Why I (almost) stayed with KMail

Sat Jun 30 09:14:18 BST 2012

Am 30.06.2012 09:43, schrieb Jörg Stadermann:
> Here's how I migrated away from kmail and why I almost failed:
> 
> Man, what a sorry state today's email clients are in. How long is
> email around, 30 years? It seems, most modern clients still assume that
> you receive about 10 mail per day and that your folder structure
> is as complex as inbox and one or two additional folders. I guess
> that's because that what used to be email conversation has shifted more
> and more to facebook, twitter and the like. But let's start from the
> beginning: My distro (Slackware) stayed with kde 4.4 quite long,
> except some minor annoyances Kdepim did a good job for me and
> since I'm a long time kde user I saw no real reason to use
> something else. Recently .Slackware (in current) switched to 4.8
> and I faithfully upgraded, since I never had major problems with
> kde.  Now akonadi managed my mail and suddenly I could understand
> all the moaning in forums and lists. Mind you, the conversion
> went smooth and I still think that akonadi is not such a bad idea
> as long as we're talking about unifying resources, but the whole kmal2
> experience became rather unpleasant. And that I was forced to use
> kwallet is a no-go. After I had my share of "akonadi_resource_bla
> is offline" and "Please wait, searching folder content" I
> decided, it was time to leave. So long and thank you for the fish.
> 
> The first step was to move my mail. Since I wanted to check
> several mail clients, the natural choice was IMAP. Surprisingly
> enough, kmail did a good job moving my 10,000+ mails to my
> provider's server. I have 5GB mail space, so no sweat. Filtering 
> incoming mails to folders is done on the server, but I need some
> post-processing, like folder-dependent handling of mails, based
> on age or sender, a job kmail did quite well. 
> 
> Next step was collecting a list of potential replacements for
> kmail, preferably with PIM features, but that was not mandatory.
> So I came up with Thunderbird (the obvious candidate),  Mutt,
> Zimbra (just to check) and claws-mail. Evolution is not an
> option, because Slackware does not include Gnome. The first I checked
> was Thunderbird 13.01. Wow, that was funny: I use Thunderbird quite
> often as a quick and dirty way to check my emails from MS computers,
> because it's easy to setup and easy to remove after use, but that
> was completely different now, first it's rather slow with IMAP,
> second  it's ugly and third it's mail management is really
> limited. I.e. to convince Thunderbird to check all folders for new
> mail, I had to tweak about:config. I guess thers's probably an
> option in the config dialogs, but I couldn't find it. But the
> real show stopper was the folder management. There are options
> for encoding and syncing and quotas, but processing  mails by
> status is limited to age and actions are limited to delete or not
> delete. Something like in kmail, "Move messages older than 30
> days to archive" is simply not possible. Use filters, I hear you
> say. Yeah, good idea, but here's the catch: Thunderbird can do
> automatic filtering only on incoming mails! Filters on mails in
> folders have to be applied manually. At that point, I decided
> Thunderbird is not for me. Why is this thing so popular, even in
> business environments? It's a toy, not more.

Na, thunderbird is more than a toy. The basic functions in TBird are
limited, but that's what add-ons are for. These automatic filter stuff
on folders (not as great as kmails) is hidden in an additional add-on
called "Folder Account".

I had the same problem like many others. Additionally I have to support
windows users and I have a central PIM server (SOGo btw.). There are not
that much mail clients out there supporting all this. Currently I use
Thunderbird for this but I test kmail every now and then. After having
many problems with the first official release (minor problems as
timeouts, but major as several mail losses as well) the recent kmail2 is
quite OK. I think the kmail2 in 4.9 Release will be as good as the old
kmail1 was/is.

> 
> Next try, Mutt: I always liked Mutt, probably because of the
> challenge, but it became apparent very quickly,  that it would
> need a lot of effort, getting Mutt fit for today's email
> requirements. Not the processing but the displaying of messages is
> the problem. Nowadays people tend to sent emails in all kind of
> formats with all kind of attached media and you want to see that
> stuff right away. I'm sure Mutt can do this, but currently the effort is
> too big for me. 

Mutt is nice if you have a command line only. But not a mail client you
can give an inexperienced user.

> 
> Zimbra: Next one. No, seriously, what's that supposed to be. I
> guess there's some vision behind, but I don't get it.
> 
> At this point desperation set in. It seemed , there wasn't a
> feasible replacement for kmail, which would suit my needs.
> 
> Enter claws-mails: It's not pretty, some of it's configuration
> seems a bit odd, PIM  is limited to a vCalendar-plugin, but it's
> doing the job. There's nothing I did in kmail I can't do in
> claws-mail and I guess there are a lot of things it can do that
> kmail doesn't. And yes, you can use vim as editor ;-)
> 
> It seems claws-mail, mutt and probably Evolution are the only
> programs able to handle complex mail requirements. Kmail
> could be in that list, if it wasn't for it's present shape.
> 
> So if you're looking for a kmail replacement, have a look at
> claws-mail. For me it seems to be the best option for kmail power
> users.

I tried claws-mail once (due to a database problem in thunderbirds
internal cache I saw no mails and addresses - yes, other programs have
similar problems as kmail has/had) but its interface was way to
cluttered for me. I need PIM integration (is limited in claws at best)
and I have inexperienced users (linux and windows). But every now and
then I test other mail clients. May be it is time to check claws mail again.

Martin

> 
> Joerg
> 
> 
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