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Slashdot Asks: Which Is Your Favorite Email Client?
With Google recently rolling out a big revamp of Gmail to mixed reviews, we would like to know which email client you prefer. Are you a firm believe in the "inbox zero" idea -- that is, the approach to email management aimed at keeping the inbox empty, or almost empty, at all times? If you're looking for inspiration, Ars Technica recently published an article highlighting several different email clients used by the editors of the site: Are you the sort of person who needs to read and file every email they get? Or do you delight in seeing an email client icon proudly warning of hundreds or even thousands of unread items? For some, keeping one's email inbox with no unread items is more than just a good idea: it's a way of life, indicating control over the 21st century and its notion of productivity. For others, it's a manifestation of an obsessively compulsive mind. The two camps, and the mindsets behind them, have been a frequent topic of conversation here in the Ars Orbiting HQ. And rather than just argue with each other on Slack, we decided to collate our thoughts about the whole "inbox zero" idea and how, for those who adhere to it, that happens. Some of the clients floated by the editors include: Webmail, Airmail 3, Readdle's Spark, Edison Mail, Sparrow, Inbox by Gmail, and MailSpring.
Thunderbird for desktop, Pine/AlPine for shell, K-9 Mail for a phone.
Webmail is for the birds. And I'm not organized or disciplined enough for the "Inbox Zero" cult.
I abhor mail clients that work by publishing your email as web pages (most gMail, Hotmail etc). I also do not like HTML in my mail, nor do I like linked
pictures and graphics. I use Thunderbird for my (Linux) computer, and K9 for Android, although I have also used AquaMail for Android.
Outlook 2013
if you don't know what or why, you won't like it...
Over the years, I've used any number of email clients which were everything from POP clients to shell (mutt/pine with procmail) to webmail (tried em all, including my own hosted ones) to GUI (Groupwise/Outlook/Maill.app/etc).
I haven't ever had a favorite, although Groupwise's detailed transparent tracking features were great to CYA, especially in a union environment where everyone was backstabbing one another. I currently use the latest Outlook (Mac) and it works ok enough for the desktop and I use any number of other clients on our Linux VMs for reading through job messages or scripting their sends (mutt, mail, etc).
But the only thing I've ever stuck with is Inbox Zero, which I've been at least since before 2004 (when my GMail archive began). It's so incredibly worth it and doesn't require any special tools or client, only dedication.
Inbox by Gmail Outlook for work (love the focused vs all mail option in mobile) Normal Gmail and outlook are fine as well, but I actually read at least half of my emails from my phone. Desktop is mostly just work email and I have to use Outlook.
I use RoundCube with my own Linux email server.
Only old people read Slashdot!
Really nothing else even coming close. One of those Emacs-based solutions without alternative.
Web mail is a horrible idea.
Any local mail client is generally tolerable.
Best if it includes PGP support. (And yes I'm aware of the recent headline, and no, it doesn't obsolete or invalidate the desirability of email encryption).
my Office 365 subscription provides a great toolset including an email client with desktop and phone variants. Works great! Especially when backed with an Exchange server.
i use Seamonkey suite, it is a browser & email client, and a basic bare bones WYSIWYG html editor and IRC client, (the emacs of the browser world)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
After not using Outlook for almost two decades, I decided to upgrade my Thunderbird to Outlook. Big mistake! Major downgrade.
I'm going back to Thunderbird ASAP, the best email and calendar client that exists.
They all suck to one degree or another. But I am forced to use Outlook at work. Otherwise Gmail on my phone. But I don't use email to communicate much with anyone important. There are better ways.
...is the worst one out there, except for all the rest.
should i answer to you in vim, emacs, or a cat-out-pipe through a telnet push using inline binary forged packet that can bounce behind inetd...? seriously, my fave was... sylpheedclaws-gtk
Because it doesn't expose my gpg encrypted email by loading messages into a web view...
Kmail. Although, back when I used Windows I really liked The Bat. Among other things, it uninstalled cleanly - very few Windows programs like that. I wonder if they're still around...
i used YAHOOpops for the longest time... what that was is a background service that effectively sat on a lan ipaddr and localhost ipaddr, pre-configured to login to your favorite yahoo webmail acct through http port 80 simulated web browsing requests, and then abstracted your webmail as a pop3/smtp host service. it worked awesome until recaptcha would interrupt your session and that means you had to open a browser to re-negotiate your yahoo login to continue your host simulated mail service.
Ask me my favorite horror film.
At home, Thunderbird with "View Message Body as Plain Text" and Javascript disabled (for messages from asinine senders that can only be viewed as HTML - grrr) to POP mail from ISP and Gmail. Never really been a fan of browser-based email clients, especially having to worry about browser/javascript exploits, etc..., but will periodically log directly into Gmail to permanently delete mail put into in the trash via the POP3 processing -- that should have actually been deleted, also grrr -- (still haven't decided if I'd like using IMAP instead).
At work, MS Outlook on the desktop and "mailx" on Linux/Unix systems (usually for daemon messages I haven't forwarded).
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Has all the features i need, my company provides it to me and works for all of us.
I've been using Kmail, KDE's default email client, for more than a decade. It integrates very well with online mail, address book, and calendar services. I haven't found anything else that does so many things so well. And of course it's perfectly integrated with the KDE desktop.
