Which email software do you use on Linux?
I have been happily using Thunderbird for years now. But for some reason it get's slower and slower to start it. Even though all my email accounts are IMAP. And I set it up to not query them on startup. So startup should be immediately. But it takes 8 seconds.
So I am playing with the idea to switch.
What do you guys use?
I keep trying them all - and I keep hating my answer. I've been trying to like Evolution since 2000, this year I've tried all the flavours of mutt/neomutt and combinations of things like offlineimap. I've tried KMail, Geary, Outlook in Wine.... It's just Thunderbird.
Thunderbird is the only thing that works. It's not awesome, but it can keep up with my 5 email accounts that get checked in parallel.
Claws Mail [1]. I used it since when it was called Sylpheed (later Sylpheed Claws), and wouldn't swap it with anything else.
Features aside, it's rock solid, small and fast, truly fast: I can search my entire mail db since like 1997 and find an indexed word in a sender/recipient/subject in a fraction of second, or a word in the body in more time.
[1] https://www.claws-mail.org/
The site hasn't been upgraded for a while and looks dated, but the software itself is very actively maintained. Currently using 3.17.4, which was released at the end of July.
There is also a port to Windows, which I used in a place where Outlook was having problems, after importing all its data (through an FOSS utility called "readpst"). The operator dropped his jaw looking at the difference in speed as apparently long searches in the message base were among his duties.
The least worst choice, for me, is Gmail on a web browser. Switched over from Thunderbird and prior to that Evolution after many years of using both.
Don't misunderstand. I do NOT want to use Gmail, and there are a lot of things about it that fall short... but nothing else has given me such pain-free integration with calendar, contact, and office apps, on my desktop, my laptop, and my phone.
I'm also keeping an eye on ownCloud, which seems to be on its way to become a viable alternative.
I used mutt for years, but then wrote an alternative with integrated lua scripting:
* https://lumail.org/
* https://github.com/lumail/lumail/
Since large parts of it are configured in Lua it suits my needs perfectly. Recently I've been considering a third and final rewrite of a console-based mail-client. But I find it hard to be too enthusiastic..
I've been using mu4e and thoroughly enjoying it. The HTML support is a bit wonky (or perhaps more accurately, HTML emails themselves are usually wonky), but most of the HTML mail I get is trash anyway. Combined with org-mode, I find it pretty slick.
IMNSHO, it gets slower because your inboxes get bigger. I moved ooold mail to "archive-20xx" folders, and it gets snappier again. Perhaps do the cleanup-compact dance, too?
(So far, I haven't found anything that I would like more - even though TB does have its share of bugs, warts, and UX issues. Opera's mail client was great while it lasted.)
Emacs is the answer; what was the question again?
It's nothing specifically to do with the Kernel pr operating system. I use Gnus after starting with RMAIL on SunOS and using VM for some time. I often use it in tty mode, typically with emacsclient. It would work OK with relatively recent Exchange IMAP at work if it wasn't for the VPN required to access it. Gnus is obviously good for mail lists via Gmane's NNTP.
Thunderbird, Evolution and another clients UI looks like designed 10-15 years ago.
Evolution because with the evolution-ews package it can talk to exchange via exchange web services, it's reliable unlike the IMAP access to exchange that our external IT provider messes up constantly somehow.
I use Thunderbird with 10 imap-accounts. Takes about 3s to start, with one mail account being checked on initialization.
I've pondered a move to mutt, but it's a bit of a pain to configure to "get it right" to fit my workflow and nitpicks.
I use Claws Mail, and have been using it for 10 years. It is fast and can handle a lot of email. It has many options and integraes nicely into the XFCE desktop. It is a fork of Sylpheed, and I assume the two have diverted quite a bit.
What's it really worth?
8 sec/load / 3600 sec/hour = 0.002 hours/load
If switching takes one hour [1]. Assuming you wait for Thunderbird to start 500 times, there's roughly equal time cost. Restarting Linux once a week at 50 work weeks per year amortizes one hour of switching cost out over ten years. [2] Ten hours spent switching puts the break even well into the twenty-second century. Automating Thunderbird initialization via your boot, session or login scripts is likely to take less time and produce fewer bugs/glitches/incompatibilities than switching email applications. Manual startup will always require more of a users time than automation. [3] [4]
[1]: It won't because monitoring this thread and investigating alternatives and setting up the new software will take several hours.
[2]: Of course some people restart their OS more frequently. That more strongly suggests integrating email startup into a boot/session/login script.
[3]: Personally, I find automation is often more satisfying than switching from one manual process to another manual process. In part because the problem just gets done. But that's me.
