default mail client

[Jens Petersen]

I am writing this mail as a long time Fedora user, not so much as a
Fedora developer, so feel free to flame away, etc: though I am not
really trying to start painful flame-war here...

For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA). I was a long time
user of Emacs MUAs, so I feel my background is fairly neutral - but I
have never been able to use Evolution for long. These days I use
Thunderbird since alas I gradually found Emacs too slow for imap. I am
not married to Thunderbird but it mostly does what I want it and it is
pretty stable at least.

So what are the arguments for keeping Evolution as the default Mail
application in Fedora? This question seems particularly relevant now
with things like the Lightning calendar extension and the launch of
Mozilla Messaging. Evolution is different enough from regular GNOME
applications to be basically a different platform, and from the
development point of view it is expensive to have another platform to
maintain.

[Matthias Clasen]

Post by Jens Petersen
I am writing this mail as a long time Fedora user, not so much as a
Fedora developer, so feel free to flame away, etc: though I am not
really trying to start painful flame-war here...
For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA). I was a long time
user of Emacs MUAs, so I feel my background is fairly neutral - but I
have never been able to use Evolution for long. These days I use
Thunderbird since alas I gradually found Emacs too slow for imap. I am
not married to Thunderbird but it mostly does what I want it and it is
pretty stable at least

Anecdotal evidence... here is some anecdotal counter-evicence: I've used
Emacs MUAs in the past too, but have been using Evolution without any
big issues for many years now. And in my experience, people who tend to
have a problem with their mail client switch from evo to thunderbird and
back in quick succession, because the alternative is even worse...

Post by Jens Petersen
So what are the arguments for keeping Evolution as the default Mail
application in Fedora? This question seems particularly relevant now
with things like the Lightning calendar extension and the launch of
Mozilla Messaging. Evolution is different enough from regular GNOME
applications to be basically a different platform, and from the
development point of view it is expensive to have another platform to
maintain.

I don't get this argument at all. How is Evolution being a different
platform a problem, but Thunderbird being even more different is not ?

Also, a backing organization is not necessarily a guarantee for a
successful mail client. Otherwise, we would all be using chandler by
now...


Matthias

[Warren Togami]

Post by Matthias Clasen

Post by Jens Petersen
I am writing this mail as a long time Fedora user, not so much as a
Fedora developer, so feel free to flame away, etc: though I am not
really trying to start painful flame-war here...
For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA). I was a long time
user of Emacs MUAs, so I feel my background is fairly neutral - but I
have never been able to use Evolution for long. These days I use
Thunderbird since alas I gradually found Emacs too slow for imap. I am
not married to Thunderbird but it mostly does what I want it and it is
pretty stable at least

Anecdotal evidence... here is some anecdotal counter-evicence: I've used
Emacs MUAs in the past too, but have been using Evolution without any
big issues for many years now. And in my experience, people who tend to
have a problem with their mail client switch from evo to thunderbird and
back in quick succession, because the alternative is even worse...

I find Evolution to be completely unusable for IMAP folders. I have
dozens of IMAP folders with tens of thousands of messages on two
servers. Thunderbird seems to handle this a LOT faster than evolution
and crashes less often.

Warren

[seth vidal]

Post by Warren Togami
I find Evolution to be completely unusable for IMAP folders. I have
dozens of IMAP folders with tens of thousands of messages on two
servers. Thunderbird seems to handle this a LOT faster than evolution
and crashes less often.

I've been using evolution with imap folders since 2002. I've never had
this sort of pain. Furthermore synchronization of imap to local works
well, too.

I've used it with uw-imap, dovecot, cyrus, courier and gmail and never
had a problem that wasn't transient on any of them.

-sv

[Denis Leroy]

Post by seth vidal

Post by Warren Togami
I find Evolution to be completely unusable for IMAP folders. I have
dozens of IMAP folders with tens of thousands of messages on two
servers. Thunderbird seems to handle this a LOT faster than evolution
and crashes less often.

I've been using evolution with imap folders since 2002. I've never had
this sort of pain. Furthermore synchronization of imap to local works
well, too.

I use both evolution and thunderbird with IMAP :-) evolution for work,
thunderbird for personal and FOSS stuff. I find thunderbird's GUI easier
to use on those large FOSS threaded mailing lists. Over time I think
i've suffered more from evolution bugs than thunderbird one, but thigns
are pretty stable now.

[Jeff Law]

Post by Denis Leroy

Post by seth vidal

Post by Warren Togami
I find Evolution to be completely unusable for IMAP folders. I have
dozens of IMAP folders with tens of thousands of messages on two
servers. Thunderbird seems to handle this a LOT faster than
evolution and crashes less often.

I've been using evolution with imap folders since 2002. I've never had
this sort of pain. Furthermore synchronization of imap to local works
well, too.

I use both evolution and thunderbird with IMAP :-) evolution for work,
thunderbird for personal and FOSS stuff. I find thunderbird's GUI easier
to use on those large FOSS threaded mailing lists. Over time I think
i've suffered more from evolution bugs than thunderbird one, but thigns
are pretty stable now.

I just recently switched from Evolution to Thunderbird -- I've simply
seen Evolution crash too many times, wiping out reams of email history
in the process. Having Evolution hang at startup due to corruption of a
mailbox a few weeks ago was the last straw.

I find Thunderbird painfully slow, but at least it's working.

Part of me still regrets the day I didn't take up MH maintenance so
that I could continue to use MH and EXMH.... OK, not really...

Jeff

[Alan Cox]

Post by Jeff Law
seen Evolution crash too many times, wiping out reams of email history
in the process. Having Evolution hang at startup due to corruption of a
mailbox a few weeks ago was the last straw.
I find Thunderbird painfully slow, but at least it's working.

In which case try claws-mail. Claws is actually quite fast performing even
with several folders of 250,000+ mails.

Alan

[Ralf Ertzinger]

Hi.

Post by Alan Cox
In which case try claws-mail. Claws is actually quite fast performing
even with several folders of 250,000+ mails.

....if you are willing to throw sufficient memory at it. That's not
criticism, by the way, just a statement of fact. I've been using
claws for years now, and I love it.

[Alan Cox]

Post by Ralf Ertzinger
....if you are willing to throw sufficient memory at it. That's not
criticism, by the way, just a statement of fact. I've been using
claws for years now, and I love it.

It's better than it was but still a bit leaky.

Alan

[Alan Cox]

Post by Jeff Law
seen Evolution crash too many times, wiping out reams of email history
in the process. Having Evolution hang at startup due to corruption of a
mailbox a few weeks ago was the last straw.
I find Thunderbird painfully slow, but at least it's working.

In which case try claws-mail. Claws is actually quite fast performing even
with several folders of 250,000+ mails.

Alan

[Jeff Law]

Post by Denis Leroy

Post by seth vidal

Post by Warren Togami
I find Evolution to be completely unusable for IMAP folders. I have
dozens of IMAP folders with tens of thousands of messages on two
servers. Thunderbird seems to handle this a LOT faster than
evolution and crashes less often.

I've been using evolution with imap folders since 2002. I've never had
this sort of pain. Furthermore synchronization of imap to local works
well, too.

I use both evolution and thunderbird with IMAP :-) evolution for work,
thunderbird for personal and FOSS stuff. I find thunderbird's GUI easier
to use on those large FOSS threaded mailing lists. Over time I think
i've suffered more from evolution bugs than thunderbird one, but thigns
are pretty stable now.

I just recently switched from Evolution to Thunderbird -- I've simply
seen Evolution crash too many times, wiping out reams of email history
in the process. Having Evolution hang at startup due to corruption of a
mailbox a few weeks ago was the last straw.

I find Thunderbird painfully slow, but at least it's working.

Part of me still regrets the day I didn't take up MH maintenance so
that I could continue to use MH and EXMH.... OK, not really...

Jeff

[Denis Leroy]

Post by seth vidal

Post by Warren Togami
I find Evolution to be completely unusable for IMAP folders. I have
dozens of IMAP folders with tens of thousands of messages on two
servers. Thunderbird seems to handle this a LOT faster than evolution
and crashes less often.

I've been using evolution with imap folders since 2002. I've never had
this sort of pain. Furthermore synchronization of imap to local works
well, too.

I use both evolution and thunderbird with IMAP :-) evolution for work,
thunderbird for personal and FOSS stuff. I find thunderbird's GUI easier
to use on those large FOSS threaded mailing lists. Over time I think
i've suffered more from evolution bugs than thunderbird one, but thigns
are pretty stable now.

[David Woodhouse]

Post by Warren Togami
I find Evolution to be completely unusable for IMAP folders. I have
dozens of IMAP folders with tens of thousands of messages on two
servers. Thunderbird seems to handle this a LOT faster than evolution
and crashes less often.

See GNOME bug #336074 and #336076.


Does Thunderbird actually support IMAP over SSH yet?

Some mail servers don't actually have an IMAP d?mon listening, or allow
password authentication. It has to be SSH.

$ ssh baythorne.infradead.org exec /usr/sbin/dovecot --exec-mail imap
* PREAUTH [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 SASL-IR SORT THREAD=REFERENCES MULTIAPPEND UNSELECT LITERAL+ IDLE CHILDREN NAMESPACE LOGIN-REFERRALS] Logged in as dwmw2


Evolution can do this. Mutt can do this. Pine can do this.
Sylpheed can do this. Etpan can do this. Can Thunderbird?

Also, can Thunderbird send plain text without mangling it, or does the
documentation at http://mbligh.org/linuxdocs/Email/Clients/Thunderbird
still apply?

(WARNING: The above-linked page Promotes an Attitude of Violence. Not
for the faint-hearted).

[Mike]

Post by David Woodhouse
Also, can Thunderbird send plain text without mangling it, or does the
documentation at http://mbligh.org/linuxdocs/Email/Clients/Thunderbird
still apply?

I saw a posting

http://www.typo3-unleashed.net/nc/singleentry/date/2008/01/24/
how-to-send-plaintext-attachments-not-inline-with-thunderbird.html

So here is a solution for all thunderbird users (I still use it for reading
the newsgroups). Go to Tools > Options. Select panel advanced and tab General.
Start the Config Editor and search for mail.content_disposition_type and set it
to 1. This forces Thunderbird to send all attachments as real attachments and
not inline. This is much more compatible than the default behavior in my eyes.

