[ALUG] Names sorting in Linux, is it just me that wants surname first?

[Chris G]

Does anyone else here find that Linux applications' idea of how names
should be presented in address lists etc. seems to be wrong, or at
least not ideal?

Having decided that I don't want to live with Evolution's quirks I
took a look at Thunderbird, a well sorted mainstream application if
there was one surely.

But it *too* decides that the "Screen Name" for entries in the address
list is presented as first name followed by surname.  Thus, more
importantly than the presentation, the names are *sorted* by first
name which is decidedly not the way I expect to look names up in an
address list.

Am I missing some obvious configuration option that sorts names in
surname order?

This has happened in several different Linux apps when synchronizing
data from my PDA whereas when I synchronized with Outlook (spit) I got
exactly what I expected, names sorted by surname.  It's this sort of
thing that puts people of Linux a bit.

-- 
Chris Green