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Thunderbird Unseats Evolution In Ubuntu 11.10
An anonymous reader writes "Coinciding with the recent release of Mozilla Thunderbird 5 and its 400 performance and stability fixes, Canonical has decided that it's now fit for adoption in Ubuntu — and as of version 11.10, Thunderbird will replace Evolution as the default mail program. You can download the second alpha of Ubuntu 11.10 today and give Thunderbird a whirl."
I've always hated evolution. Thunderbird is much cleaner.
I never liked Evolution. It tried too hard to be Outlook. It was just as convoluted to configure, was buggy as sin and used an enormous amount of screen real estate. Thunderbird has it's issues here also but it's been far better than Evolution for some time now. I'm probably not the target audience anymore though, I've been using webmail for some time and have no intentions of switching back to a client.
I like "close to how I set things up anyway", so that I don't have to fight against stupid defaults all the time. Purge evolution, purge empathy, install thunderbird, install pidgin. Done. That was the appeal of Ubuntu.
Though they've jumped the shark with unity, so ... I'll switch to Debian now I guess.
Now if they'll just put pidgin back in instead of empathy.
You can download the second alpha of Ubuntu 11.10 today and give Thunderbird a whirl.
Wow, you have to download and install an entire OS distribution to try an email client.
Better known as 318230.
I just haven't seen any significant innovation Evolution for some time now. I switched to Thunderbird a long time ago and haven't missed Evolution one bit. For one, the extensions support for Thunderbird makes it more appealing not to mention the ability to choose what is and isn't in my mail client. For example, if don't want to do calendaring from Thunderbird I don't add the extension.
I believe it to be a good move from Canonical as you could find the same software on Windows
Besides, it can't be worse than Evolution :P
Regards
One of the first things I always did when I was updating Ubuntu was install Thunderbird. It's a great program. I also use it on my Win7 computer.
In other news: desktop mail clients lost 92% of marketshare to web-based stuff.
How does Thunderbird 5 handle full Exchange connectivity (including Calendaring, Contacts, Tasks, etc)? That is my main reason for sticking with Evolution.
I'm really surprised they're doing this before they fix Thunderbird's Addressbook. How they still have not implemented allowing as many email addresses as you want to add for a person is beyond me.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=118665
The only decent mail client on Linux is Thunderbird. Everything else crashes, locks up, and doesn't set up as easy.
I've tried 'em all and every major release, I try them again - same result every time so far: crap.
KMail is the only "native" mail app but, unlike gnome, KDE works well with thunderbird. With a little effort you can even make it use the KDE theme and dialogs. Not 100% ideal, but maybe 95%. And, after switching, I've been able to stop thinking about my mail client and actually get some work done.
I've been using Thunderbird forever, and have been hating Ubuntu's insistent pushing of Evolution as long. It can be disabled, but its backend is integrated with the gnome panel and calendar, which is impossible to connect with Thunderbird. Worse, Evolution is inferior where features, addons as well as IMAP are concerned (I haven't tested Evolution's POP). Synchronization takes forever, the folder structure is rigid and clashes with that of Googlemail, and the interface periodically freezes when displaying large folders.
Getting rid of it almost makes up for Unity, but not quite.
Good news! Now if they could just rip out all those Evolution dependencies, maybe I could install a functional Gnome desktop without all the Evolution crap that I never use.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Agree.
I like Thunderbird because:
-I like to keep the same apps across platforms
-The availability of plugins
-The fact that plugins can be programmed more easily than for Evolution (do they have them? are they done in C?)
Yet at the same time, this continues the general theme of Ubuntu keeping on messing things around and changing them. Pick one thing and stick with it! F-spot -> Shotwell, Pidgin -> Empathy, drop GIMP, drop OpenOffice (from CD), Gnome -> Unity, etc.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Is Thunderbird able to work well with Exchange yet?
I know the big thing about Ubuntu is that it is ready to go out of the box (so to speak), but people are always complaining about the default programs. And if you changed them to what the complainers wanted, other people would complain about the changes.