Maybe this helps?

[Mike]

Post by Mike
So here is a solution for all thunderbird users (I still use it for reading
the newsgroups). Go to Tools > Options. Select panel advanced and tab General.
Start the Config Editor and search for mail.content_disposition_type and set it
to 1. This forces Thunderbird to send all attachments as real attachments and
not inline. This is much more compatible than the default behavior in my eyes.

In fact in Linux this should have started Edit-> Preferences...

But also see
http://mbligh.org/linuxdocs/Email/Clients/Thunderbird

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Post by Warren Togami
I find Evolution to be completely unusable for IMAP folders. I have
dozens of IMAP folders with tens of thousands of messages on two
servers. Thunderbird seems to handle this a LOT faster than evolution
and crashes less often.

Thunderbird is stuck in the mbox area. That alone is a showstopper
depending on your mail archive sizes.
--
Nicolas Mailhot

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[David Woodhouse]

Post by Nicolas Mailhot

Post by Warren Togami
I find Evolution to be completely unusable for IMAP folders. I have
dozens of IMAP folders with tens of thousands of messages on two
servers. Thunderbird seems to handle this a LOT faster than evolution
and crashes less often.

Thunderbird is stuck in the mbox area. That alone is a showstopper
depending on your mail archive sizes.

That wouldn't be such an issue if it could just use a local IMAP
"server" by running '/usr/sbin/dovecot --exec-mail imap' and talking to
that. But it isn't capable of that, either. It has to connect to a
listening IMAP d?mon.

[seth vidal]

Post by Warren Togami
I find Evolution to be completely unusable for IMAP folders. I have
dozens of IMAP folders with tens of thousands of messages on two
servers. Thunderbird seems to handle this a LOT faster than evolution
and crashes less often.

I've been using evolution with imap folders since 2002. I've never had
this sort of pain. Furthermore synchronization of imap to local works
well, too.

I've used it with uw-imap, dovecot, cyrus, courier and gmail and never
had a problem that wasn't transient on any of them.

-sv

[David Woodhouse]

Post by Warren Togami
I find Evolution to be completely unusable for IMAP folders. I have
dozens of IMAP folders with tens of thousands of messages on two
servers. Thunderbird seems to handle this a LOT faster than evolution
and crashes less often.

See GNOME bug #336074 and #336076.


Does Thunderbird actually support IMAP over SSH yet?

Some mail servers don't actually have an IMAP d?mon listening, or allow
password authentication. It has to be SSH.

$ ssh baythorne.infradead.org exec /usr/sbin/dovecot --exec-mail imap
* PREAUTH [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 SASL-IR SORT THREAD=REFERENCES MULTIAPPEND UNSELECT LITERAL+ IDLE CHILDREN NAMESPACE LOGIN-REFERRALS] Logged in as dwmw2


Evolution can do this. Mutt can do this. Pine can do this.
Sylpheed can do this. Etpan can do this. Can Thunderbird?

Also, can Thunderbird send plain text without mangling it, or does the
documentation at http://mbligh.org/linuxdocs/Email/Clients/Thunderbird
still apply?

(WARNING: The above-linked page Promotes an Attitude of Violence. Not
for the faint-hearted).

[Daniel Fitzgibbons]

Post by Matthias Clasen

Post by Jens Petersen
I am writing this mail as a long time Fedora user, not so much as a
Fedora developer, so feel free to flame away, etc: though I am not
really trying to start painful flame-war here...
For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA). I was a long time
user of Emacs MUAs, so I feel my background is fairly neutral - but I
have never been able to use Evolution for long. These days I use
Thunderbird since alas I gradually found Emacs too slow for imap. I am
not married to Thunderbird but it mostly does what I want it and it is
pretty stable at least

Anecdotal evidence... here is some anecdotal counter-evicence: I've used
Emacs MUAs in the past too, but have been using Evolution without any
big issues for many years now. And in my experience, people who tend to
have a problem with their mail client switch from evo to thunderbird and
back in quick succession, because the alternative is even worse...

Post by Jens Petersen
So what are the arguments for keeping Evolution as the default Mail
application in Fedora? This question seems particularly relevant now
with things like the Lightning calendar extension and the launch of
Mozilla Messaging. Evolution is different enough from regular GNOME
applications to be basically a different platform, and from the
development point of view it is expensive to have another platform to
maintain.

I don't get this argument at all. How is Evolution being a different
platform a problem, but Thunderbird being even more different is not ?
Also, a backing organization is not necessarily a guarantee for a
successful mail client. Otherwise, we would all be using chandler by
now...
Matthias

It's not a problem that Evolution isn't really a part of the gnome
platform... it's just the most common argument to keep it is "It's part of
gnome", which is what he was refuting. Personally, I couldn't care less...
I use gmail and no desktop-based client I have used can match it. But FWIW,
I have tried the major players for email clients and have found Thunderbird
to be a much more pleasing to use than Evolution, but this is all
anecdotal. If you're comfortable replacing Epiphany with Firefox, I don't
see any reason why you couldn't do the same with Evolution, should people
really want it.

--Daniel

Post by Matthias Clasen
--
fedora-devel-list mailing list
fedora-devel-list at redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list

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[Jens Petersen]

Post by Matthias Clasen
I don't get this argument at all. How is Evolution being a different
platform a problem, but Thunderbird being even more different is not ?

Ok, my comments were a little vague - I meantwas that Thunderbird as a
Mozilla application can leverage rendering and other technology from
Firefox, whereas over the years we've seen a lot of i18n problems with
Evolution for example. Maybe it is the cross-platform nature of
Thunderbird that leads to its stability?

Jens

[Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay]

Jens Petersen wrote:

| Ok, my comments were a little vague - I meantwas that Thunderbird as a
| Mozilla application can leverage rendering and other technology from
| Firefox, whereas over the years we've seen a lot of i18n problems with
| Evolution for example. Maybe it is the cross-platform nature of
| Thunderbird that leads to its stability?

is this part of some brainstorming or an indication of steps to be
proposed by the i18n team at Red Hat ?





- --

http://www.gutenberg.net - Fine literature digitally re-published
http://www.plos.org - Public Library of Science
http://www.creativecommons.org - Flexible copyright for creative work

[Warren Togami]

Post by Matthias Clasen

Post by Jens Petersen
I am writing this mail as a long time Fedora user, not so much as a
Fedora developer, so feel free to flame away, etc: though I am not
really trying to start painful flame-war here...
For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA). I was a long time
user of Emacs MUAs, so I feel my background is fairly neutral - but I
have never been able to use Evolution for long. These days I use
Thunderbird since alas I gradually found Emacs too slow for imap. I am
not married to Thunderbird but it mostly does what I want it and it is
pretty stable at least

Anecdotal evidence... here is some anecdotal counter-evicence: I've used
Emacs MUAs in the past too, but have been using Evolution without any
big issues for many years now. And in my experience, people who tend to
have a problem with their mail client switch from evo to thunderbird and
back in quick succession, because the alternative is even worse...

I find Evolution to be completely unusable for IMAP folders. I have
dozens of IMAP folders with tens of thousands of messages on two
servers. Thunderbird seems to handle this a LOT faster than evolution
and crashes less often.

Warren

[Daniel Fitzgibbons]

Post by Matthias Clasen

Post by Jens Petersen
I am writing this mail as a long time Fedora user, not so much as a
Fedora developer, so feel free to flame away, etc: though I am not
really trying to start painful flame-war here...
For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA). I was a long time
user of Emacs MUAs, so I feel my background is fairly neutral - but I
have never been able to use Evolution for long. These days I use
Thunderbird since alas I gradually found Emacs too slow for imap. I am
not married to Thunderbird but it mostly does what I want it and it is
pretty stable at least

Anecdotal evidence... here is some anecdotal counter-evicence: I've used
Emacs MUAs in the past too, but have been using Evolution without any
big issues for many years now. And in my experience, people who tend to
have a problem with their mail client switch from evo to thunderbird and
back in quick succession, because the alternative is even worse...

Post by Jens Petersen
So what are the arguments for keeping Evolution as the default Mail
application in Fedora? This question seems particularly relevant now
with things like the Lightning calendar extension and the launch of
Mozilla Messaging. Evolution is different enough from regular GNOME
applications to be basically a different platform, and from the
development point of view it is expensive to have another platform to
maintain.

I don't get this argument at all. How is Evolution being a different
platform a problem, but Thunderbird being even more different is not ?
Also, a backing organization is not necessarily a guarantee for a
successful mail client. Otherwise, we would all be using chandler by
now...
Matthias

It's not a problem that Evolution isn't really a part of the gnome
platform... it's just the most common argument to keep it is "It's part of
gnome", which is what he was refuting. Personally, I couldn't care less...
I use gmail and no desktop-based client I have used can match it. But FWIW,
I have tried the major players for email clients and have found Thunderbird
to be a much more pleasing to use than Evolution, but this is all
anecdotal. If you're comfortable replacing Epiphany with Firefox, I don't
see any reason why you couldn't do the same with Evolution, should people
really want it.

--Daniel

Post by Matthias Clasen
--
fedora-devel-list mailing list
fedora-devel-list at redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list

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[Jens Petersen]

Post by Matthias Clasen
I don't get this argument at all. How is Evolution being a different
platform a problem, but Thunderbird being even more different is not ?

Ok, my comments were a little vague - I meantwas that Thunderbird as a
Mozilla application can leverage rendering and other technology from
Firefox, whereas over the years we've seen a lot of i18n problems with
Evolution for example. Maybe it is the cross-platform nature of
Thunderbird that leads to its stability?

Jens

[Matthew Barnes]

Evolution is different enough from regular GNOME applications to be
basically a different platform

Can you elaborate on this? Evolution is an official component of the
GNOME desktop so I don't understand what you mean by "regular GNOME
applications."

/me digs in for another round of Evolution bashing on fedora-devel.

Matthew Barnes

[Jens Petersen]

Post by Matthew Barnes

Evolution is different enough from regular GNOME applications to be
basically a different platform

Can you elaborate on this?

