Ask Slashdot: Current State of Linux Email Clients?

mcloaked writes "We get all kinds of news about new developments, but one subject has been lacking for some time and that is email clients for Linux (or Windows for that matter). A number of reviews (mostly not all that recent) have pointed to the main clients as Thunderbird, Evolution, Claws-mail, and Kmail as possibilities. Up to about a year ago, Thunderbird seemed to be 'the' email client with the best mix of positives. However there are no recent reviews that I have seen. In the meantime Thunderbird has moved to monthly releases, which are more maintenance releases containing security fixes but little functional change — and little new development. Thunderbird also won't be significantly altered in the future, if one interprets the available news information. Evolution is reported to be rather prone to bugs, and Kmail even more so. Claws-mail has limitations, as does Kmail. So where is the future of Linux email clients going, absent any real innovation? We need a well maintained and capable mail client, preferably with good calendar integration (webcal/Google calendar), properly supported HTML composing, good maildir format storage for local mail, and good security support (including the capacity to deal with both GPG and S/MIME encryption and signing). It needs a modern UI and good import/export facilities, as well as good integration with its address book, including import/export of addresses. Are we likely to see this kind of package as we move into the future, or will mail clients slowly disappear? At the moment it looks like email client support is dead — Are too many users moving into web mail and the cloud instead of having a properly functional mail client on their desktops?"

Comments

Re:Why do we need a desktop client?

[whoever57]

Outlook is one of the few things Microsoft does right (at least from the user perspective) imo.

Maybe Outlook used with Exchange, but used with POP, it is very poor. If Outlook is set not to delete emails offf the server, you just have to squint at the settings or the server itself and Outlook will download all the emails again, resulting in multiple copies of the same email in the inbox. Interrupt Outlook when downloading -- it starts from scratch, multiple copies again.

Let's not forget that Outlook had a 2GB limit for years, with loss of emails if the limit was reached (it's one thing to have a limit, it's quite another to silently lose emails when the limit is hit).