KMail vs. Evolution vs. Thunderbird?

Deemo asks: "I use Mozilla Thunderbird on the Windows machine. Recently I installed kUbuntu, on a separate computer. Since I'm using KDE, the obvious choice is to use KMail as my default mail application. However, I tend to like Evolution's interface better, and I like Thunderbird in general from extensive use of the Windows version. I was wondering what the advantages/disadvantages are of each, and which one Slashdot users recommend for everyday use."

In all honesty

[Universal Nerd]

It doesn't matter, as long as you like it.

I'm a thunderbird user. Not because it's better or cooler, it's the one I'm used to using and I like it.

If you like Evolution, good for you. If you like Kmail, good for you. If you like Outlook, gasp, good for you!

reasons I like kmail

[jdclucidly]

• when clicking on a link in an email, the MIME type is checked BEFORE deciding which application to launch
• identities (Work, Home, etc.) are kept separate from incoming and outgoing server profiles; this means that one can send mail as any identity regardless of the physical location of your laptop
• very complete GPG/MIME support and integration with KGPG
• when writing an email, if the word attach appears in the email, it will warn you if you didn't attach anything before you send it
• the email viewer has an *AWESOME* email structure viewer... you can see all the different pieces of how the email was assembled right next to your attachments
• a robust filtering system that, as of KDE 3.5, supports filtering in to IMAP folders
• complete integration with KAddressbook, KCalendar, todo lists, etc. (All can be embedded in Kontact)
• and last but not least it's STABLE... I've had so much trouble with the other two clients mentioned crashing and destroying data... in KMail all the data is stored in Maildir's plain text format and is accelerated by index files which allow for fast lookups and operations; even KAddressbook uses VCards to store the data... this makes me feel much safer about my data

None Of The Above. Webmail only.

[computersareevil]

I only use webmail because I can access all of my email from everywhere, and I never have to worry about duplicates updating many local clients, or which machine an email is on. But of course, now we have to argue over webmail clients. I use Horde IMP.

Use IMAP? Use KMail.

[gottabeme]

I used Tb for a long time, and I like it. But its IMAP support is not good at all. When I changed to another e-mail provider, still with IMAP, Tb would no longer download IMAP messages for offline use. I'd activate the function to download and sync e-mail folders, and it would always say that there were no new messages on the server, even though there were. When I went into offline mode, the messages weren't available. I tried making a new, clean profile, but it didn't fix it. (Tb 1.0.7/Debian, BTW.) It also would go into some sort of mode after leaving it running for a long time where trying to move or delete messages, or change folders, would do nothing. I'd have to restart Tb to fix it. Even when Tb was working properly, doing things like moving or deleting a message would block other mail operations until it sync'ed with the server.

Finally I had enough. I tried KMail. It has superb offline IMAP support: operations happen quickly and in the background, and are queued as well, letting me continue to do things while KMail syncs it. It has nice little features like automatically changing addresses from "someone at somewhere dot org" to "[e-mail]". It also seems faster than Tb.

I still like Tb; it has a good interface, and is pleasant to use. I will try 1.5 when it comes out. But I am also disappointed in the Tb's team not fixing old, simple, outstanding bugs that have been in the bug db for years. There are some important ones that are breaking Tb for people, but they don't seem to care. Those people would be glad to help test and debug...but the Tb team has more important things on their list, it seems.

So, I highly recommend KMail.

Re:It's very simple

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you think is in kdelibs? A mess of stuff for KDE....

Re:Use IMAP, try them all.

[Octorian]

I couldn't agree more with that suggestion.
For my mail server, I run IMAP (specifically Cyrus IMAPD) with server-side filtering rules (using sieve). These rules basically filter things caught by spamassassin and messages from mailing lists into their appropriate mail folters.

On the client side, I can use whatever the heck I want. I use KMail on my desktop, Mail.app on my laptop (it's a PowerBook), pine when I ssh in remotely, and RoundCube for Webmail (new AJAX thing, still heavily development/featureless, but very nice and clean look/feel).

It is so nice that my e-mail is not tied to my e-mail client in any way, shape, or form. :-)

I prefer KMail

[jgardn]

I've been using KMail for quite a while now. I don't clearly remember why I chose it above the alternatives. However, I believe it was a combination of the following things.

(1) KMail is mature. It can handle a variety of mail delivery systems properly. In particular, it handles my setup extremely well. (The others do equally well, however.)

(2) KMail integrates well into the KDE platform. If you're using KDE, you'll probably like KMail. If you're not, then it probably won't work for you.

(3) KMail seems to be snappier and less memory hungry than Evolution and Thunderbird. (I haven't used recent versions of Thunderbird, so this may not be true.)

(4) KMail handles HTML and Outlook mail reasonably well. It doesn't try to pressure me to use HTML format, but it does pretty well with it anyway.

(5) I tried for a while to use the command line MUAs. Mutt was my best fit, but it had weaknesses where KMail had strengths. I think KMail does a reasonable job of keeping the UNIX philosophy in that it doesn't try to do everything, just reading and delivering mail.

(6) KMail seems more intuitive. The keyboard settings seemed to fit my style, whereas the others don't quite match well.

(7) KMail has reasonable support for mailing lists. The others may have good support to, it's just that I haven't been able to get them to work together too well.

Ultimately, it comes down to choice. I don't expect many people to have similar experiences to mine.