Ok, probably not very technically accurate, but I was thinking of the
custom gtk widgets and gtkhtml that Evolution uses.

Post by Matthew Barnes
/me digs in for another round of Evolution bashing on fedora-devel.

Sorry Matthew, I know and appreciate how much work you put into maintaining
our Evolution packages. This is not meant as an attack on Evo,
as much as a reminder that a lot of people feel Thunderbird is also a
viable MUA.

Jens

[Matthew Barnes]

Post by Jens Petersen
Ok, probably not very technically accurate, but I was thinking of the
custom gtk widgets and gtkhtml that Evolution uses.

That's a valid point and it's an issue I've been trying to chip away at
since landing this gig. Evolution has a lot of old cruft underneath the
hood and still relies on technology that fell out favor years ago.

Examples:

- GtkHTML -- Evolution's HTML rendering library -- is no longer under
active development.

- Parts of Evolution's UI look like something out of the Motif era.

- It's still heavily dependent on the GNOME Applications Library, a
library that never gained much popularity and Evolution eventually
subsumed.

- Don't even get me started about Bonobo.


Here's what I'm doing about each of them:

- Alp Toker and I have talked about a possible migration to WebKit/GTK+.
WebKit/GTK+ still lacks an editing API and adequate printing support,
among other things, but looks very promising. I've begun prototyping
code but it's still in a very early stage.

- I've been aggressively moving Evolution off deprecated and custom
widgets to modern GTK+ widgets. Still much more work to be done.

- Chipping away at the GNOME Applications Library. Slow going.

- I'm in the midst of rewriting Evolution's message composer to not rely
on Bonobo. Once done, I plan to use those results as a blueprint for
moving the rest of Evolution off Bonobo. I hope to start this last
phase by year's end.

I also have to say Evolution development seems more active and positive
now than I think it has been in years. That's a good sign.

Matthew Barnes

["Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"]

I suggest that Thunderbird will be installed along with Evolution
RFE filed for when a user first setups Thunderbird he will be asked if
he wants to import mail from Evolution and make Thunderbird the default
mail client...
Evolution could still be the default mail client but users that are
switching from M$ to
Fedora or already use Fedora and already are used to use Thunderbird, it
would be there for them..

I think we should rather waste our energy in debating about Tomboy and
it's reason being installed by default
and wasting users resource when there are already alot ( Gedit
openoffice vim for example )
of other application that get installed by default, that the user
can organize his ideas and information he deals with every day....

Just my 2 cents....

Best regards.
Johann B.


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[Matej Cepl]

Post by "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"
I think we should rather waste our energy in debating about
Tomboy and it's reason being installed by default

+1 (and I don?t like Mono; I know many people here do, but still
I cannot help it)

Mat?j

[Matej Cepl]

Post by "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"
I think we should rather waste our energy in debating about
Tomboy and it's reason being installed by default

+1 (and I don?t like Mono; I know many people here do, but still
I cannot help it)

Mat?j

["Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"]

I suggest that Thunderbird will be installed along with Evolution
RFE filed for when a user first setups Thunderbird he will be asked if
he wants to import mail from Evolution and make Thunderbird the default
mail client...
Evolution could still be the default mail client but users that are
switching from M$ to
Fedora or already use Fedora and already are used to use Thunderbird, it
would be there for them..

I think we should rather waste our energy in debating about Tomboy and
it's reason being installed by default
and wasting users resource when there are already alot ( Gedit
openoffice vim for example )
of other application that get installed by default, that the user
can organize his ideas and information he deals with every day....

Just my 2 cents....

Best regards.
Johann B.


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[Matthew Barnes]

Post by Jens Petersen
Ok, probably not very technically accurate, but I was thinking of the
custom gtk widgets and gtkhtml that Evolution uses.

That's a valid point and it's an issue I've been trying to chip away at
since landing this gig. Evolution has a lot of old cruft underneath the
hood and still relies on technology that fell out favor years ago.

Examples:

- GtkHTML -- Evolution's HTML rendering library -- is no longer under
active development.

- Parts of Evolution's UI look like something out of the Motif era.

- It's still heavily dependent on the GNOME Applications Library, a
library that never gained much popularity and Evolution eventually
subsumed.

- Don't even get me started about Bonobo.


Here's what I'm doing about each of them:

- Alp Toker and I have talked about a possible migration to WebKit/GTK+.
WebKit/GTK+ still lacks an editing API and adequate printing support,
among other things, but looks very promising. I've begun prototyping
code but it's still in a very early stage.

- I've been aggressively moving Evolution off deprecated and custom
widgets to modern GTK+ widgets. Still much more work to be done.

- Chipping away at the GNOME Applications Library. Slow going.

- I'm in the midst of rewriting Evolution's message composer to not rely
on Bonobo. Once done, I plan to use those results as a blueprint for
moving the rest of Evolution off Bonobo. I hope to start this last
phase by year's end.

I also have to say Evolution development seems more active and positive
now than I think it has been in years. That's a good sign.

Matthew Barnes

[Lubomir Kundrak]

Post by Matthew Barnes

Evolution is different enough from regular GNOME applications to be
basically a different platform

Can you elaborate on this? Evolution is an official component of the
GNOME desktop so I don't understand what you mean by "regular GNOME
applications."

I believe there was a similar thread about Epiphany vs. Firefox being
default a while ago there. Epiphany is a default GNOME component, but
Firefox is default, right?

Actually, I don't have an opinion on this -- difficulty of deciding
about defaults seems to me bigger than relevance of what's being the
default as it's so easy to switch. And I'm a happy Firefox and Evolution
user :)

[Jens Petersen]

Post by Matthew Barnes

Evolution is different enough from regular GNOME applications to be
basically a different platform

Can you elaborate on this?

Ok, probably not very technically accurate, but I was thinking of the
custom gtk widgets and gtkhtml that Evolution uses.

Post by Matthew Barnes
/me digs in for another round of Evolution bashing on fedora-devel.

Sorry Matthew, I know and appreciate how much work you put into maintaining
our Evolution packages. This is not meant as an attack on Evo,
as much as a reminder that a lot of people feel Thunderbird is also a
viable MUA.

Jens

[Lubomir Kundrak]

Post by Matthew Barnes

Evolution is different enough from regular GNOME applications to be
basically a different platform

Can you elaborate on this? Evolution is an official component of the
GNOME desktop so I don't understand what you mean by "regular GNOME
applications."

I believe there was a similar thread about Epiphany vs. Firefox being
default a while ago there. Epiphany is a default GNOME component, but
Firefox is default, right?

Actually, I don't have an opinion on this -- difficulty of deciding
about defaults seems to me bigger than relevance of what's being the
default as it's so easy to switch. And I'm a happy Firefox and Evolution
user :)

[Nicu Buculei]

This post might be inappropriate. Click to display it.

[Kevin Kofler]

Post by Nicu Buculei
Have a look at the Mugshot applications usage report -
http://mugshot.org/applications

Don't forget that this is a heavily biased sample though. For example, KDE apps
tend to rank terribly low there, for reasons which are mostly obvious (Mugshot
is heavily associated with GNOME). There are also other sources of bias. (The
immense popularity of gnome-terminal says much about the audience of Mugshot. I
doubt you're capturing data from average users there.)

Kevin Kofler

[Nicu Buculei]

Post by Kevin Kofler

Post by Nicu Buculei
Have a look at the Mugshot applications usage report -
http://mugshot.org/applications

Don't forget that this is a heavily biased sample though. For example, KDE apps
tend to rank terribly low there, for reasons which are mostly obvious (Mugshot
is heavily associated with GNOME). There are also other sources of bias. (The
immense popularity of gnome-terminal says much about the audience of Mugshot. I
doubt you're capturing data from average users there.)

Sure, but the average user probably stays with what's the default, no
matter what the default is.

[Nicu Buculei]

Post by Kevin Kofler

Post by Nicu Buculei
Have a look at the Mugshot applications usage report -
http://mugshot.org/applications

Don't forget that this is a heavily biased sample though. For example, KDE apps
tend to rank terribly low there, for reasons which are mostly obvious (Mugshot
is heavily associated with GNOME). There are also other sources of bias. (The
immense popularity of gnome-terminal says much about the audience of Mugshot. I
doubt you're capturing data from average users there.)

Sure, but the average user probably stays with what's the default, no
matter what the default is.

[Kevin Kofler]

Post by Nicu Buculei
Have a look at the Mugshot applications usage report -
http://mugshot.org/applications

Don't forget that this is a heavily biased sample though. For example, KDE apps
tend to rank terribly low there, for reasons which are mostly obvious (Mugshot
is heavily associated with GNOME). There are also other sources of bias. (The
immense popularity of gnome-terminal says much about the audience of Mugshot. I
doubt you're capturing data from average users there.)

Kevin Kofler

[Matej Cepl]

though I am not really trying to start painful flame-war
here...

Sorry, I don?t know how to say it nicely, so I will be just blunt
? there is no way how can I believe this sentence. I don?t mean
it badly ? a good flamewar from time to time makes things more
clear, but it is the flame if I ever saw one.

For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA). I was a long time
user of Emacs MUAs, so I feel my background is fairly neutral - but I
have never been able to use Evolution for long. These days I use
Thunderbird since alas I gradually found Emacs too slow for imap. I am
not married to Thunderbird but it mostly does what I want it and it is
pretty stable at least.

Aside from the obvious one (?It is the standard Gnome MUA?), you
mean? OK, I think to make a little sense of this argument, let?s
get to the common ground ? ?All mail clients suck. This one just
sucks less.? (http://www.mutt.org) What?s true about all mail
clients (and yes, mutt sucks too, but that?s for different
flamewar) is especially true for GUI MUAs.

I have in the past seven years used (aside from mutt and little
bit of pain) kmail, Thunderbird, Evolution, and in the last week
I needed to dip a little bit into claws-mail and sylpheed (I
prefer the latter, BTW). That IMHO means I have covered most of
what?s interesting in the world of Linux GUI MUAs (yes, I am
missing chandler and balsa; oh well). My conclusion? All of them
suck. A lot. And I mean it (Matthew, you are great!). I have no
idea, why we still don?t have at least one MUA which would suck
only as much as mutt does in non-GUI world, but we don?t.