Used to use neomutt on Debian. Still use it on OpenBSD. Have it set up to convert weird file formats to text automatically which ends up covering most of the stuff I get. Few emails actually need docx, html, etc formating so it is not much of a bother to just save any that do and use the appropriate program. Much more convenient than having to deal with random spawned programs for everything.
Mail spring is great. Easily handles multiple emails and in addition to traditional imap will user the google api integration for your google mail accounts. You can mix and match account types with one view into all your mail. Or filter your views easily. The click and open tracking can be turned off so it is optional and is not even available in the free version.
I moved from Mailspring to Thunderbird because it was possible to integrate message filters with desktop notifications (via FiltaQuilla, which hasn't been updated to T68 yet), so I was getting notifications only when message was coming from certain email addresses or had certain keywords. Then I just got used to this program. To my eye, Thunderbird got a lot better in the last few months - faster startup (though still a bit slow, but I'm restarting it maybe once a week), better responsiveness, no "action interrupted" popup when using it while a folder is compacting. Search is still meh, though.
I use Claws Mail. It can handle loads of mail with a multigygabyte inbox, it's fast and very stable.
Recommended.
Integrates seamlessly great into all of my environments.
Mutt is good enough for what I need. I'm on OpenBSD, not Linux, but the recommendation still applies.
I use sylpheed; so far it loads like a bullet with 3 IMAP email accounts.
We have Thunderbird on all our machines; three different operating systems, but a majority are Linux Mint. Startup on Linux is 3s to 6s depending on the machine. All machines have mulitple accounts, from two to six, some use IMAP4 and some use POP3.
At various times we've tested other clients, but Thunderbird is the only one that has all the features we want. These include complex filtering, calendaring (external and our own iCal server) and productivity add-ons.
At the end of every year we archive all mail that's more than a year old into a new Thunderbird profile, so there's now a list of historic profiles for some accounts going back twelve years. That does make searches for specific messages a hassle, but these are thankfully rare, and it means the current profile is relatively trivial for backups and history is available to all machines via our local server.
Thnderbird with Enigmail. Though I gather there may be some implementation weaknesses with engimail but, as of right now, I'm not doing anything where I'm too concerned about key or message integrity. If that changes I'll probably revoke the key and move to something else.
Just use anything command line, I personally stick to Mutt.
Check it out or neomutt or even Alpine if your taste suits that.
I switched from Thunderbird to just the Gmail web interface. TB was too slow (esp switching between tabs), and like most open-source email clients, just couldn't manage Gmail's labels elegantly (e.g. search should only search "All Mail"). Also seemed to use 30+ % CPU all the time (on a laptop, so power impact not acceptable). I gave it a go over a few weeks but just went to having Chrome open all the time in one workspace with Gmail and Calendar.
I have a couple of years of archive, but Thunderbird starts in about 2 seconds for me. Do you have an SSD? If not, you should invest in one.
What do you all use for Office365? I tried the thunderbird o365 plugin but it failed to send and was requesting 2fa every time I restarted
mutt + offlineimap with EDITOR=emacsclient, but also gmail
At work I also use mutt instead of outlook for some tasks, as outlook is very poor.
Is there an e-mail app out there that integrates nicely with Google Calendar and looks nice as well?
I just login to my email service provider on a browser to check my email. During work I keep a tab open and it gives me alert when emails come in.
Are there any advantages that email clients such as thunderbird can offer me?
I used to use Thunderbird on my work laptops, but currently it's been easier to just use Rambox to wrap the Gmail web interface.
At home I typically use Claws or Alpine.
After a long while I started reusing KMail (I'm using KDE on Debian boxes mostly) I would recommend it in a heartbeat if you are already using KDE.
I use mu4e + offlineimap with emacs. I highly recommend taking the 1-2 hours to set it up if you're an emacs user. Well worth it.
I use Thunderbird on both Linux and Windows. I'm very happy with it, but I haven't experienced the symptoms you describe.
I used to use alpine, but after it was abandoned I realized the only place I could find the source was on my personal laptop.
I’ve since switched to mutt.
Evolution because it works with Exchange and integrates with Gnome notifications. Not a very modern UI, though.
I use Mailspring mostly for aesthetic reasons.
Mailspring. Excellent, except it doesn't have Outlook Calendar integration.
evolution is very usable imo, geary looks nicer but tends to crash more.
mailmate for mac!
My browser. And if I want to do multiple emails, Gmail on my phone unfortunately
KMail. Startup is immediate even with > 200K mails in multiple accounts.
thunderbird is good if you don't have to search through your past messages, is slow and often get a lot of false positive.
never experienced a slow start though, sorry.
Still using thunderbird. And this guy eats lots of memory!!!
evolution since it supports exchange