thank you sdowney for your wise words.

i always knew that millions of users, including distro maintainers who include thunderbird in their installation images, just had to be wrong.

and because they are all wrong it is really obvious that the reason for the malfunction cannot be limited to your own machine.

not to speak of thunderbird developers themselves of course.
your capabilities of perception and deduction are so superior to theirs, you should oversee development from now on. except, of course, thunderbird itself really isn't worth it.

1 members found this post helpful.

Exactly, junk software to me as I said.
My feeling is it hangs because I refused to go through setup and clicked cancel and it got mad at me, maybe the developers design it that way to irritate you cause you refuse to submit and want to cancel.

LOL!
I too have used Thunderbird in Linux and Windows for several years without incident...Outlook, on the other hand...<sigh>

I had been having a severe usability problem with google maps, and I just noticed the problem disappeared.
The only change on my end was uninstalling thunderbird.
Maybe it was the cause of more problems than I thought, that thunderbird. Maybe it does not work with ubuntu, Maybe it does not like my 6 core CPU.
Perhaps Chrome and Thunderbird don't like each other on my PC.
I do not believe I am the only affected user. You can attack the messenger, but you certainly must realize not all software works ok with other people's hardware!
Likely due to BUGS in the codes.

I can now use google maps, it was so totally unresponsive, I had switched to mapquest, or used google maps on firefox.
Maybe thunderbird on my PC would work ok with firefox, but I will not be reinstalling it to waste my time.

https://productforums.google.com/for...k/9B2zVZ5IDQAJ

i am so glad that thanks to sdowney's wisdom we can now all join the googleverse without any limitations.
no more software installations!
use the browser for everything!

i wonder why we even bother with linux at all, when all we need is to launch a browser.