Now, a little bit of reasons why I think Thunderbird is no better
than others. First of all, I certainly cannot confirm that
Thunderbird wouldn?t crash on me. It did and many times. Second,
in my past many attempts to use Netscape Messenger/Mozilla
Mail/Thunderbird I have actually incurred couple of times
a dataloss (which never happened with other MUA), which makes me
a little bit worried ? true, it hasn?t happened lately, so may be
Thunderbird is better IMAP client now, than it used to be, but it
certainly makes me worried.

Second, you mean you have tens of thousands of messages in IMAP
folders and you don?t care that your MUA hasn?t heard about
regexps? (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19442 the
bug was filed 1999 and there is still not attempt from TB folks
to solve it)

Third, another reason why Thunderbird seems to me a pitiful IMAP
client is that somehow it never heard about separate Trash folder
not being part of IMAP world
(https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=243075 and
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=359281).

Fourth, Reply-to-list feature ?
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45715 Thunderbird is
one of the reasons Red Hat internal mail lists are such mess as
they are, because everybody Reply-to-all.

Fifth, automatic messages archiving
? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=93094 You
shouldn?t have ten thousands of messages in your working folder
ever in the first place, because old messages should be
archived!

Sixth, its vfolders are just pityfull ? I suspect TB doesn?t
index the messages, so whenever you open vfolder it has to search
through all messages again and again.

I am not writing down these issue to say, that Evolution or any
other GUI MUA is better (actually, kmail doesn't fail on most of
these, but then vfolders in Evolution rock, and kmail is also
POP3 client learning IMAP ? special dIMAP account anyone?), just
that there are good reasons why Thunderbird is not that much
better than others, and there is no reason to incurr
non-negligible switching costs on our users (remember, most of
them probably use default MUA, just because it is default).

The second reason, why I put down this list is to show how old
some of these bugs are. OK, maybe regexps are questionable
feature in MUA (I would strongly disagree, but who am I), but not
being able to fix Reply-to-list for seven years, and ?Hide
deleted IMAP messages? for four years, shows questionable level
of support for the application which is in the core of
everything.

Happy flaming!

Matej

[Matej Cepl]

Post by Matej Cepl
better than others, and there is no reason to incurr
non-negligible switching costs on our users (remember, most of
them probably use default MUA, just because it is default).

BTW, I have found in TB ?Import from Evolution? menu option. You
mean that everybody should just throw out all their old messages
out of the window?

Mat?j

[Matej Cepl]

Post by Matej Cepl

Post by Matej Cepl
better than others, and there is no reason to incurr
non-negligible switching costs on our users (remember, most of
them probably use default MUA, just because it is default).

BTW, I have found in TB ?Import from Evolution? menu option. You

sorry, that should read obviously ?I have NOT found?

Post by Matej Cepl
mean that everybody should just throw out all their old messages
out of the window?
Mat?j

[Ralf Ertzinger]

Hi.

Post by Matej Cepl
BTW, I have found in TB ?Import from Evolution? menu option. You
mean that everybody should just throw out all their old messages
out of the window?

The answer to that is IMAP.

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Post by Ralf Ertzinger
Hi.

Post by Matej Cepl
BTW, I have found in TB ?Import from Evolution? menu option. You
mean that everybody should just throw out all their old messages
out of the window?

The answer to that is IMAP.

However the fact the answer to any semi-complex mail need is to set up a
private imap server tells a lot about the state of our email clients.

You could do a lot of what imap offers just by standardising the MUA
backends to maildir, but everybody talks about the UI and forgets the
backend part (in fact it's quite surprising we managed to get good imap
servers out since we insist on using last century's tech with mbox and
sendmail as our defaults)
--
Nicolas Mailhot

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[Ralf Ertzinger]

Hi.

Post by Nicolas Mailhot
You could do a lot of what imap offers just by standardising the MUA
backends to maildir, but everybody talks about the UI and forgets the
backend part (in fact it's quite surprising we managed to get good
imap servers out since we insist on using last century's tech with
mbox and sendmail as our defaults)

Well, my IMAP server has it's own storage system, so what sendmail and
mbox think about how mail should be handled does not concern me very much.


I think we agree that the normal use case these days is that there is
a remote mail server involved somewhere (be it POP or IMAP), in contrast
to a mail client reading local mail storage (like /var/spool/mail).
Yes, I know, some of you do that. But the majority does not. So any local
storage done by the mail client is basically a cache. Standardizing this
format to something makes it easier to change mail clients, for sure.

But I think the point can be made that if a remote server is involved
in a majority of cases, anyway, it may as well be IMAP, since that neatly
solves a bunch of problems (it also creates new ones, for example backup).
Changing mail clients is no longer a real problem, the new client will
see all your mail, read and unread, in your prefered folder structure.
Reading mail from multiple places (and even if we just talk about a mail
client on your home machine and webmail) is no longer a problem. Especially
the concurrent access problem can not be solved by any local storage format.

[Chris Adams]

Post by Nicolas Mailhot
You could do a lot of what imap offers just by standardising the MUA
backends to maildir, but everybody talks about the UI and forgets the
backend part (in fact it's quite surprising we managed to get good imap
servers out since we insist on using last century's tech with mbox and
sendmail as our defaults)

Maildir solves one problem with mbox (deleting an arbitrary message)
while making a whole bunch of new ones (the biggest being a directory
with 10,000 files is not good). Dovecot's mbox+index seems to work
pretty well in my experience.

I find it funny that at the same time NNTP servers were moving away from
a one-file-per-message storage format due to the many problems, Maildir
(and its variants) was trying to move towards that format.

[Ralf Ertzinger]

Hi

Post by Chris Adams
Maildir solves one problem with mbox (deleting an arbitrary message)
while making a whole bunch of new ones (the biggest being a directory
with 10,000 files is not good). Dovecot's mbox+index seems to work
pretty well in my experience.

Handling tens of thousands files per directory has gotten significantly
better over time, and it will not get worse in the future.

Post by Chris Adams
I find it funny that at the same time NNTP servers were moving away
from a one-file-per-message storage format due to the many problems,
Maildir (and its variants) was trying to move towards that format.

NNTP works in a different problem space. Messages are seldom deleted
randomly, most are expired over time, with the oldest messages expiring
first. This pattern lends itself very well to cyclic buffers, which would
not work with mail spools.

[Les Mikesell]

Post by Chris Adams

Post by Nicolas Mailhot
You could do a lot of what imap offers just by standardising the MUA
backends to maildir, but everybody talks about the UI and forgets the
backend part (in fact it's quite surprising we managed to get good imap
servers out since we insist on using last century's tech with mbox and
sendmail as our defaults)

Maildir solves one problem with mbox (deleting an arbitrary message)
while making a whole bunch of new ones (the biggest being a directory
with 10,000 files is not good). Dovecot's mbox+index seems to work
pretty well in my experience.
I find it funny that at the same time NNTP servers were moving away from
a one-file-per-message storage format due to the many problems, Maildir
(and its variants) was trying to move towards that format.

You generally don't delete messages individually from nntp servers with
a human waiting for the next operation, whereas moving and deleting are
probably the most common things to do to a received email message. And
if your filesystem isn't good at handling a reasonable number of files,
that's probably something you should fix anyway...

[Matej Cepl]

Post by Matej Cepl

Post by Matej Cepl
better than others, and there is no reason to incurr
non-negligible switching costs on our users (remember, most of
them probably use default MUA, just because it is default).

BTW, I have found in TB ?Import from Evolution? menu option. You

sorry, that should read obviously ?I have NOT found?

Post by Matej Cepl
mean that everybody should just throw out all their old messages
out of the window?
Mat?j

[Ralf Ertzinger]

Hi.

Post by Matej Cepl
BTW, I have found in TB ?Import from Evolution? menu option. You
mean that everybody should just throw out all their old messages
out of the window?

The answer to that is IMAP.

[Kevin Kofler]

Post by Matej Cepl
I am not writing down these issue to say, that Evolution or any
other GUI MUA is better (actually, kmail doesn't fail on most of
these, but then vfolders in Evolution rock, and kmail is also

KMail will have virtual folders in KDE 4.1 or 4.2 (this is being implemented in
Akonadi, and what parts of Akonadi will be in 4.1 is not decided yet), so
chances are that feature will come in Fedora 10 or 11. :-) It will also be very
powerful, integrating with Nepomuk tagging, so you can tag your mails and
filter by tags.

http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3264

Post by Matej Cepl
POP3 client learning IMAP ? special dIMAP account anyone?), just

There has been lots of work done on IMAP by the Kolab consortium, so if you
tried a pre-enterprise KMail, you may want to have a look at 3.5.9 (currently
in updates-testing, but the kdepim-enterprise snapshot we have in updates is
almost 3.5.9). Those folks are also working on kdepim 4.1 (and actually, in KDE
4 kdepimlibs, IMAP support came first, POP support has been added only
recently).


And by the way, KMail can import mail from Evolution. :-) (It's probably the
client with the most import filters.)

Kevin Kofler

[Matej Cepl]

want to have a look at 3.5.9 (currently in updates-testing, but
the kdepim-enterprise snapshot we have in updates is almost
3.5.9). Those folks are also working on kdepim 4.1 (and
actually, in KDE 4 kdepimlibs, IMAP support came first, POP
support has been added only recently).

Yes, to be honest, I was comparing with kmail as found in
Debian/testing two years ago (KDE 3.3, I believe). Being
bugmaster of the desktop team in RH, I am expected to use
Gnome-based programs.

Mat?j

[Mail Lists]

Post by Kevin Kofler
KMail will have virtual folders in KDE 4.1 or 4.2 (this is being implemented in
Akonadi, and what parts of Akonadi will be in 4.1 is not decided yet), so
chances are that feature will come in Fedora 10 or 11. :-) It will also be very
powerful, integrating with Nepomuk tagging, so you can tag your mails and
filter by tags.
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3264

Opinion alert:

I have used kmail for a long time - its an almost wonderful tool.
Sadly until it can actually speak html like the rest of the world it is
my opinion that noone shud use it for anything save text email - if you
find that useful like on here. Unless the developers get away from their
personal anti-html crusade this what-cud-be-great client will fall by
the wayside. I got very tired of having structured emails destroyed by
kmail at work - never mind the complaints - or the inability to respond
and put an 'approved' in a small html table. This is convenient and the
reality we live in - the kmail developers said save the mail - copy it
to a word processor file - attach it and send it. Yep - that makes
sense. Now if the latest version - indeed has full support for
structured html mail it wud definitely be worth a second look.

