Spyke

A good e-mail client for linux?

I have been using KDE for a while, while I like many features I am looking for suggestions to the default email client:

Kmail - completely unusable for me and the only one which could maybe be integrated with kontacts, it could not receive mails from IMAP or pop or would receive only sometimes

Geary - good but too minimal, I need at least some kind of contact list and mailing lists feature, maybe this integrates with gnome contacts? I couldn't find anything in settings

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programming.dev

Thunderbird is the usual recommendation for an email client. So try that

91
Novalingreply
lemmy.zip

I have no idea if Betterbird is actually better than regular Thunderbird, but I use that cause people said so and I read about it a bit. If it does die I guess I'll switch to Thunderbird, just a little cautious about Mozilla after the privacy policy fiasco.

Betterbird is in flathub too which is great for newbies like me.

6

I'd be wary of that fork. It's run by a former Thunderbird dev that got banned for his toxic attitude and hasn't really improved since. Just take a look at the projects website. Being so unrespectful towards your upstream project should have no place in open-source.

10
lemmy.world

I've been using Betterbird for a while and I like it. It's based on Thunderbird.

16
janbaumyreply
lemm.ee

I second this! It seems to have more features than Thunderbird while being just a fifth of the file size.

I can‘t confirm this, but I have read elsewhere that Thunderbird is a bit bloated.

6
Piratareply
lemm.ee

Aren't you concerned that the development is in the hands of just one guy?

2
lemmy.ml

Not the above poster, but for me: it's a slight concern but AFAIK the profiles are interchangeable so it's pretty trivial to just switch back to Thunderbird if anything does happen.

8
janbaumyreply
lemm.ee

That‘s not how it works. The mails are not stored on BetterBird servers (there are none). Your mails are stored on your E-Mail providers server (like Gmail) and downloaded to your local client via IMAP or POP3.

The developer of BetterBird does not have access to any of that.

5

Oh, understood. Dumb me, lol.

So, aren't there security risks associated with using Betterbird?

4

Damn these guys are very passionate about how shitty thunderbird is

11
lemmy.world

If your into Linux and a decent admin. Nothing is better than neomutt. Add not much.

Filtering and searching is faster than Google on gigs of mail.

It will take a long time to configure it well. But it's worth it. I rarely change the config.

I have been using Linux since 1992.

13
lemmy.ml

I landed on Claws Mail myself. It does look a bit dated, but the UI is functional and the client works. I'm content with it.

9

At first i thought, wow, cool they're still developing that? Doing a release or two a year, i see.

I used to use it long ago, and was pretty happy with it.

::: spoiler But looking closer now, what is going on with security there?! Sorry to be the bearer of probably bad news, but... 😬 The only three CVEs in their changelog are from 2007, 2010, and 2014, and none are specific to claws.

Does that mean they haven't had any exploitable bugs? That seems extremely unlikely for a program written in C with the complexity that being an email client requires.

All of the recent changelog entries which sound like possibly-security-relevant bugs have seven-digit numbers prefixed with "CID", whereas the other bugs have four-digit bug numbers corresponding to entries in their bugzilla.

After a few minutes of searching, I have failed to figure out what "CID" means, or indeed to find any reference to these numbers outside of claws commit messages and release announcements. In any case, from the types of bugs which have these numbers instead of bugzilla entries, it seems to be the designation they are using for security bugs.

The effect of failing to register CVEs and issue security advisories is that downstream distributors of claws (such as the Linux distributions which the project's website recommends installing it from) do not patch these issues.

For instance, claws is included in Debian stable and three currently-supported LTS releases of Ubuntu - which are places where users could be receiving security updates if the project registered CVEs, but are not since they don't.

Even if you get claws from a rolling release distro, or build the latest release yourself, it looks like you'd still be lagging substantially on likely-security-relevant updates: there have actually been numerous commits containing CID numbers in the month since the last release.

If the claws developers happen to read this: thanks for writing free software, but: please update your FAQ to explain these CID numbers, and start issuing security advisories and/or registering CVEs when appropriate so that your distributors will ship security updates to your users! :::

5

Every time I look around for a new mail client I come back to thunderbird. Nothing else ticks all the boxes

7
lemmy.ca

IMHO, you should consider doing more troubleshooting on Kmail. I've never used it personally, but from my understanding, it's a stable program and shouldn't have problems doing the basics of email, like you're reporting.

7

The problem of kmail is the underlying subsystem that is evertything other than stable.

