On Friday 04 Jan 2013 23:47:22 Rodney Baker wrote:

Hi folks. Two questions for the group:

1. My main desktop machine is still running OS 11.4/KDE4.6.5/kernel 3.1.0

and is stable and fast. Apart from ongoing support, are there any COMPELLING reasons (features/usability/speed) that I should think about upgrading to 12.2/12.3?

(I never upgrade to .0 or .1 releases since there almost always seem to be bugs still being worked out in those releases).

2. Re KMail2, when I first tried it (when it was still in RC phase, I think,

and then again after its first release) it no longer sorted the "special folders" first in the folder list (i.e. Inbox, Sent, Trash, Drafts first, then the other folders in alpahbetical order) but instead sorted ALL folders in alphabetical order (at least, when using IMAP which is what I run at home); previously KMail sorted the folder list with the "special" folders first (which I find much more usable).

Has this been fixed, or made configurable, or is it still sorting the folders the "broken" way (IMHO)?

Any other "improvements" over KMail 1 (IMAP functionality is of particular importance)?

The "brokenness" of KMail 2 (compared to KMail 1.13x ) is one thing that stopped me upgrading KDE past 4.6.x. That and the need to delete KDE4's settings folder and recreate my desktop layout from scratch every time (to stop Plasma crashing) every time there was a major point release (e.g. 4.3 -> 4.4, 4.4 -> 4.5, 4.5 -> 4.6).

I am using kmail2. Why? . . . I don't know. In my opinion it is still a mess. However, my greatest frustration is receiving two copies of each message and having to remove duplicates each time I go in to a folder. It has been like this for ages, I was hoping that at least this would have been fixed, but I still get duplicate messages.

Don't know what others think but this is my experience.

Eddie

Thanks in advance for the feedback.

On 01/04/2013 09:17 PM, Rodney Baker wrote:

Hi folks. Two questions for the group:

1. My main desktop machine is still running OS 11.4/KDE4.6.5/kernel 3.1.0 and

is stable and fast. Apart from ongoing support, are there any COMPELLING reasons (features/usability/speed) that I should think about upgrading to 12.2/12.3?

(I never upgrade to .0 or .1 releases since there almost always seem to be bugs still being worked out in those releases).

2. Re KMail2, when I first tried it (when it was still in RC phase, I think,

and then again after its first release) it no longer sorted the "special folders" first in the folder list (i.e. Inbox, Sent, Trash, Drafts first, then the other folders in alpahbetical order) but instead sorted ALL folders in alphabetical order (at least, when using IMAP which is what I run at home); previously KMail sorted the folder list with the "special" folders first (which I find much more usable).

Has this been fixed, or made configurable, or is it still sorting the folders the "broken" way (IMHO)?

Any other "improvements" over KMail 1 (IMAP functionality is of particular importance)?

The "brokenness" of KMail 2 (compared to KMail 1.13x ) is one thing that stopped me upgrading KDE past 4.6.x. That and the need to delete KDE4's settings folder and recreate my desktop layout from scratch every time (to stop Plasma crashing) every time there was a major point release (e.g. 4.3 -> 4.4, 4.4 -> 4.5, 4.5 -> 4.6).

Thanks in advance for the feedback.

Can't answer number 1, except that I started with 11.4, upgraded to 12.1, and then 12.2. I am happiest now with 12.2. I also found a guide on the forums to setting up multimedia with packman and being able to play DVDs, and that made everything run more as I like it. I use my pc for work, not recreation, and I needed the multimedia setup in order to get things to run. I have now installed 12.2 on 3 of my own pc's, and on 4 other pc's used by other people, all with that same setup, and all are happy with it. I have some bugs I am still working out with booting, but I don't know for sure that I am dealing with an issue that has to do with 12.2.

As far as kmail2, I decided to try it with 12.2 on 2 of my computers. My desktop went smoother than my laptop, but I got both of them to work. I used kmail2 for about 2 months. It worked ok, but not as smoothly as thunderbird. The only feature that it has that I prefer over TB is the threaded by date view. Adding google calendar and google contacts was complicated, but it worked. However, somehow I got my google contacts all duplicated, and I had to delete my entire contact list and re-download from google. In order to do that I had to go through the complex setup to connect to google contacts again, which meant I had to look the procedure up on the web. I had fun making the switch the first time and setting everything up, but after that it became a chore.

The other problem I had with kmail was that it still took about 5 times longer to download all my emails than TB. It also would continue to sync and sync for several days. I use all IMAP emails and keep thousands of emails archived. TB had all the headers downloaded within just a few minutes, while kmail2 took about 3 days.

The last straw for me on kmail was that sometimes it would not connect to the smtp server, and so would leave important emails in my outbox. I would get a warning in the bottom corner of kmail, but did not notice that the emails had not sent until a week after or so when I happened to be looking at the outbox. Thunderbird's system is better in that it has a popup in your face telling you it didn't send. Also, TB never had a problem connecting, while kmail2 did. So I finally gave up on kmail and am going back to TB - it is just easier to not have the headache. Kmail works, but there is still some development it needs to make it more user-friendly. At least that is my opinion. Some people swear by kmail2, but I prefer TB.

HTH George

S

On Sat, 05 Jan 2013 02:17:22 Rodney Baker wrote:

...

2. Re KMail2, when I first tried it (when it was still in RC phase, I think,

and then again after its first release) it no longer sorted the "special folders" first in the folder list (i.e. Inbox, Sent, Trash, Drafts first, then the other folders in alpahbetical order) but instead sorted ALL folders in alphabetical order (at least, when using IMAP which is what I run at home); previously KMail sorted the folder list with the "special" folders first (which I find much more usable).

Has this been fixed, or made configurable, or is it still sorting the folders the "broken" way (IMHO)?

One way to deal with the special folders is put them in the favorites list.

Any other "improvements" over KMail 1 (IMAP functionality is of particular importance)?

The "brokenness" of KMail 2 (compared to KMail 1.13x ) is one thing that stopped me upgrading KDE past 4.6.x. ...

Back in 12.1 I found that kmail2 could not convert my mail directory. So I did as Graham Smith suggested, and ran an old kmail on 12.1 and then 12.2. I eventually found kmail openSUSE 4.4.10-3.2 to be OK and able to work with my existing kmail1 hierarchy - I've not dared try anything more up to date than that.

I'm currenty trying kmail2 in a vbox install of openSUSE to see if it has improved. I've found a safe way to convert old mail over is to use kmail1 to convert any mbox folders to maildir. Then I can copy the folder hierachy over to my vbox and import it using the import kmail-hierarchy option. All mail was imported unread - had to shift-click select bunches of folders and mark all contents as read. When kmail2 performs some long operations there is sometimes no indication except a hang. It appears slow, but that may be the VM. Personally, from what I seen so far, I may hold off for 12.3's kmail and revisit then.

In the long term if kmail1 continues to have a following, I may just step back to that.

Michael