I have also used evo and thunderbird .. the only mailer which I have
found comes close to being functional in the modern (business and
personal) world is thunderbird.

As of now - I use thunderbird with enigmail and lightning. I use it
for work and personal email use.

As an aside - if - you want the ability to trivially switch to/try
different clients without dealing with the variety of local storage
issues - do what I do - never use the local storage. I run a local imap
server (even on my laptop) and use that. I can now easily switch email
clients with almost zero cost.

g

[Kevin Kofler]

Post by Mail Lists
I have used kmail for a long time - its an almost wonderful tool.
Sadly until it can actually speak html like the rest of the world it is
my opinion that noone shud use it for anything save text email - if you
find that useful like on here. Unless the developers get away from their
personal anti-html crusade this what-cud-be-great client will fall by
the wayside. I got very tired of having structured emails destroyed by
kmail at work - never mind the complaints - or the inability to respond
and put an 'approved' in a small html table. This is convenient and the
reality we live in - the kmail developers said save the mail - copy it
to a word processor file - attach it and send it. Yep - that makes
sense. Now if the latest version - indeed has full support for
structured html mail it wud definitely be worth a second look.

KMail in kdepim 4.1 will support composing and sending HTML mail.
Unfortunately. HTML mail is a plague infecting the Internet.
http://expita.com/nomime.html
By the way, IMHO, the attachment solution is also a bad solution, the best
solution is approximating the table with ASCII art.

Kevin Kofler

[Kevin Kofler]

Post by Kevin Kofler
KMail in kdepim 4.1 will support composing and sending HTML mail.

Actually, the current kdepim-enterprise in Fedora (and upstream kdepim >=
3.5.9) already has basic support for this.

Kevin Kofler

[Mail Lists]

Post by Kevin Kofler
KMail in kdepim 4.1 will support composing and sending HTML mail.

And replying without mangling too ? Great.
I'm delighted to hear kmail is slowly moving toward being more usable.

Post by Kevin Kofler
Unfortunately. HTML mail is a plague infecting the Internet.
http://expita.com/nomime.html
By the way, IMHO, the attachment solution is also a bad solution, the best
solution is approximating the table with ASCII art.

I cannot agree with you on this Kevin - the reality is that we (well
some of us) need to interact with other email users in the business
world - many of whom use structured email - a table sent to me for my
approval - is easiest for all if I simply reply and type approved in the
appropriate column - mimicking this with ascii art is a little silly and
would make the original sender unhappy and annoy me and take a lot of
unnecessary time duplicating it and ascii art will not have the
structure of a table - no boxes etc.

Also you must remember frequently small lists are mailed thru to
several ppl - each making a small addition or mod - ascii art is a
mess in that too.

Frankly, most of the now ancient arguments against HTMLseem
contrived in a world of unlimited gmail storage and high speed internet
and often just dont apply anymore - while its true that there is a place
for text mail (mail lists, being sensitive to those who have slow
connections etc) it is equally true there is a place for html mail
(business, never mind making it pretty for personal reasons!) - arguing
that there is only one right way is just .. well .. sillly.

Its just a reality - it has use whether we consider it a plague or
not. Its like blu-ray - you may prefer HD-DVD or 8mm film clips but
shud you want to rent dvd movies from blockbuster well .. those wont
help ya! Reality is something we have to deal with .. some of us anyway!

Of all the email programs - html aside - kmail blows away most of
the others.

gene

[Alan Cox]

Post by Mail Lists
approval - is easiest for all if I simply reply and type approved in the
appropriate column - mimicking this with ascii art is a little silly and

Ah but you've no idea what the recipient receives if you do that. HTML
isn't a strict formatting specification. You can also do foul things with
javascript and a lot of clients (or even the exploding gif from hell on
some of them is quite sufficient) [1]

Post by Mail Lists
connections etc) it is equally true there is a place for html mail
(business, never mind making it pretty for personal reasons!) - arguing
that there is only one right way is just .. well .. sillly.

Indeed.

Alan
[1] Draw a plain coloured rectangle the largest size permitted by gif format,
save it. You'll find its very few bytes. Add about 50 of them to your html
email at the bottom. Send and watch as some clients try to turn them all into
enormous bitmaps run out of ram and die.

Almost as neat as the old (long fixed) <img src="file:/dev/mouse">

[Jesse Keating]

On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 05:57:25 +0000 (UTC)

Post by Kevin Kofler
KMail in kdepim 4.1 will support composing and sending HTML mail.

Oh the horrors!
--
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- All my bits are free, are yours?
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[Kevin Kofler]

Post by Kevin Kofler
KMail in kdepim 4.1 will support composing and sending HTML mail.

Actually, the current kdepim-enterprise in Fedora (and upstream kdepim >=
3.5.9) already has basic support for this.

Kevin Kofler

[Kevin Kofler]

Post by Mail Lists
I have used kmail for a long time - its an almost wonderful tool.
Sadly until it can actually speak html like the rest of the world it is
my opinion that noone shud use it for anything save text email - if you
find that useful like on here. Unless the developers get away from their
personal anti-html crusade this what-cud-be-great client will fall by
the wayside. I got very tired of having structured emails destroyed by
kmail at work - never mind the complaints - or the inability to respond
and put an 'approved' in a small html table. This is convenient and the
reality we live in - the kmail developers said save the mail - copy it
to a word processor file - attach it and send it. Yep - that makes
sense. Now if the latest version - indeed has full support for
structured html mail it wud definitely be worth a second look.

KMail in kdepim 4.1 will support composing and sending HTML mail.
Unfortunately. HTML mail is a plague infecting the Internet.
http://expita.com/nomime.html
By the way, IMHO, the attachment solution is also a bad solution, the best
solution is approximating the table with ASCII art.

Kevin Kofler

[Matej Cepl]

want to have a look at 3.5.9 (currently in updates-testing, but
the kdepim-enterprise snapshot we have in updates is almost
3.5.9). Those folks are also working on kdepim 4.1 (and
actually, in KDE 4 kdepimlibs, IMAP support came first, POP
support has been added only recently).

Yes, to be honest, I was comparing with kmail as found in
Debian/testing two years ago (KDE 3.3, I believe). Being
bugmaster of the desktop team in RH, I am expected to use
Gnome-based programs.

Mat?j

[Mail Lists]

Post by Kevin Kofler
KMail will have virtual folders in KDE 4.1 or 4.2 (this is being implemented in
Akonadi, and what parts of Akonadi will be in 4.1 is not decided yet), so
chances are that feature will come in Fedora 10 or 11. :-) It will also be very
powerful, integrating with Nepomuk tagging, so you can tag your mails and
filter by tags.
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3264

Opinion alert:

I have used kmail for a long time - its an almost wonderful tool.
Sadly until it can actually speak html like the rest of the world it is
my opinion that noone shud use it for anything save text email - if you
find that useful like on here. Unless the developers get away from their
personal anti-html crusade this what-cud-be-great client will fall by
the wayside. I got very tired of having structured emails destroyed by
kmail at work - never mind the complaints - or the inability to respond
and put an 'approved' in a small html table. This is convenient and the
reality we live in - the kmail developers said save the mail - copy it
to a word processor file - attach it and send it. Yep - that makes
sense. Now if the latest version - indeed has full support for
structured html mail it wud definitely be worth a second look.

I have also used evo and thunderbird .. the only mailer which I have
found comes close to being functional in the modern (business and
personal) world is thunderbird.

As of now - I use thunderbird with enigmail and lightning. I use it
for work and personal email use.

As an aside - if - you want the ability to trivially switch to/try
different clients without dealing with the variety of local storage
issues - do what I do - never use the local storage. I run a local imap
server (even on my laptop) and use that. I can now easily switch email
clients with almost zero cost.

g

[Matej Cepl]

Post by Matej Cepl
better than others, and there is no reason to incurr
non-negligible switching costs on our users (remember, most of
them probably use default MUA, just because it is default).

BTW, I have found in TB ?Import from Evolution? menu option. You
mean that everybody should just throw out all their old messages
out of the window?

Mat?j

[Kevin Kofler]

Post by Matej Cepl
I am not writing down these issue to say, that Evolution or any
other GUI MUA is better (actually, kmail doesn't fail on most of
these, but then vfolders in Evolution rock, and kmail is also

KMail will have virtual folders in KDE 4.1 or 4.2 (this is being implemented in
Akonadi, and what parts of Akonadi will be in 4.1 is not decided yet), so
chances are that feature will come in Fedora 10 or 11. :-) It will also be very
powerful, integrating with Nepomuk tagging, so you can tag your mails and
filter by tags.

http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3264

Post by Matej Cepl
POP3 client learning IMAP ? special dIMAP account anyone?), just

There has been lots of work done on IMAP by the Kolab consortium, so if you
tried a pre-enterprise KMail, you may want to have a look at 3.5.9 (currently
in updates-testing, but the kdepim-enterprise snapshot we have in updates is
almost 3.5.9). Those folks are also working on kdepim 4.1 (and actually, in KDE
4 kdepimlibs, IMAP support came first, POP support has been added only
recently).


And by the way, KMail can import mail from Evolution. :-) (It's probably the
client with the most import filters.)

Kevin Kofler

[John Dennis]

All MUA's suck, it's just a question of which sucks less for a given
user/task.

Between Evolution and Thunderbird I think Evolution is the clear winner
in terms of functionality and usability. The problem with Evolution is
its the most bug-ridden application I've ever used (Matt has been doing
a wonderful job of trying to fix things but it might be a losing
battle). When Evolution crashes/hangs finally pissed me off enough last
year I switched to Thunderbird. There are a *lot* of things about
Thunderbird I don't like, but it has one attribute I can't live without,
it doesn't hang or crash on a regular basis, so I'm now a reluctant TB user.