So why not give "advanced users" the option to install just the programs they want so that they can add in what they want later without a mess of orphaned packages. They don't even have to be sophisticated about it. Deselecting "Internet Applications" then adding Firefox, Thunderbird, and Pidgin in the Software Centre would be a lot easier than removing Empathy and Evolution then adding Thunderbird and Pidgin. (Never mind tracking down that orphaned package that leaves a dysfunctional Evolution icon hanging around or removing the other network applications that I just don't use.)
It's just an idea. After all, it could be tucked away behind that "advanced" button on the last screen so that the typical user will never be burdened/confused by it.
Finally, I use Thunderbird everyday, this is just one more app I don't need to install when I do a fresh install of Ubuntu.
about time. First thing I did on a new install of Windows/Ubuntu was install Thunderbird. Stupid Evolution, what a piece of crap.
The best luck I've had in Thunderbird is to use the 'Exchange Provider for Lightning' add-on to support an Exchange calendar, and then hoping like hell the Exchange server has the IMAP service running for mail. But that's about it.
/* No Comment */
This was always one of the first changes I made in a new Ubuntu install. Evolution was awful, slow, and I hated it.
Carousel is a lie!
I have yet to see a windows version of Evolution. I keep hearing about one but so far I have not seen one. Thunderbird works on Windows and Linux so it is a better choice for people that have to use both systems.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Apple is working on multiple-device cloud services and bringing the app-supplants-web model to every form factor. Microsoft is working on new mobile platforms and the multitouch desktop.
Meanwhile, Linux continues to be embroiled in the devastatingly interesting GNOME vs. KDE and POP email client wars.
1999 called. They want their story back.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
And they STILL haven't fixed the setup wizard. I've said the same thing with every release since thunderbird 3: the setup process needs a way to completely BYPASS the wizard, BEFORE the wizard starts spinning out of control. Not after, not during, but BEFORE.
It's not rocket science. The very first thing you do, before committing any changes, is prompt the user: "Would you like to use the account setup wizard, or would you like to setup your account manually?" For christ's sake, it's going to take all of 5 minutes to implement this.
I don't need or want an "improved" wizard. I need a way to bypass it, cleanly and without a trace. (And I say "without a trace" because even if you manage to stop the wizard, the first server address it pulls out of its ass, however wrong it may be, will be the chosen name of your new account and account folder.) The only thing worse than making assumptions about how the user intends to use the program is forcing the user to follow those assumptions. PLEASE, don't do it.
Funny, that's what my dad said when I told him about Windows 7. He wants to stick with what he knows (IE 7/8), Excel 03 (even if he doesn't use 0.003 % of it's features and could easily switch to OpenOffice.
I don't think is so much about the OS and software changes but about people. If you teach your dad how to get his software of choice he should be able to have Ubuntu exactly as he wants.
I understand what you mean though. Considering the target market of Ubuntu, most of those users won't go much further than the default software bundle.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
About time too. Evolution is huge and slow and cumbersome, and insists on loading every folder and subfolder in your IMAP config every time you open it and log in, instead of doing it on demand.
When I switched computers a few years ago I had to change email clients and switched to Thunderbird. Configuration was excruciating. Mercifully I've blocked out the details but one thing I remember is that Thunderbird WOULD NOT let me just enter the configuration... I could enter the server and then it had to guess at what the rest of the parameters were, and I had to stop the process at the right moment, or else I was screwed. I spent a ton of time crawling thru the settings and there didn't seem to be any way to just enter what I wanted.
I built a new machine last year and spent about half an hour screwing around with Thunderbird and then gave up and installed MS LiveMail (or whatever it's called... the equivalent of Outlook Express). Entered the configuration, connected, done, in a minute or so.
But the incarnation in current Debian (icedove 3, whatever that corresponds to) sucks. It was once fairly well-behaved, but now changes the screen format when you search, adds all sorts of stupid indentation and grouping to the accounts menu and generally behaves like a kid's been let loose with the feature list. Maybe it's time to go back to MH.