Zero waiting for anything. Everything immediately accessible without even looking at the screen or reaching for a mouse.
Message coloring and response rules
Excellent IMAP interface
Directory integration
No malware / bullshit.
Not knowing anything about the "new" gmail (but disliking the attempt to replace it that rolled around a year or two ago), Gmail is my favorite. I never delete email, I never *want* to delete email, and i want a complete searchable history.
I do want "zero unread", but not an empty inbox. If I see unread email I read it, unless it looks like spam in which case I mark it unread. Later if I have need of information I use the search feature. Neither MS Lookout nor Apple Mail can do this. The client who can give me gmail searchability, apple cloud security, a large quota and absolutely no snooping will win the war. Anything else is inferior and marketing bullshit.
I first started using it on NetBSD but right now my client sits on a Windows 10 machine. It's in pkgsrc and should be available on any freenix.
One of the nice things about Sylpheed is that it nests mail threads properly, so if you subscribe to ant mailing lists the threading flows properly.
I use Thunderbird on my desktop. I used to use Evolution, as at the time it had better Exchange compatibility, which I thought I was going to need, but I got extremely frustrated with it. It was super slow moving messages into large folders (like when I archive my mail instead of deleting it), and it seemed I was always fighting bugs. Thunderbird has been a vastly superior experience.
I will say that I'm not excited about Thunderbird, either. It does the job, but it feels clunky. It would be great to have better Exchange compatibility for the corporate environment.
For my Android phone, I use K-9 mail. Even without the Doctor Who reference, it's a great mobile mail client. I have had trouble with it not noticing new mail and beeping at me like I've told it to--it was flawless until a year or so ago. I wonder if I have a setting wrong?
I don't do a lot of webmail, but sometimes I want to bring something up on my car's browser (Model S). I used to use Squirelmail, which felt like a crude HTML wrapper on a text client, but after the recent browser update, I'm now able to use RoundCube, and it's much better. I haven't played with it too much, but so far it does everything I want.
ProtonMail is run by people who think privacy is more important than just about anything else. It works great. It''s getting better all the time. It does cost money, but that's because unlike Google you are the customer and not the product that gets sold to their customers.
I haven't found anything that comes close to Outlook (on the desktop... not the web). I use it with Exchange and IMAP accounts at the same time. Lots of features, and even more with Exchange accounts.
I don't respond to AC's.
I use it on Windows 10 and Linux
For my Android phone, it is the Outlook app and the Gmail client
Gmail does have POP3/SMTP addresses so one can run Outlook on the desktop.
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7104828?hl=en
I like the modular design, so much more powerful
Loved the integrated M2 client from Opera of yesteryear. Opera has promised to deliver an updated standalone version, but it's been a long time and I've given up hope.
I use gmail, and my own domain on a gmail account. It works for me. It's responsive, the UI doesn't really suck, the search capabilities are great to find an old, obscure email sent years ago. When I change computers, I don't have to worry about where all my email is locally. It's just all there.
I haven't used Thunderbird in at least 5 years, maybe more.
All others are imitations of this best ever email client.
I have been using Gmail for many many years, and almost never delete an email. However, I read them all. The Gdrive is nice for sharing videos and storing files I want to reach from elsewhere, and the calendar is one of the best out there. I share calendars with several, and having them all show at once on the same display is super. The way Google automatically routes emails to specific folders works very well for me. I rarely delete an email (mostly just delete spam), and gladly pay Google $5/year for extra space to hold my 27,000 plus emails. If you ever sent me an email, I can find it years later. Comes in handy, both for personal emails and for critical data received from businesses.
I use Claws Mail. It's light on resources, fast, stable, and can deal with gigabyte-sized mailboxes without a hiccup. Moreover, it uses the MH mailbox format, where each email message is a single plaintext file so it's very flexible and if necessary it allows for straightforward manipulation directly from the shell. There's even a nice book available on it.
-- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."
Using webmail puts your email in the cloud, and your webmail provider can spread it to other company's clouds.
I use mutt so all my email is stored on my desktop. I use a mutt mailcap that is pointed at chrome for displaying text/HTML stuff.
For my smartphone and laptop, I connect to the desktop, and using a different mutt mailcap, a text/html is sent from the desktop to the laptop (or the phone) via an ssh-tunnel and then into chrome on the laptop (or phone). I use cobbled-together scripts using nc (netcap) to send email message sections from the desktop to the laptop (or phone).
fetchmail WAS used in the past to get my mail from Comcast's mail server, but I ended up rolling my own fetchmail-like utility. In both cases, I use POP3.
The thing I'm thinking about is to hook my fetchmail-like utility and encrypt the incoming email.
~ S_T ~
What it doesn't do is email across all your devices and it does seem to occasionally lose my email box completely, which is why I'm not using it now, but I'm starting to get the itch to dust it off and try it again.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I've tried others--Kmail for a couple of years, Evolution before that--and occasionally try new versions of those older favorites but I haven't found any new features and/or behavior that keeps me from going back to T-bird.