[Tomas Mraz]

Post by John Dennis
All MUA's suck, it's just a question of which sucks less for a given
user/task.
Between Evolution and Thunderbird I think Evolution is the clear winner
in terms of functionality and usability. The problem with Evolution is
its the most bug-ridden application I've ever used (Matt has been doing
a wonderful job of trying to fix things but it might be a losing
battle). When Evolution crashes/hangs finally pissed me off enough last
year I switched to Thunderbird. There are a *lot* of things about
Thunderbird I don't like, but it has one attribute I can't live without,
it doesn't hang or crash on a regular basis, so I'm now a reluctant TB user.

How much Evolution crashes highly depends on the usage patterns. For me
it almost completely stopped crashing after upgrade to Fedora 8. Not
that it is without other annoying problems but as for crashing it is
fine with my usage patterns.

[Timothy Selivanow]

Post by Tomas Mraz

Post by John Dennis
All MUA's suck, it's just a question of which sucks less for a given
user/task.
Between Evolution and Thunderbird I think Evolution is the clear winner
in terms of functionality and usability. The problem with Evolution is
its the most bug-ridden application I've ever used (Matt has been doing
a wonderful job of trying to fix things but it might be a losing
battle). When Evolution crashes/hangs finally pissed me off enough last
year I switched to Thunderbird. There are a *lot* of things about
Thunderbird I don't like, but it has one attribute I can't live without,
it doesn't hang or crash on a regular basis, so I'm now a reluctant TB user.

How much Evolution crashes highly depends on the usage patterns. For me
it almost completely stopped crashing after upgrade to Fedora 8. Not
that it is without other annoying problems but as for crashing it is
fine with my usage patterns.
--
Tomas Mraz
No matter how far down the wrong road you've gone, turn back.
Turkish proverb

I'm very happy with Evolution as long as I'm not using the Exchange
plug-in; all of the mail servers I use are IMAP now. Oh, there is one
issue that I've come across but I've never actually looked into it (only
happens on my work computer, so I haven't taken the time to do it). On
one (out of two) IMAP accounts in Evo I have to run the mail filters
manually...


--Tim
____________________________________________________________________
< Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in? >
--------------------------------------------------------------------
\
\ \
\ /\
( )
.( o ).

[Bastien Nocera]

On Thu, 2008-02-21 at 09:35 -0800, Timothy Selivanow wrote:
<snip>

Post by Timothy Selivanow
I'm very happy with Evolution as long as I'm not using the Exchange
plug-in; all of the mail servers I use are IMAP now. Oh, there is one
issue that I've come across but I've never actually looked into it (only
happens on my work computer, so I haven't taken the time to do it). On
one (out of two) IMAP accounts in Evo I have to run the mail filters
manually...

Could it be you didn't tick the box saying "Apply filters to new
messages in INBOX on this server" in the receiving options for that
account?

[Keith Sharp]

Post by Timothy Selivanow
I'm very happy with Evolution as long as I'm not using the Exchange
plug-in; all of the mail servers I use are IMAP now. Oh, there is one
issue that I've come across but I've never actually looked into it (only
happens on my work computer, so I haven't taken the time to do it). On
one (out of two) IMAP accounts in Evo I have to run the mail filters
manually...

Evolution decides which emails to filter based on the IMAP flags set by
the server (on a per message basis). Past versions have been very
strict about what combination of flags were needed before filtering
would take place. Evolutions combination of flags was different to
those required by Thunderbird, so it appeared that Evolution was
failing.

This has been changed in the development version of Evolution, and its
behaviour should be much closer to Thunderbird. There is a bug in the
GNOME bugzilla to track this:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=324804

Keith.

[Timothy Selivanow]

Post by Keith Sharp

Post by Timothy Selivanow
I'm very happy with Evolution as long as I'm not using the Exchange
plug-in; all of the mail servers I use are IMAP now. Oh, there is one
issue that I've come across but I've never actually looked into it (only
happens on my work computer, so I haven't taken the time to do it). On
one (out of two) IMAP accounts in Evo I have to run the mail filters
manually...

Evolution decides which emails to filter based on the IMAP flags set by
the server (on a per message basis). Past versions have been very
strict about what combination of flags were needed before filtering
would take place. Evolutions combination of flags was different to
those required by Thunderbird, so it appeared that Evolution was
failing.
This has been changed in the development version of Evolution, and its
behaviour should be much closer to Thunderbird. There is a bug in the
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=324804
Keith.

Neat! I await the new version then.

On a related note, anybody have an idea on how the native MAPI work is
progressing on the Exchange plug-in? While I would love my work to not
use Exchange...it's not really an option at the moment (needs a
seriously convincing tech before this could be considered politically ;)


--Tim
______________________________________________
/ When it's dark enough you can see the stars. \
\ -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, /
----------------------------------------------
\
\ \
\ /\
( )
.( o ).

[Keith Sharp]

Post by Timothy Selivanow
On a related note, anybody have an idea on how the native MAPI work is
progressing on the Exchange plug-in? While I would love my work to not
use Exchange...it's not really an option at the moment (needs a
seriously convincing tech before this could be considered politically ;)

It seems to be progressing. You should sign up for the
evolution-hackers mailing list, it's quite low volume but there is some
discussion of the MAPI plugin:

http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-hackers

In particular, there are testing RPMs available for OpenSUSE which you
might be able to use directly, or rebuild for Fedora. See the message:

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/evolution-hackers/2008-January/msg00035.html

You might even persuade one of the Fedora Evolution maintainers to put
something together for testing in their copious spare time... :-)

Keith.

[Bastien Nocera]

On Thu, 2008-02-21 at 09:35 -0800, Timothy Selivanow wrote:
<snip>

Post by Timothy Selivanow
I'm very happy with Evolution as long as I'm not using the Exchange
plug-in; all of the mail servers I use are IMAP now. Oh, there is one
issue that I've come across but I've never actually looked into it (only
happens on my work computer, so I haven't taken the time to do it). On
one (out of two) IMAP accounts in Evo I have to run the mail filters
manually...

Could it be you didn't tick the box saying "Apply filters to new
messages in INBOX on this server" in the receiving options for that
account?

[Keith Sharp]

Post by Timothy Selivanow
I'm very happy with Evolution as long as I'm not using the Exchange
plug-in; all of the mail servers I use are IMAP now. Oh, there is one
issue that I've come across but I've never actually looked into it (only
happens on my work computer, so I haven't taken the time to do it). On
one (out of two) IMAP accounts in Evo I have to run the mail filters
manually...

Evolution decides which emails to filter based on the IMAP flags set by
the server (on a per message basis). Past versions have been very
strict about what combination of flags were needed before filtering
would take place. Evolutions combination of flags was different to
those required by Thunderbird, so it appeared that Evolution was
failing.

This has been changed in the development version of Evolution, and its
behaviour should be much closer to Thunderbird. There is a bug in the
GNOME bugzilla to track this:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=324804

Keith.

[Benny Amorsen]

Post by Tomas Mraz
How much Evolution crashes highly depends on the usage patterns. For me
it almost completely stopped crashing after upgrade to Fedora 8. Not
that it is without other annoying problems but as for crashing it is
fine with my usage patterns.

Add the Exchange Connector and Evolution is hopelessly useless
(frequent crashes, eventually a crash per email sent). It got even
worse in Fedora 8 than it was in 7. It's so bad that I've switched to
Outlook on a Windows Terminal Server.

That of course isn't an argument that Thunderbird is better, because
Thunderbird doesn't have an Exchange connector at all. Also, it isn't
particularly new that it's difficult for free software to work with
undocumented proprietary protocols. If only there was a replacement
for Exchange with a good Linux and Windows client (web applications
don't cut it and shared calendars are a must).


/Benny

[Timothy Selivanow]

Post by Tomas Mraz

Post by John Dennis
All MUA's suck, it's just a question of which sucks less for a given
user/task.
Between Evolution and Thunderbird I think Evolution is the clear winner
in terms of functionality and usability. The problem with Evolution is
its the most bug-ridden application I've ever used (Matt has been doing
a wonderful job of trying to fix things but it might be a losing
battle). When Evolution crashes/hangs finally pissed me off enough last
year I switched to Thunderbird. There are a *lot* of things about
Thunderbird I don't like, but it has one attribute I can't live without,
it doesn't hang or crash on a regular basis, so I'm now a reluctant TB user.

How much Evolution crashes highly depends on the usage patterns. For me
it almost completely stopped crashing after upgrade to Fedora 8. Not
that it is without other annoying problems but as for crashing it is
fine with my usage patterns.
--
Tomas Mraz
No matter how far down the wrong road you've gone, turn back.
Turkish proverb

I'm very happy with Evolution as long as I'm not using the Exchange
plug-in; all of the mail servers I use are IMAP now. Oh, there is one
issue that I've come across but I've never actually looked into it (only
happens on my work computer, so I haven't taken the time to do it). On
one (out of two) IMAP accounts in Evo I have to run the mail filters
manually...


--Tim
____________________________________________________________________
< Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in? >
--------------------------------------------------------------------
\
\ \
\ /\
( )
.( o ).

[Benny Amorsen]

Post by Tomas Mraz
How much Evolution crashes highly depends on the usage patterns. For me
it almost completely stopped crashing after upgrade to Fedora 8. Not
that it is without other annoying problems but as for crashing it is
fine with my usage patterns.

Add the Exchange Connector and Evolution is hopelessly useless
(frequent crashes, eventually a crash per email sent). It got even
worse in Fedora 8 than it was in 7. It's so bad that I've switched to
Outlook on a Windows Terminal Server.

That of course isn't an argument that Thunderbird is better, because
Thunderbird doesn't have an Exchange connector at all. Also, it isn't
particularly new that it's difficult for free software to work with
undocumented proprietary protocols. If only there was a replacement
for Exchange with a good Linux and Windows client (web applications
don't cut it and shared calendars are a must).


/Benny

[Matthew Barnes]

The problem with Evolution is its the most bug-ridden application I've
ever used (Matt has been doing a wonderful job of trying to fix things
but it might be a losing battle).

