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The current state of linux email clients? 08 December 2012 17:52
We get all kinds of news about new developments but one subject has
been lacking for some time and that is email clients for linux (or
Windows for that matter).
A number of reviews mostly not all that recent have pointed to the
main clients as Thunderbird, Evolution, Claws-mail, and Kmail as
possibilities. Mostly up to about a year ago Thunderbird seemed to be
"the" email client with the best mix of positives.
However there are no recent reviews that I have seen and in the
meantime Thunderbird has moved to monthly releases which are more
maintenance releases, with security fixes, with little real
functional change - and little new development. Thunderbird won't be
changed into the future much, if one interprets the available news
information.
Evolution is reported to be rather prone to being buggy, and kmail
even more so. Claws-mail has limitations as does kmail.
So where is the future going without any real innovation on available
linux mail clients? We need a well maintained and capable mail
client, with preferably good calendar integration (webcal/google
calendar), properly supported html composing, good maildir format
storage for local mail, good security support including the capacity
to deal with both gpg and s/mime encryption and signing. It needs a
good modern UI, and good import/export facilities as well as good
integration with its address book, including good import/export of
addresses.
Are we likely to see this kind of package as we move into the future?
At the moment it looks like email client support is dead - maybe
users are moving more into web mail and the cloud rather than having
a properly functional mail client on their desktops?
I wonder what others think?
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