3

I've used Thunderbird since forever as my go-to client, I used mutt as well for a while and that met my needs pretty well.

6

I have used Evolution in the past. It was very Outlook like and did a decent job talking to Exchange. Now days i just use the web interface.

6

Kmail, Thunderbird, Evolution. That's pretty much it.

There's always some weird niche client somewhere but it won't be a hidden gem. Although I guess you can always use Pine (or rather Alpine nowadays) if you want to appear ubergeeky.

5

with every reinstall, i go hunting for decent calendar- and email-apps. always go back to Evolution eventually

3

90% of the time I use web interfaces, but I often have spotty connectivity while boondocking. So I need a client that can get/send gmail POP3 in narrow windows of connectivity.

I started with thunderbird but something (can't remember what) wasn't working well. Ended up with Evolution. It also syncs well to google calendar and google tasks.

3
lemmy.world

Has anyone got gmail or outlook working via SMTP in the past couple years? I was using the former with emacs gnus and then it started demanding additional auth that I couldn't provide via a simple file, then in the past 6 months the latter stopped letting me log in.

My ~/.gnus file was like this -

setq user-mail-address "[email protected]"
      user-full-name "My Name")

(setq gnus-select-method
      '(nnimap "outlook"
           (nnimap-address "imap-mail.outlook.com")
           (nnimap-server-port 993)
           (nnimap-stream ssl)))

(setq smtpmail-smtp-server "smtp-mail.outlook.com"
      smtpmail-smtp-service 587
      gnus-ignored-newsgroups "^to\\.\\|^[0-9. ]+\\( \\|$\\)\\|^[\"]\"[#'()]")

~/.authinfo (encrypted with gpg) -

machine imap-mail.outlook.com login [email protected] password **** port 993
machine smtp-mail.outlook.com login [email protected] password **** port 587

I think I might need to start hosting my own email server because every authentication option on these services requires some extra step or fingerprinting that gnus can't provide. Maybe I should give up and try Thunderbird to see if that would work.

2

I spun up a mailcow instance relatively simply through elestio (new to me devops as a service). Takes a few clicks, let's you pick your cloud provider and has pretty slick admin UI to manage firewalls and dockerfiles etc.

I've never setup an SMTP server before, but I've decided to with my "buy Canadian" initiative to eschew the tech-oligarchy at every turn I can. Not for Canadians sovereignty alone, but to help get rid the planet of billionaires by starving them of their capital.

But I digress, mailcow makes setting up DNS a breeze and elestio makes mailcow a breeze. I've actually spun up this Lemmy instance on elestio too, just so nice its a game changer. Here's info about mailcow https://elest.io/open-source/mailcow and no I'm not affiliated with elestio, just seems solid thus far (only been using it for a month, but support is on point too).

2

Ok going to try Thunderbird tomorrow and if it works then I'll see if I can reverse engineer whatever it does into gnus

2
lemmy.ca

If you arena opposed to GNOME, you add your online accounts and it integrates them into evolution mail, calendar and contacts. And also Gdrive becomes a mounted folder if you add Google account.

2
dontblinkreply
feddit.it

No I actually prefer GNOME, but have to use KDE because I need specific features (kiosk mode), but yes I feel like Gnome is so much better integrated with its defaults apps!

2

Nothing has beat mutt so far. But that's not for everyone, naturally.

2

I'm no Betterbird. For mail it's just fine. OTOH, I find the calendar a bit annoying, as doesn't allow to set email reminders when creating new event in a caldav calendary.

2

Is anybody still using mailspring? I remember trying it back in '16 or '17 or so, liked it, but didn't really feel the need for a standalone client at the time.

Now I'm looking forward to creating more email addresses, and multiple tabs of webmail are getting gradually less appealing. Sure, Thunderbird works...

1

I am A big fan of Vivaldi and its built-in email client ^^ Works like a charm for me.

1

No one has mentioned the command line: aerc

I use it and it’s very minimal and clean.

1

Evolution is really great. I was able to make Kmail work, so because it integrates best into Plasma, I am using that. But setting it up was not a fun experience.

1
lemmy.world

So what is the point of an email client? I've only ever really used web pages because it did everything I need.

-2
lemmy.ml

For me it's handy because I have multiple email accounts so I can just open Betterbird and check them all at once without having to log into several different pages.

10

@Spaniard It's all good if it works for you, no problem.
For me TB lacks a few things, I have a vague feeling that BB is what TB would have been if Mozilla still cared for users more than other things 🥲

2