I need to give props to Milan Crha, who we hired recently to help out
with Evolution support. Milan has proven to be a bug-fixing ninja,
cranking out patches at an unheard of rate. He's been a very valuable
asset in stabilizing recent versions.

But yeah, it continues to be an uphill battle.

Matthew Barnes

[Tomas Mraz]

Post by John Dennis
All MUA's suck, it's just a question of which sucks less for a given
user/task.
Between Evolution and Thunderbird I think Evolution is the clear winner
in terms of functionality and usability. The problem with Evolution is
its the most bug-ridden application I've ever used (Matt has been doing
a wonderful job of trying to fix things but it might be a losing
battle). When Evolution crashes/hangs finally pissed me off enough last
year I switched to Thunderbird. There are a *lot* of things about
Thunderbird I don't like, but it has one attribute I can't live without,
it doesn't hang or crash on a regular basis, so I'm now a reluctant TB user.

How much Evolution crashes highly depends on the usage patterns. For me
it almost completely stopped crashing after upgrade to Fedora 8. Not
that it is without other annoying problems but as for crashing it is
fine with my usage patterns.

[Matthew Barnes]

The problem with Evolution is its the most bug-ridden application I've
ever used (Matt has been doing a wonderful job of trying to fix things
but it might be a losing battle).

I need to give props to Milan Crha, who we hired recently to help out
with Evolution support. Milan has proven to be a bug-fixing ninja,
cranking out patches at an unheard of rate. He's been a very valuable
asset in stabilizing recent versions.

But yeah, it continues to be an uphill battle.

Matthew Barnes

[Christopher Aillon]

Post by Jens Petersen
I am writing this mail as a long time Fedora user, not so much as a
Fedora developer, so feel free to flame away, etc: though I am not
really trying to start painful flame-war here...
For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA). I was a long time
user of Emacs MUAs, so I feel my background is fairly neutral - but I
have never been able to use Evolution for long. These days I use
Thunderbird since alas I gradually found Emacs too slow for imap. I am
not married to Thunderbird but it mostly does what I want it and it is
pretty stable at least.
So what are the arguments for keeping Evolution as the default Mail
application in Fedora? This question seems particularly relevant now
with things like the Lightning calendar extension and the launch of
Mozilla Messaging. Evolution is different enough from regular GNOME
applications to be basically a different platform, and from the
development point of view it is expensive to have another platform to
maintain.

There is no clear winner. You will find a lot of people that want
Thunderbird as the default client. You will also find just as many
people who want Evolution as the default. Changing to please half the
people while pissing off the other half doesn't make sense.

[Pete Zaitcev]

Post by Jens Petersen
For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA).

IIRC it was a Havoc's decree, together with the attempt to hoist
Epiphany upon us as a part of the over-arching Open Source Architecture.
The main merit of Evo is the integration with calendaring and LDAP.

Post by Jens Petersen
So what are the arguments for keeping Evolution as the default Mail
application in Fedora? This question seems particularly relevant now
with things like the Lightning calendar extension and the launch of
Mozilla Messaging.

Let's see if it moves beyond words. Several fractions tug onto
the Thunderbird's feathers. If it turns into an all-integrating
bloat monster, might as well keep Evo.

I use Sylpheed because it's the only mail client in existence never
to chew patches. Not arguing for making it default or anything,
but it's not all Evo all the time since we had Fedora Extras.

-- Pete

[Bryan Clark]

Post by Pete Zaitcev

Post by Jens Petersen
For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA).

IIRC it was a Havoc's decree, together with the attempt to hoist
Epiphany upon us as a part of the over-arching Open Source Architecture.
The main merit of Evo is the integration with calendaring and LDAP.

There was a long discussion about the default web browser with the
choices of Epiphany or Firefox and the decision for choosing Firefox
came from a number of factors beyond the OSA. There were customer
needs weighed against the best browser for our users, weighed against
the amount of developer resources needed to maintain either choice.
Ultimately the decision fell to Firefox, at the time I wasn't in
agreement with that decision but it was made using the correct data
and feedback; now I completely agree it was the correct choice.
Though ephy was my first love...

And at the time of that decision Havoc spelled out this future in an
eerie prophetic tone about how a future email fight will come sometime
after this web browser fight. Welcome to the future!

Post by Pete Zaitcev

Post by Jens Petersen
So what are the arguments for keeping Evolution as the default Mail
application in Fedora? This question seems particularly relevant now
with things like the Lightning calendar extension and the launch of
Mozilla Messaging.

Let's see if it moves beyond words. Several fractions tug onto
the Thunderbird's feathers. If it turns into an all-integrating
bloat monster, might as well keep Evo.

Watching this thread and knowing both email clients fairly well I'd
have to say that consensus seems split and changing a default is a
tough uphill battle. There needs to be a significant enough
difference between the old default application and the new default for
the switch to be worthwhile. It would probably be good for the new
default to have a system for converting people from the old default,
not that we did that for epiphany to firefox...

Here's how I'd sum up the situation. There are lots of different bugs
and issues in both apps, t-bird has an advantage of being cross
platform so there little learning curve and recognition for people
coming from other OSes (this is a often a large boost for firefox).
Evolution has the advantage of being better integrated into GNOME with
the contacts applet, calendar, and other apps that use the data-server
component as well as a fully integrated calendaring system. Evo also
has an exchange connector which makes it attractive to companies
running an exchange server with a linux client.

Since bugs will always be present and should be reported in bug
trackers instead of on mailing lists so we need to ignore that in this
kind of decision making. Thus in my mind TB would have to at least
offer integration points to the desktop similar or better than
evo-data-server does now; i'm hopeful this can happen. As for the
exchange connector I'm not so hopeful for that, but who knows. An evo
question might then be around working windows and mac clients such
that users could switch to a linux desktop with some recognition and a
low learning curve; i'm not so hopeful this will happen. But I'm
wrong all the time and the future is far away! So lets see what
happens to t-bird and evo in the future.

Post by Pete Zaitcev
I use Sylpheed because it's the only mail client in existence never
to chew patches. Not arguing for making it default or anything,
but it's not all Evo all the time since we had Fedora Extras.

I'm marking that down as an idea for a future thunderbird extension,
better patch handling. :)

~ Bryan

[Matthew Barnes]

Post by Bryan Clark
I'm marking that down as an idea for a future thunderbird extension,
better patch handling. :)

Same here for Evolution. :)

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Post by Bryan Clark
Since bugs will always be present and should be reported in bug
trackers instead of on mailing lists so we need to ignore that in this
kind of decision making.

I was persuaded by this argument at one time but my own experience with
other projects has led me to a slight modification of it. All software
has bugs and missing features, true, but how quickly fixes and
enhancements will be created or merged by upstream (depending on how
much development you/your project can spend on it) is a huge factor in
these decisions. Unresponsive or resistant upstreams can ruin an
otherwise decent piece of software.

Which of the upstream projects is worse^Wbetter in this regard is, of
course, open for debate.

-Toshio

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[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

Post by Bryan Clark
An evo
question might then be around working windows and mac clients such
that users could switch to a linux desktop with some recognition and a
low learning curve; i'm not so hopeful this will happen.

The Win32 port is mostly-working[1] but a bit out of date, and an OS X
port just needs a native Quartz GTK+[2], also almost there.

[1] http://evolution-win32.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://developer.imendio.com/projects/gtk-macosx
--
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazqueznet at gmail.com>

PLEASE don't CC me; I'm already subscribed
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[Matej Cepl]

Post by Bryan Clark

Post by Pete Zaitcev
I use Sylpheed because it's the only mail client in existence
never to chew patches. Not arguing for making it default or
anything, but it's not all Evo all the time since we had
Fedora Extras.

I'm marking that down as an idea for a future thunderbird extension,
better patch handling. :)

More information on http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/12/27/191 and
http://mbligh.org/linuxdocs/Email/Clients/Thunderbird

Mat?j

[Matthew Barnes]

Post by Bryan Clark
I'm marking that down as an idea for a future thunderbird extension,
better patch handling. :)

Same here for Evolution. :)

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Post by Bryan Clark
Since bugs will always be present and should be reported in bug
trackers instead of on mailing lists so we need to ignore that in this
kind of decision making.

I was persuaded by this argument at one time but my own experience with
other projects has led me to a slight modification of it. All software
has bugs and missing features, true, but how quickly fixes and
enhancements will be created or merged by upstream (depending on how
much development you/your project can spend on it) is a huge factor in
these decisions. Unresponsive or resistant upstreams can ruin an
otherwise decent piece of software.

Which of the upstream projects is worse^Wbetter in this regard is, of
course, open for debate.

-Toshio

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[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

Post by Bryan Clark
An evo
question might then be around working windows and mac clients such
that users could switch to a linux desktop with some recognition and a
low learning curve; i'm not so hopeful this will happen.

The Win32 port is mostly-working[1] but a bit out of date, and an OS X
port just needs a native Quartz GTK+[2], also almost there.

[1] http://evolution-win32.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://developer.imendio.com/projects/gtk-macosx
--
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazqueznet at gmail.com>

PLEASE don't CC me; I'm already subscribed
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[Bryan Clark]

Post by Pete Zaitcev

Post by Jens Petersen
For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA).

IIRC it was a Havoc's decree, together with the attempt to hoist
Epiphany upon us as a part of the over-arching Open Source Architecture.
The main merit of Evo is the integration with calendaring and LDAP.

There was a long discussion about the default web browser with the
choices of Epiphany or Firefox and the decision for choosing Firefox
came from a number of factors beyond the OSA. There were customer
needs weighed against the best browser for our users, weighed against
the amount of developer resources needed to maintain either choice.
Ultimately the decision fell to Firefox, at the time I wasn't in
agreement with that decision but it was made using the correct data
and feedback; now I completely agree it was the correct choice.
Though ephy was my first love...

And at the time of that decision Havoc spelled out this future in an
eerie prophetic tone about how a future email fight will come sometime
after this web browser fight. Welcome to the future!

Post by Pete Zaitcev

Post by Jens Petersen
So what are the arguments for keeping Evolution as the default Mail
application in Fedora? This question seems particularly relevant now
with things like the Lightning calendar extension and the launch of
Mozilla Messaging.

