On Mon, 30 Dec 2002 14:33:06 +0200 p p <tuxnduke@welho.com> wrote:

This might lead to flaming war here, but despite that I'd like to know suggestions for good email-client software...

I have used mozilla -mail, but it is really heavy, though I like it's user-interface and features, possible to handle many accounts, hendling attachments, integration to browser sometimes speeds things up etc

I'd like to know what other good, stable graphical app thera are?

needed: -light -graphical (my girlfriend also has to use that....) -can handle many imap accouts (no other protocols needed) -no need for news-group ability -can handle mail-threads -light

-for linux of course ! -free

Sylpheed is good for the above and it's light and fast. -- use Perl; #powerful programmable prestidigitation

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