I do try and keep my Inbox cleared and everything filed but usually seem to have a few dozen emails that I haven't yet filed away at any given time. I don't do any automatic filing using filters as I find the filters too unreliable. I do an initial scan and drag the easily identifiable junk into my Junk folder where it is scanned and the sender IP addresses used to update my spam filter. Then the remainder gets read and filed according to topic or tossed if it's something I'm not currently interested in, won't be able to attend, etc. Only takes a few minutes on most days. (Ctrl-click, Ctrl-click, drag make short work of most filing.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I use Thunderbird on a Mac. It's allowed me to keep and organize my email locally, and support my previous move from Windows to OS X/MacOS, retaining the UI and metadata (no import with unknown conversion lossage). It's configured to download and delete my email every 10 minutes or so. My smartphone is configured to monitor the server using its built-in email client. So I can deal with important messages quickly on my phone before they move to my Mac, but they're safely off the server relatively quickly. If I need longer email access on my phone, I just shut down my Mac. When I no longer need the longer access, I just restart my Mac and it catches up. Thunderbird's also configured to use my Mac's Contacts, which is synced with my smartphone.
Any such system has compromises; I chose one that prioritizes getting the email off the server and to my backed-up Mac, while secondarily allowing most functions from my phone. MS Office 365's Outlook now offers a cross-platform solution to Thunderbird that would also work for me, but I don't want its bloat; I know how to use it well from work but choose not to at home.
I've got email going back 20 years, a ton of different email accounts, numerous scripts and automation, and damned if I'm going to move all that to another client unless I have to.
Pine
On the Windows I use EM Client. Decent interface, much faster than Outlook and doesn't bog down the whole machine. It also supports Caldav and Carddav which my server supports.
On the Mac, it's Airmail.
I tried out the eM mail client, and even though there were a few small hiccups, I decided to stick with it. A year plus later I still like it.
My favorite client is Gnus. Not only does it handle my email, but also does nntp -- especially awesome when paired with Gmane/Gwene for following mailing lists.
Once it is set up, it's a great way to read, compose, and script email in the environment that you're spending all day in anyway -- Emacs.
I used Eudora forever and even way past when they quit supporting it.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Outlook is my primary mail client that I use for the reasons you cite. Mac Mail (on my Airbook) is a second choice when I'm on the road.
Personally, I like being able to send/receive HTML mail - a picture is worth a thousand words and formatting/emphasizing/listing/etc. makes things more readable.
Honestly, I don't love it and I feel like there should be better ones out there but I haven't found them. If I could find a Linux mail client I really liked, I'd probably drop Windows (and Microsoft) all together.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
it's the only reliably working outlook client on Linux. The calendering features of thunderbird are buggued beyond imagination.
Nothing comes close.
Or your behind the times employer still thinks it is important...
Seriously. It still runs on Windows 10, over a decade since the last update.
I'll probably have to switch to something like Thunderbird when MSFT finally pulls the plug. Would love to hear other's experiences with switching from it.
After switching to Windows from Lubuntu as my primary OS (it's way more practical to use Windows with my work and school) I also switched to using Outlook and, now that I've gotten used to it, it's hands-down my favorite. I honestly don't think I could go back to anything else.
As for "Inbox Zero," it's a weekly goal that I try to, and usually do, reach by Friday at 6pm when I typically "clock-out" of the work week (as a rule, I don't check email on Saturdays, Sundays, or holidays that I don't work). If I don't hit "Inbox Zero" I feel like I left the week unfinished.
try evolution-ews 2.28.2 pretty complete exchange client
Version 7. It's only 25 years old and my boughten copy has almost paid for itself! It still works and I haven't found anything I like better.
i used it some around the turn of the century then got interested in Linux and Pegasus is a windows app so i forgot about it for years until this email client thread opened up, just did a google search and the last stable release was 4.72 (21 April 2016; 2 years ago)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
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IMAP server:
dovecot
Clients:
Seamonkey (Linux / Windows boxes)
Outlook (Windows boxes)
Mutt (remote ssh)
Flexible and Reliable.
227-3517
Gmail's web client is super confusing the way it holds and represents "threads" of emails. I find it near impossible to "follow" an email thread with it, its super confusing. The best way to view emails imho is via time stamp. So I set outlook to have zero groupings and each email is just a single line, and I use the fields to sort and find/locate emails, sorting by subject with date ascending for tracking threads, and finding the right email to reply to. God knows what the devs at gmail were thinking because other than that the client is quite good.
Thunderbird for desktop, Pine/AlPine for shell, K-9 Mail for a phone.
Webmail is for the birds. And I'm not organized or disciplined enough for the "Inbox Zero" cult.
Before DSL and before dial-up PPP connections to the Internet, we used shell connections.
Manually dialing a rotary phone, placing it on the suction cups, and waiting to connect... at 300 baud.
Again, no PPP, so basically all I had was a telnet session that broke whenever my mom tried to make a phone call. I had to read my e-mail and then manually decode my attachments and save them in my home folder before I could view them.
My first Internet connection was though a 300 baud modem and a DEC LA-36BK teletypewriter, my first e-mail address was a .uucp address.
I liked Pine and a little known thing called Bank Street Writer.
1980s.
E-mail was designed to be text-based only.
I still live the old-school text-based e-mail, using alpine on openSUSE. And strangely enough, I never get any Windows viruses.
If you have a problem with that, then you and I will not be doing business.
