4 ms·

I also have made bad experiences with evolution. I wonder why major distributions still use it as their default client. Is there some good reason for that, or i

by madez 10y ago

I also have made bad experiences with evolution. I wonder why major distributions still use it as their default client. Is there some good reason for that, or is it just neglect?

Faaak 10y ago
I'm forced at work to use an exchange account (so that implies using the calendar). Evolution was the only program I found that works on ubuntu and supports exchange somewhat (I didn't want at all to use the exchange web interface). So yeah, its a bit buggy, but it works for me
- vetinari 10y ago
  If you don't mind having jre on your system and running a daemon: http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ Then you can use any client you want.
  - nekitamo 10y ago
    Have you managed to get davmail working with Office365/Outlook.com? It was unusably slow every time I tried (message fetching would take over a minute, inbox refresh would only happen once every ~30 minutes, etc...)
    - vetinari 10y ago
      No, fortunately, never had to.
natermer 10y ago
Because it's the email client that supports Exchange the best and related calendar/email features have been split off into daemons that provide things like email messaging and calendar notifications that integrate into the desktop. The reality is that all desktop email clients suck and suffer from neglect. Mostly because hard-core people are using things like mutt or emacs for mail and everybody else is using webmail. The reality is that IMAP effectively failed as a standard. The idea of 'mail folders' is somewhat of a improvement over the mbox format, but there was never any sort of search features or mail filtering features that became standardized for IMAP servers. There are a few aborted attempts and ways to program mail filtering, of course, but nothing that really works well or isn't confusing as hell for normal people. Webmail effectively started off as browser-based IMAP clients, but they have progressed far far beyond that and solved most of the issues with syncing email to desktops, laptops, and phones. Probably the answer to fixing this issue is going back to simple POP protocol and then using something like Notmuch to use 'search-like' features to logically group email into folders and such things without destructively editing emails like IMAP does. By this I mean with IMAP and maildir you are editing and moving files around on a remote file system and this means that if something goes wrong the mail gets duplicated or corrupted or out of order or whatever. By using a database-type approach with notmuch you are not touching the original emails for the most part, but simply editing and modifying metadata. The original structure and such are preserved.
- mike-cardwell 10y ago
  Not sure what you mean by "there was never any sort of search features or mail filtering features that became standardized for IMAP servers." Search is built into the IMAP protocol. [1] Filtering doesn't belong at the IMAP protocol layer anymore than it belongs at the SMTP layer. That said, "Sieve" is really powerful, and there are many SMTP and IMAP servers which support it. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501#section-6.4.4 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501#section-6.4.4
  - natermer 10y ago
    ok, 'search that does not suck' isn't a feature of IMAP. > Filtering doesn't belong at the IMAP protocol layer anymore than it belongs at the SMTP layer. Right, so users are forced to set up this stuff for each and every device they have. This is a big reason why the exodus to webmail and the proprietary internal-only protocols they use. Seive is really powerful and I've used it plenty of times, but it's not standard and is something that needs to be done completely separate from almost all email clients. Unless you are a big email nerd that runs your own servers it's pretty much worthless.
    - mike-cardwell 10y ago
      What sucks about IMAP search? I linked to the protocol in my previous comment. It's pretty damn comprehensive in what it offers... You can get desktop and web based and command line clients which talk the ManageSieve protocol so provide you with an interface to manage your server based sieve mail filters [1] I'll agree that it's not common. Not because there is anything wrong with it, but because companies like Google decided to roll their own for whatever reason. [1] http://sieve.info/clients http://sieve.info/clients
      - Mailtemi 10y ago
        IMAP Search support only ASCII and you cannot search non-English content. There is an extension for utf-8, but Some of the major emails services as Outlook/Ofiice365 doesn't support it. Also, you can search only a particular folder instead entire mailbox.
bigbugbag 10y ago
What do you mean major distributions use evolution as the default email client ? AFAIK almost all major distros give you the choice of the desktop environment you want if you want one. When you choose the gnome flavor of said distros, I suppose that it comes with evolution because it is the official default email client for gnome until its replacement, geary, is ready. But last time I checked in 2015 it was still in early stages of development despite having started circa 2012.
xiaomai 10y ago
I have tried Evolution off and on ever since Ximian released it back in the day. It always seemed buggy and bloated (even a year or two ago when I was just using it for Calendar integration I would find freak out and eat up 100% cpu randomly). I always went back to mutt or sup, or more recently I tried Geary. Recently (<6 months?) I tried evolution again and I am blown away with how reliable it is. The search is great, everything works. It's not a very exciting e-mail client, but it gets the job done better than any other (while integrating very nicely into gnome).

by madez 10y ago

I also have made bad experiences with evolution. I wonder why major distributions still use it as their default client. Is there some good reason for that, or is it just neglect?

