Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Thunderbird As The Ubuntu E-Mail Client

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Thunderbird As The Ubuntu E-Mail Client

    Phoronix: Thunderbird As The Ubuntu E-Mail Client

    Today at UDS Budapest there was a discussion about what default e-mail client to use for Ubuntu 11.10. Up to this point GNOME's Evolution program has been used within Ubuntu, but there's a growing desire to use Mozilla's Thunderbird as the default e-mail client...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    This would make sense, I think.
    Evolution is just plain unusable, with how much it crashes. They constantly make it "significantly" more stable with each release. Alas! any patience has been spent for Evolution.

    Comment


    • #3
      One of the first things I do when installing Ubuntu is install Thunderbird, I much prefer it to Evolution.

      Comment


      • #4
        I think Thunderbird is alot better designed than Evolution. However I cannot use Thunderbird in work because it doesn't support Exchange. It's fine for an at-home situation, but most companies I know have exchange based email and calendars. As such I cannot support a move away from Evolution at this time.

        Comment


        • #5
          Yes, I have the same problem. At work I simply must have MS Exchange support. But yes, being more stable than evolution is also not so difficult to achieve...

          Comment


          • #6
            Outlook is the problem

            Outlook sucks, and Evolution was designed to mimic that sucktitude.

            Thunderbird is laid out much better and is a lot easier to use.

            Maybe Thunderbird will pick up MAPI support, but I'd much much much rather clients and servers adopt open standards for their protocols instead of sucking up to Microsoft's MAPI. I think ICAL may be the best addition to IMAP right now which adds on calendar and possibly contact syncing, but maybe someone else can fill in the details.

            One problem is that the calendar add-on for Thunderbird, Lightning, is really lagging behind Thunderbird and usually claims to be too old for the version of Thunderbird you're using so it can't be installed.

            Comment


            • #7
              Good decision. Thunderbird is much better than evolution. With Lightning and the add-on that opens contacts on a tab it has all the features necessary for everyone that doesn't need Exchange support.

              Comment


              • #8
                I don't know which one is better etc. but I've been using TB since early betas, so I'm quite happy that I can skip that uninstall evolution/install tb process now

                Comment


                • #9
                  No free lunch

                  Wouldn't adding support for Microsoft Exchange and calendar and contacts integration bring it a lot closer to Evolution? Option "A" is too heavy, so lets take lightweight option "B" and implement most of "A"... Losing a lot of time and ending up right back where it started.

                  I use neither so I can't really judge the arguments given, but how can Evolution ? basically an email client ? be so heavy-weight? It should just handle email ? short chunks of text: parse the headers, dump the body, and call the appropriate program to handle anything it can't show itself (i.e. attachments). What makes it so large?

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by december View Post
                    Wouldn't adding support for Microsoft Exchange and calendar and contacts integration bring it a lot closer to Evolution? Option "A" is too heavy, so lets take lightweight option "B" and implement most of "A"... Losing a lot of time and ending up right back where it started.

                    I use neither so I can't really judge the arguments given, but how can Evolution ? basically an email client ? be so heavy-weight? It should just handle email ? short chunks of text: parse the headers, dump the body, and call the appropriate program to handle anything it can't show itself (i.e. attachments). What makes it so large?
                    I don't know about large, but Thunderbird is much nicer than Outlook/Evolution. In order to be "fully compatible with Outlook" it's not surprising that the Evolution devs basically decided to copy everything which makes migration over to it much easier, but plus a lot of those options are no doubt needed to be fully compatible with Exchange, so they had to put them someplace.

                    I think even Thunderbird could use a bit of GUI layout design polishing, but it's a lot nicer and easier than Evolution/Outlook IMO and has the features I need.

                    Comment

                    Working...
                    X