Pine is amazing. It goes through a lot of teletype paper, so you want a glass terminal. Over 20 years after I first saw it, I'm still using it.
It screws with people when you can reply to your e-mail with a smartphone or a teletype. :)
Lawrence
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
eM Client
Postbox
Fossamail, Sylphfeed, Claws, etc...
Mailbird
I still use Pegaus (www.pmail.com) for my personal email on a Virtualboxed Windows 7.
I just love it. Especially when you can have several emails open at the same time.
No other email client comes close to Pegasus in terms of productivity.
D) none of the above
Using Newton, incredibly lightweight for those who donâ(TM)t need all the bells and whistles.
--- Science & Creativity http://simoncorry.com
I feel so old.
It was the closest thing to Claris Emailer when Apple arbitrarily cut off that avenue to productivity, as they do.
Default plain-text email is the only way to go, with the option of viewing HTML if ever required. Fast, stable and not integrated into some conglomerate's data mining conspiracy. It seems to scale to huge mailboxes really well too.
It has issues, but all the rest are so fucking terrible.
I can't believe you nerds have lost the faith! There is only *one* email system: MH.
I really have gotten used to the gmail interface, despite having my feature request to add an "ORDER BY" keyword command for years. I really don't see why Google refuses to implement this?
Enough said!
Claws Mail. http://www.claws-mail.org/
I find Claws to be wonderful. It is fast, easy to use, portable, reliable, extremely configurable, and very flexible. Claws has dozens of nice plugins and addons. Rather than being "pretty" and hiding everything from the user, it takes an older-school approach and gives you everything you need, and where you need it. Plus, you are not FORCED to use a mouse- there are key commands for just about everything and you can customize them to death. Has full scripting, filters, and connections for every type of delivery available out there.
There are a few odd things about it, but of all Email systems and clients I have used, I like it the most. I have hundreds of users using it every day. It is based on Sylpheed, which has been around forever, and development is still going on constantly. Available instantly for every Linux machine and has also been ported to MacOS and MS-Windows.
As for the problems with encrypted Email and HTML- that is completely due to poorly designed clients that render HTML immediately. Claws allows you to control how Email is displayed. For example, Claws will happily-
1) Not display the HTML part at all and just show plain-text (the default).
2) If the Email is in violation of rules and has no plain-text part, it will just invent one out of the HTML body.
3) If you DO want it to display the HTML (with a plugin), then there are settings to disable any external component loading
The one thing you can't do with Claws is COMPOSE html Email in it. And you know what? That is just 100% fine and a nice feature :)
I still miss Eudora.
Although it's a pretty good app for iOS (iphones and ipads), I just recently learned that Spark has some serious security issues. Not only do they collect statistics and analytics on your usage (pretty typical), no much worse, they "use the authorization provided to download your emails to our virtual servers and push to your device". Before I had installed it, wish I'd seen the warnings on many websites against using it.
The last GOOD mail client was Eudora, until Qualcomm abandoned it. Outlook 2010 is OK, but nothing else has come close. Thunderbird was always glitchy. and I've looked at two or three others that weren't TOO bad. Webmail is OK.
Honestly, I feel like the client is a part of the problem, not the solution. Exchange is what makes Outlook really work... but the model is still broken.
(I use Mac Mail... I really need a fscking calendar that actually works, especially when setting up appointments with Apple corporate.)
I need zero spam, zero marketing, zero IEEE (et al) announcements. I need messages that are clear on what is "information only" and what requires action on my part; items that I need to monitor, and what I need to have someone else monitor.
I get about 150 emails per day (after spam/marketing) that require some level of action. It used to be fine while my photographic memory was intact, but now it all just feels like a bunch of garbage.
I want a client that sorts through all the crap for me and identifies what I need to do...
Elm for Unix
for home Linux desktop, but Gmail web interface for my laptop Linux systems.
I don't understand why google doesn't get the value of the very basic e-mail functionality of forward-as-attachment.
Perhaps it should be called `forward-without-corrupting' and the value might be seen.
This makes it painful to work with someone using gmail even if you don't use it.
I once worked with someone who need to forward me an HTML-formatted email to understand what hundreds of items that need immediate response were. Gmail insisted on formatting the HTML email (i.e. corrupting) when forwarding.
I could not make sense of the mail either. There was no way then to get the original email.. All my associate could do to share the email forward.
It turned out the HTML was invalid and gmail was formatting it in a crazy way. Since this is an AI problem, so I can't fault them for that. However, the lack of them not being able to simply get the email forwared uncorrupted wasted hours.
Solution was to help associated install an imap client.
Want to pass mail off to some more appropriate to respond; best way is `forward-as-attachement'.
