I seriously want to use something like Thunderbird, especially since mail/calendar is one of the main blockers to my using Linux, but I don’t understand what anyone uses it with. What email provider and protocol are you all using with it? Does everyone use it with gmail?
The lack of Exchange support is what keeps me from switching and every Exchange-supporting client on Linux seems to be abandonware (eg Hiri/Mailspring). I’m not willing to switch to gmail.
The lack of Exchange support is what keeps me from switching and every Exchange-supporting client on Linux seems to be abandonware (eg Hiri/Mailspring).
For many years, I use DavMail + Thunderbird to address the same use-case of yours, and it works flawlessly. DavMail even provides a step-by-step documentation on how to set it up with Thunderbird.
Works for me, with Gmail, Hotmail, AOL Mail, Yahoo Mail, and in $JOB-1, with Office365, and with Novell Groupwise. Of course it also works with every FOSS POP3/IMAP combo I’ve ever thrown it at.
I tried over a dozen FOSS mail clients when I started at $JOB-1. The only one I stuck with for more than a few days was CLAWS, but its single-threading became a deal-breaker. I went back to Thunderbird and I still use it today, as I have for most of the time it’s existed as a standalone product.
The lack of Exchange support is what keeps me from switching and every Exchange-supporting client on Linux seems to be abandonware (eg Hiri/Mailspring). I’m not willing to switch to gmail.
Evolution is the only Exchange client on Linux that works for me. It’s pretty OK, though I’ve had issues with 365 authentication.
Does it still randomly freeze on Windows? I think it’s doing blocking file I/O on the main thread, so when the AV decides to scan a file, it pauses. This is better if you use Maildir than mbox (I think mbox is still the default and there’s no mbox -> Maildir transition tool, you need to delete your account, change a setting, and recreate the account), because the AV process doesn’t need to re-scan a large file every time an email is appended, it just needs to scan the new email files (which it can do in parallel on a multithreaded system).
Thanks, I’ll try that. It’s worth noting that the current settings interface looks absolutely nothing like the pictures in that article and the option is now in Tools -> Preferences -> Security and Privacy, somewhere near the bottom.
Sorry, I didn’t check that the article was up-to-date! I just remembered that I used to have exactly the problem that you described and that setting fixed it.
I seriously want to use something like Thunderbird, especially since mail/calendar is one of the main blockers to my using Linux, but I don’t understand what anyone uses it with. What email provider and protocol are you all using with it? Does everyone use it with gmail?
The lack of Exchange support is what keeps me from switching and every Exchange-supporting client on Linux seems to be abandonware (eg Hiri/Mailspring). I’m not willing to switch to gmail.
Works with any decent IMAP server as far as I know, including Outlook.
For many years, I use DavMail + Thunderbird to address the same use-case of yours, and it works flawlessly. DavMail even provides a step-by-step documentation on how to set it up with Thunderbird.
Works great with Fastmail including calendar
Migadu
I’m using it with OpenSMTPD and Dovecot. Not using the calendar.
Works for me, with Gmail, Hotmail, AOL Mail, Yahoo Mail, and in $JOB-1, with Office365, and with Novell Groupwise. Of course it also works with every FOSS POP3/IMAP combo I’ve ever thrown it at.
I tried over a dozen FOSS mail clients when I started at $JOB-1. The only one I stuck with for more than a few days was CLAWS, but its single-threading became a deal-breaker. I went back to Thunderbird and I still use it today, as I have for most of the time it’s existed as a standalone product.
On which note, I’d post my review from the Register when it goes live (any minute now), but AFAICT Lobste.rs still bans the Reg.
As that is $JOB, this makes me sad.
the irony of a tech site banning the reg! sad state of affairs indeed :(
I agree.
OTOH, although I do want feedback and discussion, I also do not want to spam people with self-promotion. :-/
Some of my stories have done very well on The Orange Site and on Slashdot, so it’s all good, I suppose.
Doesn’t Evolution have good EWS and MAPI support?
Thunderbird supports Exchange with a plugin. It is “paid”, but trivial to circumvent by extracting the extension.
Evolution is the only Exchange client on Linux that works for me. It’s pretty OK, though I’ve had issues with 365 authentication.
Does it still randomly freeze on Windows? I think it’s doing blocking file I/O on the main thread, so when the AV decides to scan a file, it pauses. This is better if you use Maildir than mbox (I think mbox is still the default and there’s no mbox -> Maildir transition tool, you need to delete your account, change a setting, and recreate the account), because the AV process doesn’t need to re-scan a large file every time an email is appended, it just needs to scan the new email files (which it can do in parallel on a multithreaded system).
There’s no need to delete and recreate your account: in the Security settings, there’s an Antivirus tab with an option to “Allow antivirus clients to quarantine individual incoming messages”. Enabling that fixed the freezing problem for me.
Thanks, I’ll try that. It’s worth noting that the current settings interface looks absolutely nothing like the pictures in that article and the option is now in Tools -> Preferences -> Security and Privacy, somewhere near the bottom.
Sorry, I didn’t check that the article was up-to-date! I just remembered that I used to have exactly the problem that you described and that setting fixed it.
Yep, I have to restart on Windows regularly. It doesn’t freeze it just stops checking mail in all accounts.
Been using it for 15 years and only been experiencing random freezes and slowness on Linux, so no idea how to answer that.