Evolution was great! Then I tried to upgrade it. Pure hell. Finally got it upgraded after hours of googling and moving/editing various configuration directories and files. Then it started crashing, so I switched to KMail. I remembered kmail from my first experiments with linux, and I thought it would be a good option for me since I didn’t mind installing all of kde just to use it (did I mention that evolution also has a zillion deps?)
Kmail was great! Then I tried to upgrade it. More hell. Some stupid error message about a pop service? Of course I assumed it was just a configuration issue, but even after moving my configs somewhere safe, the problems continued. So I tried thunderbird.
Thunderbird was ok. But the address book… well let’s just say it left me wanting more. The nntp support is nice, I must admit, however the overall feel was that it was lacking something. Maybe one day when sunbird is closer to “finished” I’ll try thunderbird again. If sunbird and thunderbird work well together, that is. So I tried slypheed…
Tried being the operative word. I wanted to use gtk2 so I used the development version of slypheed. Random crashes. Great. Maybe my luck? Or maybe a sign? *insert appropriate sound effect* Could there be a way to access all my mail accounts from anywhere, without having to install a million and one dependencies, and without all of the upgrade hell? So I am trying mutt.
So far I have mutt configured to connect to the ms exchange server in my office, and it works fine. I am still rtfm-ing to make the most use of the client (to set up multiple imap accounts, MIME handling, etc.) But I am very happy with mutt already. I’ll be able to use mutt via any of my shell accounts and see the same mail (well my IMAP mail anyway) and it also has a great command line mode that allows for easy sending of attachments (which is great for sending gzipped logs from a shell script!)
As I learn more I’ll be posting my findings here. Wish me luck!
UPDATE: Mutt ROCKS! It took no time at all to get my muttrc configured for all my IMAP accounts. I also have it set to use gqview to display images. I think I’m in love…..