Want to help someone with email problems and look at the header; `forward-as-attachement' makes it easy.
seriously? this is MIME 101
I started started out using Pine, way way back when, then switched to the email client on my NeXT Color Slab. I replaced the NeXT box with an SGI Indy and used their built in email client. But when that died and I moved over to Linux I tried out Emacs Gnus which was fantastic and used that for 10 years. The only drawback to Gnus is search and I finally bit the bullet and moved from Gnus to Emacs Mu4e. It's not as powerful as Gnus, but it has a powerful index engine Mu that runs outside of Emacs and the Emacs client Mu4e is fast, clean and does pretty much everything that I need in a client. My mail is in a Google Apps account under my own domain so I grab email from Google using IMAP using mbsync, and then Mu indexes and syncs. I run this setup on two different machines, one in the office and one at home. Last year I had to split my time between three job sites and used a laptop as well. These tools allow me to integrate email into my entire workflow, I can link to specific emails in document, my task lists and manage issues on our GitLab server that is integrated with code in my git repos, notes and drafts of papers and blog posts (though I have't blogged in a while)
If I don't have access to any of my boxes running Mu4e I can always slum it and use the Gmail web client, it's not nice, because it isn't a good fit with my tool chain and work flow, but in a pinch it will do if I need to see an email on a mobile phone or someone else's computer.
I have two screens, the big one runs Emacs with two windows side by side, with Mu4e running in one and elfeed (an Emacs RSS reader) in the other. Any links open in Firefox running in the other monitor.
Honorable mentions go to Anything which is another Emacs email client and Mutt.
Way back in the day Eudora was my favorite, then they added ads, then they killed it. I can't remember what was so good about it, but I hated to leave it.
But it’s totally unusable now, with Unicode and whatnot.
I deal with a guy who still uses Eurora, and his emails are a royal pain in the butt. Plus he often can’t see attachments
I use mailx mostly. With the right mailrc commands defined, such as VISUAL which in turn invokes vim with a mailx-only vimrc, and with a couple of function keys also defined, then un-miming is a breeze. No HTML engine ever. Yet can read or save any HTML content.
Mind you, I had to patch the mailx source to include readline functionality, and fix a few misfeatures and problems. Strange that no Linux distribution appears to have done that.
There is even a way to install it on Win7 and later after MS removed it
https://runasxp.com/Topic-Download-Outlook-Express-for-Windows-7-8-and-10
In all seriousness, tied to a IMAP server it is one of the leanest quickest clients I've used. And for all my years of using it I have never been infected with malware. The issue isn't outlook express, but all the idiots that will click on every single attachment they are sent. They are just as easily going to get infected in any email client. Outlook just got the bad rap since it is what everyone was using, and everyone likes to blame someone or something else other than their own damn mistakes.
Thunderbird, imap server, getmail plus server-side filters - basically my own cloud.
I use the Russian Yandex Mail.
I figure if the NSA are going to be looking at my emails, then I might as well make it easy for the KGB as well.
The main bug in Thunderbird is that it supports HTML-Mail.
Looking though the linked article, I can say for sure that none of the GUIs in the screenshots would do it for me, as they apparently all support HTML.
I used Eudora for years.
Then I switched to PostBox.
Unfortunately, PostBox as of PostBox 6 no longer supports Add-Ons, saying:
I guess these means Add-Ons go away in Thunderbird, as well?
I only have two Add-Ons, but I can't live without them:
- SpamSieve
- Markdown Here
Suggestions?
http://www.claws-mail.org/ based on GTK+, distributed under the GPL.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It runs under OS/2. It is one step above pine. It does not do html, scripts, etc. Not subject to virii. Is stores notes in extended attributes, which makes it useful for spam tracking.
It has bugs and tends to go west when dealing with hundreds of e-mails at a time. It is limited to pop3.
Fight Spammers!
I can't believe I haven't seen it mentioned.
lightweight, easy-to-use with a very nice set of features.
I've been using it for quite a while now and I'm really happy with it.
Absolute statements are never true
1. For writing simple mail : thunderbird
2. For reading recent mail : thunderbird
3. For writing complex mail : compose in emacs org-mode , export to HTML, and use thunderbird's Stationery add-on to send mail.
4. For searching old mail - mbsync, notmuch and its emacs client.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Claris Emailer on desktop was the first client I ever really liked. PowerMail was a good substitute, but my Mac days are behind me, so I had to leave that behind too.
Mailbox on mobile was probably my favorite client of all time, though. Probably the only time I was ever really good at e-mail, and then Dropbox went and killed it.
Mail.app for images/attachments and Mutt for everything else.
The homegrown part is for deleting&refiling stuff. I really like sieve filters but... Well I still have to find a good solution.
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No, I'm not kidding.
AC's are fed to prisoners as long pig
Tastes like chicken. Gluten-free.
Its fast, sufficiently colorful, and works with standardized mailbox formats (mbox/mdir).
Unfortunately, in the latest Fedora smtp is not supported with TLS due to some libraries not having been updated appropriately. It feels like balsa is dying. I'm somewhat not surprised it hasn't been mentioned so far. Am I the last one using it?
I've just read, paid-for accounts can use a bridge to decrypt/encrypt protonmail locally and access it via SMTP and/or IMAP.
Download and install the ProtonMail IMAP/SMTP Bridge to use your encrypted email account with any email client. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Cannot possibly imagine how using something that isn't your std editor is a good idea.
RainLoop works very well as (self-hosted) web-based IMAP client. The mobile client (via browser) works perhaps even better, and installation is very simple.
Outlook web mail for myself mostly but occasionally use iCloud for a few things. Don't use Mail app in Windows 10 it has never impressed me. If I used Office 365 I would probably use Outlook but for myself I don't see that is worth paying for just for that. Did buy Outllok.com premium for awhile to get rid of ads. But they don't bother me much anymore so just dropped the premium subscription.
