On Monday 30 December 2002 4:33 am, p p wrote:
This might lead to flaming war here, but despite that I'd like to know suggestions for good email-client software... [...]
I've been using "Kmail" for a couple of months now (btw: switched from outlook2000 on windows to linux; just for "frame of reference" :) ) Seems decent enough; has a minor nit if you try to use something like spamassassin with it [more on that in a moment] and suits most of your needs:
needed: -light
so far as I know, yes -- checking... tom@bigbro:/opt/kde3/bin> l kmail* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1749928 2002-10-09 17:00 kmail* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 130020 2002-09-10 16:16 kmailcvt* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4288 2002-09-10 15:21 kmailservice* raw file sizes are decent; background files include things like icons, help files, etc., and are found under /opt/kde[23]/share/apps/kmail
-graphical (my girlfriend also has to use that....)
begins with "k" -- just about goes without saying this is "KDE" based... :)
-can handle many imap accouts (no other protocols needed)
handles imap (unfortunately my ISP switched AWAY from imap recently -- grrr)
-no need for news-group ability
none included [otoh, "knode" does the newsgroup stuff]
-can handle mail-threads
yup
-light
black text on a white background is pretty "light" :)
-for linux of course !
would I be posting here if it weren't?
-free
comes as part of the KDE package; meaning it is already included on many distro's
Thanks,
now for the niggles & nits: * setting up filters is a "single dialog" instead of a "wizard series of dialogs". This is an extremely trivial nit, just included as an example of how trivial the "differences" between something like outlook and kmail are... * spamassassin: initially, I set up spamassassin to be called as a filter rule [plus side of kmail filters over outlook: can run external programs to "process" a message] Unfortunately, spamassassin is a pig [interpreted perl script, as I remember; means firing up the interpreter for each message; initializing "perl" environment; initing spamassassin; etc.] Fortunately I found a way to speed this up somewhat [spamassassin can run "as a daemon", so it "always stays running" -- drops the "cost" of firing up perl several times a second...] BUT this still wasn't enough. The "problem" with using external programs & kmail is that kmail COMPLETELY BLOCKS while an external program is running. This lead to a couple of interesting anomolies: -- typing in messages would routinely "hang" as the background process(es) were fired off; you *could* continue typing [blind] and when the download was complete it would "fill in" everything you typed [typo's and all...] -- my ISP would drop the connection if my "client" took too long to process messages [i.e., if I wasn't picking up a message or issueing a command at least once every 15 seconds, well...] This is only mildy annoying as I would have to keep clicking on "download messages" button [I wound up playing Eric's Ultimate solitaire while waiting for things to "download and process"] I've since turned off the spamassassin checking as a "perform on download" rule, but left it as a "perform on demand" rule. most of my other rules move messages from lists like this one to their own folder [which, btw, kmail has features designed specifically for dealing with lists...] and the amount of "spam" I'm getting from "lists" is darned near zero -- as a result, the only thing "left in my inbox" is spam -- I can "manually clean that up" fairly fast ['del' deletes the item, 'right-arrow' moves to the next message in the case when the message is not spam, like a personal reply from a list...] If I've left my computer off for a day or more, I'll fire it up and download the several HUNDRED waiting messages [really!] and after the move-to-list rules are done, I'll be left with maybe 20-80 "most likely spam" messages in my inbox -- I can highlight those and click "apply filter" and away it goes... [spamassassin is explicitly run in this case] my next step in the whole saga is to use fetchmail to retrieve messages from my isp; spamassassin to process them "outside" of kmail, and kmail would then pick up "locally" instead of "from my isp" -- this way I'll never even see the spam