[Techtalk] Linux mail clients?

[agoats at compuserve.com]

I don't know about ssh tunneling, but....

I use Thunderbird, starting eons ago with Netscape Mail under Netscape 
(when was the first issue with it? That's when I started). I use the 
filtering to send LinuxChix e-mails to their respective lists, magazine 
subscriptions to theirs, various User Group mailings in their separate 
folders. I use spam filtering which is needed as I'm also Mailman 
Administrator for a local user group where HR/Head Hunters don't seem to 
be able to grasp sending plain text e-mails and yet get caught with the 
spam filters of Mailman, all getting bounced to me. Thunderbird splits 
out the real bounces from the spam leaving me less to sort through. I 
also have issues with some people/sites receive plain text only while 
others get the fancy text (rtf/html), so I can set what each mail 
address gets with a standard default for anything not directly set.

It uses an mbox format for storing mail, which is great. For Windoze 
boxes, I found that when Microsoft mail screws up and "loses" a 
significant portion of your mail, Thunderbird is able to import the 
majority of the lost e-mails as long as you don't start Microsoft's 
e-mail again. Saved me at work twice.

There are add-ons that I also found useful, including AE Extract which 
helps me extract attachments to a directory of my choice or it's own 
default directory. There are other add-ons that others may find useful 
as well.

Alvin

Carla Schroder wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I'm finally giving up on KMail after loving it muchly for lo these 
> many years. KDE4 drives me insane and the badness has infected KMail. 
> I am very sad. It had many great features like very easy to create 
> mail filters, even complex ones, boatloads of configuration options, 
> handles multiple accounts and identities with ease, lots of one-key 
> shortcuts, and all kinds of goodness.
>
> Now it is a bloaty slow pig that depends on Nepomuk and Akonadi. Way 
> overkill for me-- I very much do not like when devs lose their minds 
> and code the equivalent of a 1959 Cadillac. The '59 Caddy is known for 
> having the biggest fins, the most chrome, and being possibly the most 
> gaudy, uneconomical, sloppy-handling heaviest passenger car of all 
> time. I just want a nice POP/IMAP mail client with a plain-text 
> address book and that supports maildirs, and that doesn't need 
> mondobytes of dependencies, a database backend, and squillions of 
> processes. You know, like KMail used to be.
>
> I need something that supports templates, handles attachments sanely, 
> and that runs nicely over SSH because I use ssh -X a lot. A nice clean 
> readable interface, and a good importing tool. Icedove is hopeless; it 
> only supports importing from Communicator 4.x. WTF people. (Though I 
> should try opening a maildir in it.)
>
> I'm currently testing Icedove (Thunderbird for non-Debian users) and 
> Balsa. No Evolution for me, I don't need a groupware client that drags 
> in buttloads of junk I don't use.
>
>  I will give Trinity KDE a try when it's in distro repos. Any other 
> suggestions? It seems like slim pickings. No I don't use Gmail and 
> don't want to.
>
> best,
> Carla
>
>