The Slashdot community are nerds.
Aging tech community sticking to our habits and beliefs - "google is evil", "rich e-mail is bad".
We are outliers as far as email goes.
Our choices do not matter, as we do not represent the general user in any way.
Go ask someone else.
I've used Apple Mail app for over 20 years - never had a problem !
Has a bunch of useless features, but it's worked for me.
They all suck balls. I had high hopes for Thunderbird and its commercial fork Postbox, but the huge storage space offered for free/cheap by webmail providers has greatly reduced any interest in desktop clients. And webmail clients suck for different reasons, but it's not like you get a choice, whatever the vendor publishes that's what you use.
Good news, bad news situation.
The good news is there is already a solution to your problem. The better part is that there are millions of them world wide, tens of thousands of which are great and available in just about any major language. And a few dozen, at least in even more obscure languages.
The one I chose works great. It goes through all my mail, filters out BS HR mail sent to everyone even when it is from a new sender in that group, automatically updates my calendar and even sends me a text message I can reply to for overbooking decisions. It can even batch print signature required forms, and take my paper receipts and processes them into an expense report every two weeks for me.
The bad news is that it costs more than $99/yr for a good secretary/admin assistant.
On the plus side, if you hire your own you can even negotiate daycare pick up for a nominal fee or comp time.
More seriously there are tons of semi/retired seniors capable of doing a great job for a couple hours a day as a PT non greeter job. Protip, let the missus picker her/him. A wizened old battle axe is even cheaper than the cute bunny type, if you factor in the risk of divorce /harassment suits.
I prefer Sylpheed, in which I have set incoming "server" to maildir, with fetchmail as a cronjob downloading the mails.
Mutt. It worked in 1997, and it still works today. Sure, it has more features, but it's the same basic mail client that worked over dial up with a Pentium 100 box with 8 megs of RAM, and now on my 100Mb net connection with my dual-Xeon workstation with 16 gigs of RAM.
Life is short; think quickly.
Ok, it was a mess. Bugs, poor performance, but to this day I am still looking for a mail client that will let me create projects the way it did and let me link documents and create folders, route, provide custom calendar views.
It performed terribly, but I can't find anything to replace it.
My favorite client, and I"ve been using it since the OS/2 days is PMMail.
Hasn't been supported in ages. Doesn't support HTML, text only. It's the perfect client.
Every message is a file
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/nmh
Were that I say, pancakes?
Remember when an email GUI for linux was just plain voodoo? And once we finally got it running normally, e17 would freak out and you'd have to go hunt down zombie processes.
Mail was so much more fun back then.
jk
...Outlook. Microsoft has, hands down, simply the best e-mail client out there. I've used a ton of clients over the years and nothing else comes close.
The best of the worst. It has its flaws and yet it's still far above all the others: https://www.ritlabs.com/en/pro...
I use GMail, because it's portable between all of my devices. Work laptop, home laptop, home desktop, smartphone... same inbox, no software install needed.
I'm one of those guys who tries to read every e-mail, and unsubscribes from every marketing list I get myself on. My wife on the other hand, doesn't unsubscribe from anything and probably has 200,000 unread junk e-mails in her inbox by now. Just looking at the screen when she's checking her e-mail drives me batty.
My wife like's "The Bat!" and I like claws-mail.
On the computer: Thunderbird. I know it's the "cool" thing on Slashdot to bash Thunderbird and Mozilla in general, but truthfully there is no better, full-featured, actively-maintained cross-platform email client.
On Android, I currently use AquaMail but there are a number of good options there and it's mostly a matter of taste.
Used in both Windows and Mac OS.
Even supported the failed efforts to save it.
Still miss it.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
Sorry, now at 47,369. (I do occasionally trim that, but normally I'm too lazy to do that.)
I have no idea how many read e-mails the inbox has, but I long gone are the days when I sorted stuff in any way.
You might aw well ask what is your favorite color?
being using for a while very good compatibility with gmail + good organizer.
It is getting a bit long in the tooth but I still prefer to use Eudora (version 7.1.0.9 on Windows). I have been using this program forever and like it since it is highly portable if I need to upgrade computers. The program contains itself to one folder and to backup/restore you just need to copy the folder from one computer then paste it to a new computer. Make a shortcut to the exe and you are set to go. No need to install or track down the actual data files.
The POP3 client included with Netscape navigator gold 2.02.
Oh ok.. not that one?
Another important question regarding gmail is: Do you want Google reading your mail? I am slowly migrating to ProtonMail (protonmail.com) because I find Google's reading and archiving my email to be disturbing, perhaps in response to the recent Facebook revelations. Regarding email clients, I am quite happy with Thunderbird because it just makes sense for me and I don't have much use for bells and whistles.
Well stated and I actually agree with you. The challenge is just in getting people up to speed.
Mailspring all the way. Totally performant on linux.
http://www.nongnu.org/nmh/
Microsoft Outlook Express is the best!
Not Outlook, that crap will not last another year.
But Outlook Express? That is a beast.
It works great for sorting emails and searching them.
I have like 2 whole years of emails stored!
Can you believe that? I can search for a email from last year!