Let's see if it moves beyond words. Several fractions tug onto
the Thunderbird's feathers. If it turns into an all-integrating
bloat monster, might as well keep Evo.

Watching this thread and knowing both email clients fairly well I'd
have to say that consensus seems split and changing a default is a
tough uphill battle. There needs to be a significant enough
difference between the old default application and the new default for
the switch to be worthwhile. It would probably be good for the new
default to have a system for converting people from the old default,
not that we did that for epiphany to firefox...

Here's how I'd sum up the situation. There are lots of different bugs
and issues in both apps, t-bird has an advantage of being cross
platform so there little learning curve and recognition for people
coming from other OSes (this is a often a large boost for firefox).
Evolution has the advantage of being better integrated into GNOME with
the contacts applet, calendar, and other apps that use the data-server
component as well as a fully integrated calendaring system. Evo also
has an exchange connector which makes it attractive to companies
running an exchange server with a linux client.

Since bugs will always be present and should be reported in bug
trackers instead of on mailing lists so we need to ignore that in this
kind of decision making. Thus in my mind TB would have to at least
offer integration points to the desktop similar or better than
evo-data-server does now; i'm hopeful this can happen. As for the
exchange connector I'm not so hopeful for that, but who knows. An evo
question might then be around working windows and mac clients such
that users could switch to a linux desktop with some recognition and a
low learning curve; i'm not so hopeful this will happen. But I'm
wrong all the time and the future is far away! So lets see what
happens to t-bird and evo in the future.

Post by Pete Zaitcev
I use Sylpheed because it's the only mail client in existence never
to chew patches. Not arguing for making it default or anything,
but it's not all Evo all the time since we had Fedora Extras.

I'm marking that down as an idea for a future thunderbird extension,
better patch handling. :)

~ Bryan

[Jens Petersen]

I am writing this mail as a long time Fedora user, not so much as a
Fedora developer, so feel free to flame away, etc: though I am not
really trying to start painful flame-war here...

For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA). I was a long time
user of Emacs MUAs, so I feel my background is fairly neutral - but I
have never been able to use Evolution for long. These days I use
Thunderbird since alas I gradually found Emacs too slow for imap. I am
not married to Thunderbird but it mostly does what I want it and it is
pretty stable at least.

So what are the arguments for keeping Evolution as the default Mail
application in Fedora? This question seems particularly relevant now
with things like the Lightning calendar extension and the launch of
Mozilla Messaging. Evolution is different enough from regular GNOME
applications to be basically a different platform, and from the
development point of view it is expensive to have another platform to
maintain.

[Matthias Clasen]

Post by Jens Petersen
I am writing this mail as a long time Fedora user, not so much as a
Fedora developer, so feel free to flame away, etc: though I am not
really trying to start painful flame-war here...
For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA). I was a long time
user of Emacs MUAs, so I feel my background is fairly neutral - but I
have never been able to use Evolution for long. These days I use
Thunderbird since alas I gradually found Emacs too slow for imap. I am
not married to Thunderbird but it mostly does what I want it and it is
pretty stable at least

Anecdotal evidence... here is some anecdotal counter-evicence: I've used
Emacs MUAs in the past too, but have been using Evolution without any
big issues for many years now. And in my experience, people who tend to
have a problem with their mail client switch from evo to thunderbird and
back in quick succession, because the alternative is even worse...

Post by Jens Petersen
So what are the arguments for keeping Evolution as the default Mail
application in Fedora? This question seems particularly relevant now
with things like the Lightning calendar extension and the launch of
Mozilla Messaging. Evolution is different enough from regular GNOME
applications to be basically a different platform, and from the
development point of view it is expensive to have another platform to
maintain.

I don't get this argument at all. How is Evolution being a different
platform a problem, but Thunderbird being even more different is not ?

Also, a backing organization is not necessarily a guarantee for a
successful mail client. Otherwise, we would all be using chandler by
now...


Matthias

[Matthew Barnes]

Evolution is different enough from regular GNOME applications to be
basically a different platform

Can you elaborate on this? Evolution is an official component of the
GNOME desktop so I don't understand what you mean by "regular GNOME
applications."

/me digs in for another round of Evolution bashing on fedora-devel.

Matthew Barnes

[Nicu Buculei]

This post might be inappropriate. Click to display it.

[Matej Cepl]

though I am not really trying to start painful flame-war
here...

Sorry, I don?t know how to say it nicely, so I will be just blunt
? there is no way how can I believe this sentence. I don?t mean
it badly ? a good flamewar from time to time makes things more
clear, but it is the flame if I ever saw one.

For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA). I was a long time
user of Emacs MUAs, so I feel my background is fairly neutral - but I
have never been able to use Evolution for long. These days I use
Thunderbird since alas I gradually found Emacs too slow for imap. I am
not married to Thunderbird but it mostly does what I want it and it is
pretty stable at least.

Aside from the obvious one (?It is the standard Gnome MUA?), you
mean? OK, I think to make a little sense of this argument, let?s
get to the common ground ? ?All mail clients suck. This one just
sucks less.? (http://www.mutt.org) What?s true about all mail
clients (and yes, mutt sucks too, but that?s for different
flamewar) is especially true for GUI MUAs.

I have in the past seven years used (aside from mutt and little
bit of pain) kmail, Thunderbird, Evolution, and in the last week
I needed to dip a little bit into claws-mail and sylpheed (I
prefer the latter, BTW). That IMHO means I have covered most of
what?s interesting in the world of Linux GUI MUAs (yes, I am
missing chandler and balsa; oh well). My conclusion? All of them
suck. A lot. And I mean it (Matthew, you are great!). I have no
idea, why we still don?t have at least one MUA which would suck
only as much as mutt does in non-GUI world, but we don?t.

Now, a little bit of reasons why I think Thunderbird is no better
than others. First of all, I certainly cannot confirm that
Thunderbird wouldn?t crash on me. It did and many times. Second,
in my past many attempts to use Netscape Messenger/Mozilla
Mail/Thunderbird I have actually incurred couple of times
a dataloss (which never happened with other MUA), which makes me
a little bit worried ? true, it hasn?t happened lately, so may be
Thunderbird is better IMAP client now, than it used to be, but it
certainly makes me worried.

Second, you mean you have tens of thousands of messages in IMAP
folders and you don?t care that your MUA hasn?t heard about
regexps? (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19442 the
bug was filed 1999 and there is still not attempt from TB folks
to solve it)

Third, another reason why Thunderbird seems to me a pitiful IMAP
client is that somehow it never heard about separate Trash folder
not being part of IMAP world
(https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=243075 and
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=359281).

Fourth, Reply-to-list feature ?
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45715 Thunderbird is
one of the reasons Red Hat internal mail lists are such mess as
they are, because everybody Reply-to-all.

Fifth, automatic messages archiving
? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=93094 You
shouldn?t have ten thousands of messages in your working folder
ever in the first place, because old messages should be
archived!

Sixth, its vfolders are just pityfull ? I suspect TB doesn?t
index the messages, so whenever you open vfolder it has to search
through all messages again and again.

I am not writing down these issue to say, that Evolution or any
other GUI MUA is better (actually, kmail doesn't fail on most of
these, but then vfolders in Evolution rock, and kmail is also
POP3 client learning IMAP ? special dIMAP account anyone?), just
that there are good reasons why Thunderbird is not that much
better than others, and there is no reason to incurr
non-negligible switching costs on our users (remember, most of
them probably use default MUA, just because it is default).

The second reason, why I put down this list is to show how old
some of these bugs are. OK, maybe regexps are questionable
feature in MUA (I would strongly disagree, but who am I), but not
being able to fix Reply-to-list for seven years, and ?Hide
deleted IMAP messages? for four years, shows questionable level
of support for the application which is in the core of
everything.

Happy flaming!

Matej

[John Dennis]

All MUA's suck, it's just a question of which sucks less for a given
user/task.

Between Evolution and Thunderbird I think Evolution is the clear winner
in terms of functionality and usability. The problem with Evolution is
its the most bug-ridden application I've ever used (Matt has been doing
a wonderful job of trying to fix things but it might be a losing
battle). When Evolution crashes/hangs finally pissed me off enough last
year I switched to Thunderbird. There are a *lot* of things about
Thunderbird I don't like, but it has one attribute I can't live without,
it doesn't hang or crash on a regular basis, so I'm now a reluctant TB user.

[Christopher Aillon]

Post by Jens Petersen
I am writing this mail as a long time Fedora user, not so much as a
Fedora developer, so feel free to flame away, etc: though I am not
really trying to start painful flame-war here...
For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA). I was a long time
user of Emacs MUAs, so I feel my background is fairly neutral - but I
have never been able to use Evolution for long. These days I use
Thunderbird since alas I gradually found Emacs too slow for imap. I am
not married to Thunderbird but it mostly does what I want it and it is
pretty stable at least.
So what are the arguments for keeping Evolution as the default Mail
application in Fedora? This question seems particularly relevant now
with things like the Lightning calendar extension and the launch of
Mozilla Messaging. Evolution is different enough from regular GNOME
applications to be basically a different platform, and from the
development point of view it is expensive to have another platform to
maintain.

There is no clear winner. You will find a lot of people that want
Thunderbird as the default client. You will also find just as many
people who want Evolution as the default. Changing to please half the
people while pissing off the other half doesn't make sense.

[Pete Zaitcev]

Post by Jens Petersen
For a long time (actually as long as I can remember;) I wondered why
Evolution was our default Mail application (MUA).

IIRC it was a Havoc's decree, together with the attempt to hoist
Epiphany upon us as a part of the over-arching Open Source Architecture.
The main merit of Evo is the integration with calendaring and LDAP.

Post by Jens Petersen
So what are the arguments for keeping Evolution as the default Mail
application in Fedora? This question seems particularly relevant now
with things like the Lightning calendar extension and the launch of
Mozilla Messaging.

Let's see if it moves beyond words. Several fractions tug onto
the Thunderbird's feathers. If it turns into an all-integrating
bloat monster, might as well keep Evo.

I use Sylpheed because it's the only mail client in existence never
to chew patches. Not arguing for making it default or anything,
but it's not all Evo all the time since we had Fedora Extras.

-- Pete