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Replacement For Mozilla Thunderbird?
maxcelcat writes: I've used Thunderbird for about a decade, and Netscape Mail before that (I have an email from 1998 from Marc Andreessen, welcoming me to Netscape Email, telling me different fonts can add impact to my emails). Thunderbird has served me well, but it's getting long in the tooth. Given the lack of development and the possibility that it's going End of Life, what should I use instead? I have multiple email accounts and an archive of sixteen years of email. I could get a copy of Outlook, but I don't like it.
Things I like about Thunderbird: Supports multiple email accounts; simple interface; storage structure is not one monolithic file; plain text email editor; filtering. Things I don't like: HTML email editor; folders are hard to change and re-arrange.
Things I like about Thunderbird: Supports multiple email accounts; simple interface; storage structure is not one monolithic file; plain text email editor; filtering. Things I don't like: HTML email editor; folders are hard to change and re-arrange.
The last time I used pine was 20 years ago. Those were the days. A 56K dial-up account on a UNIX server to browse the Internet in a text-based web browser called Lynx. The Internet was blazingly fast back then. No need to wait for Flash content, every social media icon, and the kitchen sink to load.
FossaMail is a Thunderbird fork from the creator of the Pale Moon web browser (Though you don't have to use the one to use the other). The devs have confirmed that they are a true fork that is independently developing each release and will continue on as it has been with future security, stability, and useability improvements no matter what happens to Thunderbird.
A Thunderbird user would likely find the interface and features very familiar, and I think there is an included migration tool to import settings and such from Thunderbird.
http://www.fossamail.org/
Second the recommendation for Claws Mail. If I leave my Thunderbird open and exercise it for several days it grows to 6 GB RAM use and beyond. There does not appear to be any way to set an upper bound. That is unacceptable, inexcusable, and an incompetent and moronic design. Watch your PC get driven into thrashing the page file and I guarantee you will know what rage is. For a while I thought I could run with no swap (I have 16 GB RAM), but behavior is even more pathological and irrecoverable when you run into the memory wall with no paging.
I have seen Claws Mail grow to around 0.4 GB; no more - even if left open and exercised INDEFINITELY.
There are some huge, commanding wins for Claws Mail over and above the RAM win clincher:
1) Threaded view, easily/quickly toggled on/off.
2) View shows headers in line; I happen to prefer that to a second scrolling pane.
3) I found the accounts setup to be more rational and well organized than it is in TB. I have a LOT of accounts set up.
There are a few negatives with Claws Mail:
1) No HTML support beyond a hokey plugin. Idiots do send me HTML mail. You can't stop them; I've tried.
2) No Unified Inbox.
3) Seems really slow to sync hotmail and gmail.
4) I found the PGP plugin harder to set up than Enigmail in TB.
5) The accounts setup does not have the cool auto-detect you get in TB. Even if you fine tune the setup, the auto-detect is great for getting you going.