It is amazing at work. (Yea' it does take a BIG chunk of my 4 GB hard drive, but it is worth it)
It's also fine for reading usenet groups and can combine binary messages.
It's a great way to find people to talk about my new favorite thing, Adult Swim on cartoon network. NOT FOR KIDS!
I also download subtitles for anime I import from japan on Video CD, and I download music files for this new thing I got called a 'ipod'.
It's a MP3 player (that is a compressed audio format).
It's like a Rio, or walmman, but apple makes it.
I can't wait until the future... Like 2020 or so..
We'll have flying cars and be able to 'jack in' like Neo.
Have you seen the matrix yet?
It's sooooo cool.
...with Eudora?
Thunderbird
A completly different direction for a suggestion, but...
Have you tough about setting up some server ? /. geek you have on of those. Just hoping that your basement and your mom's house have a good connection).
(On you own home server. I'm sure as a
Some Dovecot or Courrier-Imap to hold the her e-mail folders ?
- Migrating is basically just drag-droping the local folders into the imap server's folder ?
- In case of Thunderbird going berzerk you can still re-download everything from the Imap server.
- In case of something that your mom ends up liking more than Thunderbird, it's basically just about pointing that tool to the same home imap server.
- The above use Maildir, which a lot simpler to backup/restore than mbox. and are lot less corruption sensitive (as they are 1 file per mail, 1 directory per folder. instead of 1 file per folder)
Drawbacks : whenever network drops between your mom's apartment and the your basement's server, she only get the latest pre-failure snapshot.
---
And on a un-related note, Mozilla are considering making a plug-in based mail storage, which could make using Maildir directly in Thunderbird possible (once all the remaining bugs are closed).
That would also make her mails better to backup and less corruption prone, and also a tiny bit easier to move across different maildir-based clients.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Storing mail in its own mbox format is a weakness. Calling it standard mbox is still wrong.
Eventually, Maildir will be coming to Thunderbird.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mutt is a clear favourite.
I only use self-hosted webmail because I'm on three different computers in different cities and want unified access to all my accounts and email all the time.
Roundcube is the only one that has the functionality I want. It does not hide things. It allows me to put newest emails on the bottom. It allows me to add a "To" column to the inbox so I can tell what address it was sent to (I use catchall and a unique address for every entity I deal with.) Folder handling is not stupid (it actually has folders). It doesn't break IMAP folders. The search works very well. It's Free and free and under my control.
Things it lacks: keyboard shortcuts, per-folder sort settings. That's it.
https://roundcube.net/
Pegasus used to use a proprietary mail folder format. Pissed me off when I switched to Linux. Had to pay a third party for conversion software.
Pegasus is also proprietary software.
Just curious, why do you need Thunderbird?
I use Alpine on the desktop and K-9 on my phone.
I can use a webmail client for gmail or my hosted domain mail, but don't even remember when I last needed to do that.
I don't get the point of "inbox zero". I archive by month (e.g. 2017-02 for Feb 2017) Right now I have March, April, and May in my inbox and I have about 300 emails. I can launch alpine and it opens in less than a second. And with fetchmail I can aggregate several emails into one account.
I have tried other clients, but none of them have come close to being as useful as alpine for me.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Lotus Notes
It's becoming a bit more persnickety as i don't think its being updated so much but it's what I have always used on all my Linux boxes of various distros.
I don't use it's local calendaring though, I use the google calendar plugin.
It's just easier to use than all that mouse shit.
Good that you managed to solve the base Thunderbird problem !
(POP3 ought to be abandoned !)
No server. I just have one computer. She's got slow internet. She's not nearby so I only visit every few months.
Then setting up a *local* server ?
Like a low-power single-board computer (you could go to a Raspberry Pi for the popular solution, though beware of later models requiring good supplies in order to not trigger under-voltage CPU throttling).
If you go for a slightly more expensive solution (something that has directly SATA port(s), or at least support good transfer speed over USB3) you could also plugin a disk and install a file server for backups (e.g.: her photo collection, her documents).
(With snapshotting cronjobs on the linux side of things, only accessible over SSH. Samba/CIFS only see the topmost snapshot.
If mom's laptop ever catches a Ransomware with networking abilities, the virus will only be able to fuck up the latest backup over CIFS, not the older time-line over SSH-only)
Do not try to save money by picking up an excessively cheap SD boot card.
Decent UPS solution for SBC boil down usually to a small daughter board with a smartphone's battery management chip and some relatively cheap LiFePo battery plugged to it.
If you're not much into funny home brewed solutions, you could go for a Synology server box which could let you settup most of the above (mail server, backups).
Plus the existence of a linux machine within her network that you can SSH into could let you do some minimal remote admin.
(restrict SSH access to public-keys only, no password allowed. optionally install fail2ban)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I was a long-term user of KMail (since at least 2001) on my home computer. When KMail2 came out, I held off on upgrading because of several showstopping bugs I read about on the KDE Bugzilla. Years and years passed and these bugs didn't get fixed; meanwhile I was stuck using an increasingly antiquated operating system (openSUSE 11.4, from 2012) since all newer versions of it packaged only KMail2. Last year I finally broke down and upgraded the OS to the most recent version.