Faaak 10y ago

I'm forced at work to use an exchange account (so that implies using the calendar). Evolution was the only program I found that works on ubuntu and supports exchange somewhat (I didn't want at all to use the exchange web interface). So yeah, its a bit buggy, but it works for me

vetinari 10y ago
If you don't mind having jre on your system and running a daemon: http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ Then you can use any client you want.
- nekitamo 10y ago
  Have you managed to get davmail working with Office365/Outlook.com? It was unusably slow every time I tried (message fetching would take over a minute, inbox refresh would only happen once every ~30 minutes, etc...)
  - vetinari 10y ago
    No, fortunately, never had to.

natermer 10y ago

Because it's the email client that supports Exchange the best and related calendar/email features have been split off into daemons that provide things like email messaging and calendar notifications that integrate into the desktop. The reality is that all desktop email clients suck and suffer from neglect. Mostly because hard-core people are using things like mutt or emacs for mail and everybody else is using webmail. The reality is that IMAP effectively failed as a standard. The idea of 'mail folders' is somewhat of a improvement over the mbox format, but there was never any sort of search features or mail filtering features that became standardized for IMAP servers. There are a few aborted attempts and ways to program mail filtering, of course, but nothing that really works well or isn't confusing as hell for normal people. Webmail effectively started off as browser-based IMAP clients, but they have progressed far far beyond that and solved most of the issues with syncing email to desktops, laptops, and phones. Probably the answer to fixing this issue is going back to simple POP protocol and then using something like Notmuch to use 'search-like' features to logically group email into folders and such things without destructively editing emails like IMAP does. By this I mean with IMAP and maildir you are editing and moving files around on a remote file system and this means that if something goes wrong the mail gets duplicated or corrupted or out of order or whatever. By using a database-type approach with notmuch you are not touching the original emails for the most part, but simply editing and modifying metadata. The original structure and such are preserved.

mike-cardwell 10y ago
Not sure what you mean by "there was never any sort of search features or mail filtering features that became standardized for IMAP servers." Search is built into the IMAP protocol. [1] Filtering doesn't belong at the IMAP protocol layer anymore than it belongs at the SMTP layer. That said, "Sieve" is really powerful, and there are many SMTP and IMAP servers which support it. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501#section-6.4.4 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501#section-6.4.4
- natermer 10y ago
  ok, 'search that does not suck' isn't a feature of IMAP. > Filtering doesn't belong at the IMAP protocol layer anymore than it belongs at the SMTP layer. Right, so users are forced to set up this stuff for each and every device they have. This is a big reason why the exodus to webmail and the proprietary internal-only protocols they use. Seive is really powerful and I've used it plenty of times, but it's not standard and is something that needs to be done completely separate from almost all email clients. Unless you are a big email nerd that runs your own servers it's pretty much worthless.
  - mike-cardwell 10y ago
    What sucks about IMAP search? I linked to the protocol in my previous comment. It's pretty damn comprehensive in what it offers... You can get desktop and web based and command line clients which talk the ManageSieve protocol so provide you with an interface to manage your server based sieve mail filters [1] I'll agree that it's not common. Not because there is anything wrong with it, but because companies like Google decided to roll their own for whatever reason. [1] http://sieve.info/clients http://sieve.info/clients
    - Mailtemi 10y ago
      IMAP Search support only ASCII and you cannot search non-English content. There is an extension for utf-8, but Some of the major emails services as Outlook/Ofiice365 doesn't support it. Also, you can search only a particular folder instead entire mailbox.

bigbugbag 10y ago

What do you mean major distributions use evolution as the default email client ? AFAIK almost all major distros give you the choice of the desktop environment you want if you want one. When you choose the gnome flavor of said distros, I suppose that it comes with evolution because it is the official default email client for gnome until its replacement, geary, is ready. But last time I checked in 2015 it was still in early stages of development despite having started circa 2012.

xiaomai 10y ago

I have tried Evolution off and on ever since Ximian released it back in the day. It always seemed buggy and bloated (even a year or two ago when I was just using it for Calendar integration I would find freak out and eat up 100% cpu randomly). I always went back to mutt or sup, or more recently I tried Geary. Recently (<6 months?) I tried evolution again and I am blown away with how reliable it is. The search is great, everything works. It's not a very exciting e-mail client, but it gets the job done better than any other (while integrating very nicely into gnome).