Evolution has not been 'booted' (word used in TFA), the decision on going ahead with Thunderbird or Evolution will be made before the release of alpha 3 in a few weeks. See the blueprint. I knew there was a reason why I stopped reading Extremetech.
absolutely. I also agree with the commenter below, get rid of empathy and go back to pidgin, and then we'll be a step closer to ubuntu not being crap.
It might well happen.I think the main driver was the integration with Gnome and Ubuntu deferred to the Gnome guys. With Ubuntu moving away from Gnome lately we could see a reverse.
Trouble is, neither Pidgin nor Empathy have progressed very much since Ubuntu put together this comparison:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EmpathyVsPidginUsability
I'll consider it fit as soon as I an drag an attachment to the desktop. It's been a bug for four years and counting now.
It's about time a distro admitted what a horrible MUA and application evolution is. Thunderbird is infinitely better, and I hope Fedora will make the same transition. Thunderbird + Lightening for calendaring FTW.
The thing that Evolution had that played a big part for us in adopting Evolution, was that it had really easy MS Exchange connectivity. I don't know if this was a factor in Cannonical's decision in the past but it was for me.
"fit for adoption in Ubuntu"?
I have been using Thunderbird long before Ubuntu existed.
Evolution was never fit for adoption by any distribution. Co-workers always complained about Evolution crashes.
I wondered why they used Evolution, but many just use the default.
Thunderbird has always been in Ubuntu, but I guess not the default.
" Linux is still great for many applications, but I think the present is the farthest behind Microsoft's/Apple's products in terms of general appeal as a consumer desktop OS that it has ever been"
When was that golden age? Did I miss the year of Linux on the desktop?
I think Ubuntu improved usability quite well, although I miss ctrl-alt-del (task manager). It can be useful for fullscreen applications, like games. On Linux I have to go to alt-ctrl-1 (80*25 terminal) and then kill the process by PID, to shut down a freezing program, because a freezing program captures the keyboard binding for xkill.
Also I think that the default Nautilus without Location Bar is quite annoying. (I like to copy-paste directory paths.) Also, why does it have to be ctrl+L, when in all browsers you get the url bar with alt+D (firefox, opera, ie, safari).
In general, I think Linux folks could have learnt a lot for Windows UI design (yeah I know, that's heresy). It would be also nice to have an option to make keyboard shortcuts similar to Windows. That would be also a great help for newcomers. ( I'm not a newcomer, but I still think Windows got the UI thing implemented better.)
For anyone who wants to migrate from Evolution to Thunderbird, I found a REALLY EASY way to convert the contacts/address book info. In Evolution Contacts, select File-->Save Address Book as vCard. Then use this website to convert from .vcf to .ldif: http://labs.brotherli.ch/vcfconvert/ .ldif file, you can import into Thunderbird Address Book, and every single bloody detail comes over (at least it did for me).
Once you have the
You can also copy the php script from that webpage, for future use, if needed (if that website is ever taken down).
It was always a software roulette determining if removing the evolution package would "convienently" uninstall 90% of Gnome.
You're the 5th poster or so who mentions this, and at least on Ubuntu 11.04 it is just not true:
aptitude -s purge evolution
The following packages will be REMOVED:
evolution{p}
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 4 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 1.196 kB will be freed.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
evolution-exchange: Depends: evolution (>= 2.32.2) but it is not going to be installed.
Depends: evolution ( 2.33.0) but it is not going to be installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:
Remove the following packages:
1) evolution-exchange
Leave the following dependencies unresolved:
2) evolution-common recommends evolution
3) ubuntu-desktop recommends evolution
4) ubuntu-desktop recommends evolution-exchange
Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] y
The following packages will be REMOVED:
evolution{p} evolution-exchange{a}
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 4 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 3.535 kB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] y
Would download/install/remove packages.
abc@comp:~$
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
when Linux was being downloaded as 100 floppy images from shareware boards, the Linux desktop was light years ahead of anything else available outside of a university engineering lab.
