Solved! It was due to the Lightning extension. I had the version 0.7 of Lightning installed and the Ubuntu installation updated Thunderbird but not the Lightning extension. Funnily Thunderbird did not complain about the incompatible Lightning extension. Anyway after uninstalling Lightning and installing the current 0.8 version the problem was resolved.
** Changed in: thunderbird (Ubuntu) Status: New => Invalid -- lost screen real estate with ubuntu 8.04 upgrade https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/222246 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs