Mail clients on Linux

Today the use of webmail continues to increase, as the advantages it offers are undoubtedly remarkable. First, we can access our mail from anywhere, any device, we just need a web browser. Also, if we use Google mail, we have the perfect 'application' for our mailbox and data (GMail.com obviously), the same happens with Hotmail, etc. But, Webmail does not offer us the same comforts as an email client, because with an email client we can have notifications on our desktop, somewhat more advanced options or simply other options that perhaps webmail does not offer, the convenience of having the email on our computer, that we can review it offline, etc.

The options we have in Linux for email clients are dozens, because if we have terminal applications, there are really, many alternatives. However, I will try to focus on some of the most important (or at least interesting).

Geary:

Already of Geary we talk to them Some time ago, it was thought to be a lightweight email client for Gnome although it was popularized by ElementaryOS, since it is the email client that this distro adopts by default.

On the positive side, we can say yes, it is light, minimalist, and with the right appearance it can be quite beautiful. The negative is incredibly, that it is so minimalist that many options that some of us could use are not present.

geary

Evolution:

Evolution is the default Gnome client in most distributions that use this environment (Ubuntu for example is different, as it includes Thunderbird).

Although in the past the fame of Evolution was not good at all (it was somewhat unstable), today as I have read it has improved a lot in this regard. In fact, today it is one of the best mail clients in terms of compatibility with Microsoft Exchange. Interestingly, the graphical interface may look a bit like Microsoft's Outlook (again, another coincidence…)

evolution-owncloud-calendar

Personalization is not exactly one of Evolution's strong points, since compared to KMail or Thunderbird, Evolution is without a doubt the most limited of all. Even so, it continues to be the favorite of many for being the one who maintains 'total' compatibility with the Gnome environment.

1024px-Evolution_3.8.0_Hebrew_in_GNOME_3.8

Thunderbird:

Thunderbird is possibly the most popular cross-platform email client. Created by Mozilla together with Firefox, in recent years it has been displaced a bit in updates if we compare it with the fire fox, perhaps because the developers focus their efforts on Firefox, because they lack innovative ideas or simply because such Nowadays developing new functions for Thunderbird is somewhat complex. I mean that GMail, Outlook, Yahoo and other major providers in the world have their APIs, code that they do not share with others and that doing so would greatly facilitate the life of email client developers and could improve them.

thunderbird_australis

In the visual section with the new interface Australis Thunderbird is undoubtedly beautiful, attractive. In addition, using it is really easy, it has a configuration wizard to create accounts that almost guesses all the parameters (server, port, etc.) just by providing our email. In addition, Thunderbird is much more than just an email client, it has an integrated chat, as well as an endless number of addons that allow to further expand its functions as code our emails with GPG, increase compatibility with our desktop (KDE, Gnome, Unity), etc.

Thunderbird_Instanbird

KMail:

I save my favorite for last. KMail is for KDE users one of the best applications we can find for our environment. Just as Evolution is the client that best integrates with Gnome, KMail is the client for KDE.

KMail is the mail client that belongs to the Kontact suite, which includes a whole set of applications such as KNotes, KOrganizer, etc. In other words, Kontact is a very complete suite, but KMail can work separately with total ease.

KMail_Header1

Like almost every KDE application, customizing it is really simple. We find many more options than those that come by default in any other mail client, for example, in Thunderbird so that when closing it is minimized to the system tray, we need an addon, in KMail not, another example may be to change the icon of the folders or mailboxes on the left, just right click on it and go to the properties, there we can customize the view of that mailbox.

In addition, on KDE-Look.org you can also find tips or 'extras' for KMail.

As a somewhat negative aspect we find its total dependence on Akonadi, that if you do not know what it is, then be satisfied 😀 ... well, Akonadi for some is one of the black sheep of KDE, together with Nepomuk they achieve an integration only seen as such time on Mac, although its consumption of resources is still negligible.

KMail I've been using it for a long time and I don't want to change it for any 😉

Conclusions:

I have used both Evolution, Thunderbird and KMail, however Evolution because of its dependence on Gnome I recommend it little (I recommend more KDE yes hehe). Thunderbird contains a huge number of plugins or addons, however, are they all compatible with the latest version of the application? That is why as I said before, I continue using KMail and as happy as ever (although I suffer from time to time from Akonadi and bugs that I have).

Obviously you can choose the one that suits you best, if you don't want to be 'tied' to a particular desktop environment Thunderbird is in my opinion the best option, you could just read about ClawnMail, or the more adventurous use Mutt as a pure terminal

In short, Do you use WebMail or a Client and what is it?

regards


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  1.   Germaine said

    Nice article, thanks.
    I only use KDE desktops and Thunderbird for these distributions because although I wanted to use Kmail, the process to include several accounts is complicated and many times it does not take them, I end up going back to Thunderbird (with my 11 email accounts) which does the process of creating accounts automatically, no matter the domain that provides them, just by providing the address and password.
    If, as you say, it has worked so well for you, it would be good if you made a post to teach us how to use it correctly, maybe we make some mistakes due to ignorance. I really want to stop depending on third-party applications and focus on the ones that KDE brings.

    1.    KZKG ^ Gaara said

      Yes, it would be a good idea to share everything that I have done to my KMail so that it works well but… honestly, I don't remember alloodo what I have had to do to him, Nepomuk and Akonadi T_T

      11 email accounts? I think I have more or less that amount, but in the end all the emails are forwarded and they eventually reach a single account, which is the one I use as primary 🙂

  2.   st0rmt4il said

    Good your sandy compilation!

    Personally I use Geary, easy to use and intuitive!

    Regards!

    1.    KZKG ^ Gaara said

      Thank you

  3.   Dark purple said

    I use KMail at home, although I really like Thunderbird but I haven't dared to try it on KDE because I imagine it will have the same problems as Firefox with KDE file associations, and opening attachments would be a pain. I have read about the extensions to improve compatibility ... Is it possible to fix this?

    1.    KZKG ^ Gaara said

      I have used Thunderbird in KDE and it doesn't work bad at all. What you comment about the attachments, for example if you try to open a PDF it will ask you with which application you want to open it, there you must look for the Okular binary (KDE PDF viewer), the path to the binary of an application can be found by putting in a terminal:

      whereis okular

      1.    Dark purple said

        Basically the same thing that happens with Firefox, fortunately for this there is a solution in OpenSUSE and Kubuntu. So I stick with KMail, less hassle.

  4.   Marcelo said

    The nerd will not be missing who will say:
    «I prefer to use VIM together with a plugin to send emails from the console ...»

    1.    Robert said

      Well, it is mutt that it is a mail client for the console ... I installed it simply and simply to see if I was able to configure it (which in reality I was only following the instructions of the Arch wiki so I don't know whether to count it) and after struggle a bit with unfamiliar concepts, I have it perfectly configured and let me tell you that it is quite good, light of course, and easier to use than one would think. An interesting alternative for those who have machines with very low resources or simply spend too much time using the console ... or just to bluff, why not?

    2.    FreeBSDDICK. said

      Use emacs now!!

  5.   Andrés said

    Geary may feel fluid, but it is not light ... it carries the bad webkit, I use it and at idle, it consumes 1GB of RAM ... just by being open; I don't think that's light.
    Geary is missing a unified mailbox (same as Thunderbird).
    To tell the truth, and despite sounding a bit "anti GNU", I think the best email manager for the average user is Opera (yes, it operates 12.16)

    1.    KZKG ^ Gaara said

      So much? … O_O… I thought it was sooo much lighter

  6.   diazepam said

    thunderbird and gmail lifetime

    1.    FreeBSDDICK. said

      The problem is that this client is extremely heavy and for the work he does he is simply overly elaborate

  7.   sieg84 said

    I have only used the one with Opera integrated.

  8.   darkar said

    Very good post, I use thunderbird 😀

  9.   FreeBSDDICK. said

    I use GNUs built into emacs !!

  10.   Phew said

    I tried to use Kmail but it never worked on Arch Linux. Look for all the means to do it now I only have to try again in Chakra

  11.   eliotime3000 said

    In my case, I am using Thunderbird + OpenMailBox. At the end of the year I am learning how to use Emacs plugins for email and surfing the internet (so far, uzbl has been doing wonders for me).

  12.   piero said

    Using the integrated mail client of Opera 12, if anyone knows the simplicity of this and can add the minimalism of mutt, I listen to them carefully. Since Opera neglected this version.

  13.   FrontSide said

    Let's see .. in an article about xubuntu I think they mentioned that Sylpheed brought it, I provided it out of pure curiosity and after (no idea how many) years we are happy together.

  14.   Germán said

    That Geary is quite new and it doesn't seem like a big deal to me, it would have been more useful to talk about Claws Mail (not clawn) or Sylpheed, but the info is still appreciated, especially for those who have just arrived ... and most importantly: for me Client , never Web !! haha 😉

    1.    KZKG ^ Gaara said

      Thanks for reading us. My mistake in mentioning Clawn instead of Claws 🙂
      I mentioned Geary because ElementaryOS adopts it by default, and since they released the last stable on many sites there has been talk of this distro (here too).

      Thanks again for reading and commenting

  15.   adeplus said

    Good post.
    I have not tried Geary. It seems nice.
    I use thunderbird / icedove because it is easy to backup mail as it is cross-platform. Interestingly, I prefer it without too many addons. Maybe lightning / iceowl and provider_for_google_calendar, and that's it.
    Evolution disappointed me, especially with the noPOP connections. Kmail is fine but it is built into kde. It is not negative, on the contrary, although it is limiting.
    I also use webmail, depending on where I get caught.
    I have not tried any in text mode since the BBS fell into disuse, back in the Cambrian. The email client that I liked the most, by the way, was the one that was integrated into Netscape. And no, seamonkey / iceape is not the same. Better maybe, but not the same.

  16.   Gonzalo said

    Evolucion is the email client par excellence 😀

  17.   jose said

    I think i'll use geary

  18.   elav said

    Good post. I leave my opinion for each of them:

    Geary: Very nice and minimalist but nothing light (or at least not as they paint it). And it only supports IMAP so it doesn't solve my needs for me.

    Thunderbird: For me the best mail client that exists for GNU / Linux. The only bad thing about it is the poor Multi-Account management.

    KMail: Integrated with KDE is the most powerful there is, but unfortunately you have to use Akonadi SI or SI.

    Evolution: It always felt very heavy and old. I have not tested it in the latest versions.

    There are others that I have tried, such as Claws-Mail, Sylpheed, Mutt, but they are too minimalist, although the first two can give us one or another surprise.

    1.    eliotime3000 said

      Completely agree with you. Thunderbird by far the best.

  19.   Cocolium said

    If there is something that I am looking for in the programs at the moment it is that they work wonderfully in the three operating systems, and I hate web services, so I use clients for everything, in this case I love Thunderbird and it works very well for me, besides I use Firefox , a greeting.

    1.    eliotime3000 said

      Both Thunderbird and its main fork (Icedove) are recommended. I am using Icedove and it works wonders.

  20.   Water carrier said

    I just add a warning about KMail: the developers boast so much about the program's superiority that it has no provision to export the messages if you don't like the program. Yes, it is possible to read the mails as an account from another application (eg Evolution) and then copy them to the application. However, the attitude of not having a module to export messages leaves a very bad taste in the mouth.

  21.   rafalinux said

    I use Sylpheed, which is very similar to Claws, although the version of Debian I use is more stable. It is very simple, takes up little and consumes very little memory. It is very fast and dispenses with configuration options that I will never use. I like it because of the simple interface, in the style of the Eudora from 20 years ago.

  22.   geronimo said

    I am faithful to thunderbird ,,,, but good ,,, everyone who uses the one they want ,,,,
    regards

  23.   wasabi said

    The only one that is banking 30Gb of emails and can be exported and transferred-copied-backup is thunderbird, the rest is to send 3 emails and receive greetings at parties

  24.   arcnexus said

    Well, I used thunderbird in KDE and in Gnome, but in the end it became slow and stuck, you open a message and it takes forever, so in the end I throw webmail using roundcube on my server. The truth is that it is not bad at all!

  25.   smr said

    Hi, I wanted to ask you about sylpheed, the stable binary has not been updated in a long time, is it out of date?

  26.   Dekomu said

    Evolution is one of my favorites, although I quite like kmail but it always gives me problems u ___ ú

  27.   manuelperez said

    For example, you forget Claws Mail, which is the one I use right now. Lightweight super powerful and highly configurable thanks to plugins

  28.   jony127 said

    Good,

    I have been using thunderbird since I started using a mail manager for convenience, sometimes I have considered using kontac with kmail but one of the reasons that slows me down is that I have to activate akonadi, currently I do not use it nor nepomuk and of course activate these services to use kmail seems unnecessary to me apart from the fact that it keeps me closely linked to kde and thunderbird is cross-platform and with lightning they make a perfect combination.

    It works very well and with the advantage that I can use it in any system and any desktop environment and that flexibility for me is important because you never know where I can end up 😉 and I don't like having to depend excessively on an environment.

    Greetings.

  29.   Dr Byte said

    I use Thunderbird and also access from the web browser when I'm not at home.

  30.   d34dmx said

    Use mutt 😀

  31.   Charles of the Source said

    My question, is Evolution compatible with Gmail? It is not official as a second account, thanks

    1.    water carrier said

      I don't use Gmail, but from what I've seen, it does work with Gmail. Ask it in a forum or, even better, if you can ask the question in English, ask on the Evolution listserv: https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list. Include in the question a description of the bug and the versions of Evolution (Help -> About) and the distro you use. If you don't speak English, answer me here and I'll translate it for evolution-list. There are developers and advanced users who answer questions promptly. A greeting.

  32.   Javier Sánchez said

    Cheers! Well, in all honesty, I have to say that I still can't find anything better than outlook. I use KDE because it just seems so much better to me than any other environment: D. Tried thunderbird hoping that being mozilla it would be great, but… it's VERY poor. The plugins are not so many and as you say, a large number is not compatible with the latest version. Then I tried KMail and I must say that I didn't really give it a try, I didn't really like the interface. I tried evolution, but the filters don't work! Can you imagine this? Looking at your article today, I'm going to give kmail another shot. But honestly, I am thinking of putting a virtual machine to continue with outlook. What do you think?

    1.    water carrier said

      The truth is that I don't trust Kmail. Kontact, the Kmail suite with Korganizer, etc. It has a pretty nice interface, but it depends on Akonadi and if you have a problem, maybe you have a pretty big problem. I agree that Outlook works better than Evolution, but Evolution works quite well for me. I think there are sometimes tricks for adjusting filters, but they do work. If you have problems there is a listserv with people who will help you solve them: https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list. I would give Evolution another chance before Kontact.