Predictably, KMail2 turned out to be a nightmare. Converting my old mail folders was fraught with problems. When I finally got that sorted out, I was bitten by the infamous message duplication bug wherein extra copies of messages would appear whenever the filters were run. None of the workarounds from the dozen or so bug reports worked for me. I had no choice but to switch to another mail client. Though I use Thunderbird at work, its filtering system is underpowered and buggy. Claws Mail seemed to be the only other option.
In KMail2, as in KMail, my mail was stored in maildir folders, so the easiest migration path to Claws Mail was to set up a local IMAP server -- Dovecot -- and copy over my maildir folders. I then set up an IMAP account in Claws Mail pointing at the local IMAP server.
I couldn't find any way of easily and accurately migrating my KMail(2) filters, so I manually recreated them all in Claws Mail. It took me a while to get the hang of Claws Mail's filters and actions.
The only thing that I haven't been able to migrate to my satisfaction is the address book. KMail2 gets the address book from KAddressbook, which uses vCards. But Claws Mail supports neither vCards nor CalDAV servers -- at least not very well. I did manage to export the KAddressbook entries and import them into Claws Mail, but almost all the fields other than the name and e-mail address were lost.
At this point, I'm waiting either for better vCard/CalDAV support in Claws Mail (in which case I'll consider my migration to Claws Mail complete), or for KMail2 to fix their mail duplication bug, in which case I might switch back to KMail2.
Please tell me Pico is not your favorite editor?
Same as my operating system.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
I have been using AltaMail on my iPhone for years. It had a rough beginning but has turned into a vital business tool with many customizable rules, actions and layout options. The latest office hours restrictions for viewing emails and sending time windows makes it more useful for keeping my work out of my head when I am enjoying time with my family https://mobile.eurosmartz.com/...
Gmail with threads turned off. Works well for me.
Pine. Okay, fine. AlPine.
Good luck trying to exploit it with a poisoned SVG file or malicious Javascript.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
personal (imaps) gnu/linux with feed2imap:
emacs gnus - debian
prayer - fastest webmail
k-9 - android
work (exchange)
outlook - desktop windows at work
evolution - desktop debian at home
gmail - android
and alpine
My intro to email was on DTSS back in '88.
Later on I used pine in an xterm before moving to exmh. It was MH with a GUI wrapper written in Tcl/Tk. For both of them I used procmail to redirect my incoming email into folders.
exmh had lots of feature I miss. Someone wrote an addon I used in '99 that would learn how you moved mail between folders and would start doing it for you. Kinda what gmail's revamp is trying to do 18 years later.
I even ran a mail server at home and had squirrelmail as a front end. As ISPs started blocking SMTP in and out, I finally got a gmail invite for my home email and haven't looked back.
At work, it's mostly Outlook/Exchange after the days of Netscape.
Thunderbird.
Still nobody can challenge MS Exchange on the back end with Outlook as the client for productivity.
HTML just adds extra security issues. Thunderbird used to allow the noscript addon but javascript is just another security hole that comes with HTML. Ive noticed that googles webmail interface doesnt seem to allow you to prevent the sending of receipts.
Mailbird on Windows.
Sparrow on Mac. (You can pry it from my cold, dead hands.)
Gmail on Android.
How easy can it be? It's right there on the web, the tablet, the phone, the kindle, and the Chromebook. Set it and forget it. The new GM is better than ever but needs a few tweaks. Re-sizable sidebar, make that horrible dialogue box lower left smaller and then auto dissolve in five seconds, show GHMini reminders in Calendar sidebar.
With a lot of personalization. It just works. No reason to change. I'd like to be able to import my pine mail files from the early 90s into TB, but not enough to actually attempt to do it.
Blue Mail on Android; I only want to 'sync' when I'm away from my real computer for more than a day (rarely), and I couldn't get K-9 to do that reliably when I tried it several years ago.
Pegasus or Eudora.
load "linux",8,1
eM Client lets me set up Gmail as my primary account and basically acts as a shell over Gmail. I can even edit email Subject lines for those nonsensical Subject lines that make no contextual sense.
-- I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.
Thunderbird because it supports my Add-ons and all 12 mail accounts + IRC.I like organizing my emails in folders, and my Add-on QuickFolders helps with that.
Bin using Evolution for years,,, now I'm too lazy to change. For the most part I does what I want it to and backups and restorations are a breeze. I will change when I have to... *** OFF TOPIC*** Thank you very much Baby Lock for not making manuals available at your website except for the models you are currently selling. Your forebears are spinning in their graves you twaddling nitwits. Sheesh! How disrespectful can a corporation get???
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
For Windows I haven't found anything better than Eudora, even though Qualcomm quit developing it in 2006. Fantastic search, massive filtering capability, it does have problems with modern certificates (mostly a problem with Gmail as it changes certificates frequently). Adding Stunnel solves that problem. None of the modern clients I've tried match up to it.
I like thunderbird a lot, but PGP was never that friendly there.
I wonder if someone could make a thunderbrid plugin to do OpsMsg/Drop e2e messaging as an alternative?
Thunderbird on all my LInux desktops. It's main benefit is it's quick and it handles big volumes well.
Gmail does the trick on the smartphone.
Guy.
i have 4929 email, 2137 are unread. i'm at 18% capacity...