I just can’t find a decent email client that looks like it’s from the last 20 years. Geary and Evolution both appear to be pretty modern but something about using Gmail with a Yubikey just doesn’t work and neither of them will connect to my account. Both on Fedora and OpenSUSE. Thunderbird works but it’s so old fashioned and Betterbird doesn’t look much better. What’s everyone else using?
Proton web and Android app
I’m using Thunderbird.
On my work computers, I don’t want the email to be stored locally (since they back up the entire system to the cloud for retention and compliance purposes), so I’m using Roundcube hosted on the email server itself. I self-host my email server.
I was using Thunderbird, but I have had a number of issues with it. Crashing seems to happen whether I use the Flatpak or install from AUR.
I have switched back to using web clients for my mail for the time being.
I’m using it on Windows at work and I was also surprised how often it just gets stuck. Deleting the database did help for some time, but then it came back every time I’m sending an email.
Why do you install Thunderbird from the AUR? It’s available on the official repository in Archlinux repos (and all distros based on). And updates are extremely quick. Can’t say anything about the Flatpak version, because I never used it other than “native” installation. I am using it since over a decade and don’t remember having crashes, maybe once in a while (1 time per year maybe fault of something else). I actually use Thunderbird with 5 accounts from different providers, plus use it as my RSS feed reader, because its stable for me.
I know saying “it works for me” won’t help you, but maybe its an indication that something else is wrong. I would recommend to install it from official repository instead.
I may have misspoke, I use an AUR helper to install many programs and utilities, and am not at my computer to view the actual source. So I took a gamble and guessed AUR. My apologies.
It could have been other instability, as I mentioned in another comment I didn’t really look too deep into it since it wasn’t so important. And by no means am I blaming Thunderbird (regardless of source) for the issues I have had. It truly is a great email client.
I see. Well Thunderbird is not the only mail client, there are other good alternatives. Hope you find something that works for you. Who knows what the actual problem is, sometimes one can’t figure it out and has to use an alternative.
I want to investigate it. I know it works well on my laptop, which the big difference in the 2 is that one is an Nvidia GPU and the other an Intel Integrated. So it could be video related. Who knows.
Thank you all the same!
I wonder if it has to to with the email provider or something? It isn’t fast for me but it gets the job done and is stable and predictable even with thousands of emails
I am using debias as os , and never had a problem with thunderbird, did you used recently? I am not against web, but i manage 5 emails so no way the web is a option for me. Also i start to use the rss from thunder and is cool.
I have never had thunderbird crash. Not questioning what you say but perhaps its sonsthing else? Did u try deleting thubderbird data and starting fresh ?
I will likely go back and try that. I however know just like in other email clients, if I have thousands of emails per account its bound to be slower. I did clean out each box. I plan to use Thunderbird again once I clear out all of those emails and consolidate to one email address.
I will have to investigate which directories to purge.
My inbox has upward of 17,000 emails and thunderbird doesn’t have any issues with it. So it should be okay with it.
I just use Protonmail’s web client. Fast, sleek, similar polish to gmail imo.
For an actual desktop client, Thunderbird with Dark Reader addon and some tweaks for theming.
Honestly though, I just prefer the web client from Proton, it’s really nice.
alpine
+dovecoat & postfix? :p
Just the successor to pine. It works with IMAP and SMTP.
I’ve tried elm and mutt many years ago back in the 90s and pine was the easiest. So I guess I just stayed there and it works over my ssh connections too. To be honest, the number of personal emails that I’ve written over the past several years can be counted in the dozens so it’s not that important to change any more.
Thunderbird. I even use it as my RSS feed reader. The only problem it has is it does not have any tray icon to indicate new unread mails (I wrote my own program for this). They are working on a tray menu, if I’m not mistaken. I have 5 mail accounts from different providers. Backing up is easy, and on a new OS installation I just need to copy over the entire directory and its like I never left my system (same for Firefox).
You can use bluetray for notifications
Did you mean birdtray? It’s in the AUR and I try to install mostly (not a hard rule) from official repositories.
It should be in the Debian repos
You probably can install it with distrobox
I cannot believe I used xbiff in the 80s to know when I had a new email, and in 2024 the most well known and old thunderbird does not…
xbiffwas usually watching a file - your mailbox - on the mainframe, which would have been updated by the mail server daemon. Heck, it could be set to watch any file to see when it updated.Basically, you could still use
xbiffif you emulate that setup using your own local mail server as a proxy. (And you’re using a GUI that supports it. No idea if Wayland does.)
I remember that was an add-on for this.
I used an addon in the past, but experienced problems at some points. Also could not find any addon that supported what I want to do, supporting RSS feeds as well or better yet, Unified Folders feature of Thunderbird. Maybe it was a configuration issue, but I ended up writing my own fast solution, that also works on commandline and can be added as a widget to any environment. Why not link it here :D https://github.com/thingsiplay/peepbird
Fair enough.
Old school here, I use mutt. :P on android I use FairEmail and really like it.
FairEmail is great! One of the best email clients I’ve ever used. It started struggling a bit with a large mailbox though, so I switched to K9 Mail (which I’ve heard will eventually become Thunderbird for Android)
The webmail interface and the app of my email provider (Tuta).
Unironically neomutt
Thunderbird for desktop computer, K-9 mail for mobile phone.
Did you know K-9 mail is soon to be thunderbird mobile
true
Am I the only one using Evolution here? I really like everything about it. All in one, simple, responaive.
Thunderbird on OpenSUSE
Thunderbird all the way 🙌
I have used Thunderbird for years. HOWEVER:
- I don’t know why Thunderbird can’t get a reliable, functional search ability. It’s such garbage. I constantly have to delete my entire search index and start from scratch, it is immensely frustrating.
- The problems connecting to gmail are also so frustrating. Yes, they are Google’s fault but if you make an e-mail client you maybe need to add a workaround for the world’s most popular e-mail provider. It’s totally fixable because you can apply those fixes manually.
Are you taking about the semi recent rewrite or the old discontinued version?
I don’t know why Thunderbird can’t get a reliable, functional search ability. It’s such garbage. I constantly have to delete my entire search index and start from scratch, it is immensely frustrating.
Maybe see if Betterbird’s search works better for you
Wow very interesting thank you! I like that it can be run side-by-side from the same profile to test it out. If search was fixed I would have never migrated so much of my e-mail to gmail.
Proton web and mobile client. Also thunderbird