I had a 16-bit color desktop running X and Windows and Mac users would go green with envy at the speed, stability and features. Integrated networking that just worked across the entire OS, not relying on clunky shareware applications or hacks that were limited to one or two contexts or online features. Dozens of windows open with no issues and no crashing. Large SCSI-based filesystems that were lighting fast thanks to the memory management model. The ability to interact with the GUI via the command line and vice-versa. Running applications on the root window, watching them refresh behind windows in the foreground. Even regular applications (forget about scientific computing and large-scale data stuff that used to be the UNIX bread and butter) were impressive to people. Emacs. Andrew. Xfig. Wingz. Mosaic.
To show off a Linux desktop in the early '90s was to show people what computers "were really capable of."
There was still some ground to stand on when advocating for Linux until the mid '00s, but things have really become stale in the world of Linux, apart from the kernel as another poster (rightly) points out. Desktop Linux now looks like the geeks at Star Wars conventions—a bunch of people really enthusiastic about a particular moment in (in this case computing) history that nobody else really cares about any longer.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Evolution had all the features I wanted and none of the features I didn't care for. I'm not saying it's perfect but after spending hours trying to get Thunderbird to do what I wanted, I realized it was just too painful to use Thunderbird.
If for example, you wanted PGP support, good message threading support, force plaintext if available, Google Contacts + Calendar sync, script generated signatures, ActiveSync support, mbox spool support, maildir support, and what have you, this is all integrated into Evolution by default. A lot of the addons on Thunderbird that accomplishes these things feel really subpar. I recall at one point accidentally deleting all my contacts on Google via an add-on for Thunderbird. Thankfully, I had my contacts backed up, so I didn't suffer too much from that.
That being said, if all you want, like the majority of people, is a simple mail client that you can use to read mail from, Thunderbird is much leaner and probably better. I feel Evolution more suitable in an enterprise environment due to Activesync support and due to its similarities to Outlook. Since Ubuntu's becoming more and more of a personal desktop OS rather than an enterprise OS like what Red Hat offers, I would say their strategy to adopt Thunderbird was a good one.
Additionally, Evolution used to be a lot slower than it is now. It was practically unusable if you had a high volume inbox. The older version of Evolution is used for the Windows version wchich you can get here: http://www.dipconsultants.com/evolution/, making it easily inferior in the face of Thunderbird on Windows.
For those using the Calendar extension
For everybody operating in a corporate environment mail, calendar and address book are delivered by an Exchange server. Thunderbird is good for pop3/imap/ldap which are all open standards but Exchange doesn't talk these protocols.
Enter DavMail -- a proxy that connects to Exchange server on one hand and exports pop3/imap/ldap on the other. I have been successfully using it for the past 3-4 years.
(bashrc.sourceforge.net -- configuration tricks for bashrc)
The keyword is "evolution-data-server".
Try to remove it.
OMG aptitude wants to remove your bladder as a dependency!
Are you just parroting what you hear from others, or do you tell lies on purpose?
aptitude -s remove evolution-data-server
The following packages will be REMOVED:
evolution-data-server
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 1.843 kB will be freed.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
evolution: Depends: evolution-data-server (>= 2.32.2) but it is not going to be installed.
Depends: evolution-data-server ( 2.33.0) but it is not going to be installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:
Remove the following packages:
1) evolution
2) evolution-exchange
Leave the following dependencies unresolved:
3) evolution-common recommends evolution
4) gnome-control-center recommends evolution-data-server
5) ubuntu-desktop recommends evolution
6) ubuntu-desktop recommends evolution-exchange
7) gnome-panel recommends evolution-data-server
Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]
So, that's one thing. The other is that evolution-data-server is not evolution. It's a tiny server that makes sure of integration between, e.g., that calendar panel applet and evolution. It's absolutely no problem to remove evo and leave e-d-s installed. In fact, the whole reason to split this out from evo was to ease up on dependencies.
See, people need to decide if they want a tightly integrated distro (which does what modern OSes do, like give access to the calendar application via the panel), or a distro that is nothing more than a bunch of apps on a disk. If they want the former, they must stop complaining that they cannot remove/exchange every single thing. If the latter I don't know why they even use Ubuntu.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns