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> Evolution [..] has a bad data loss bug. It sometimes deletes the email body text in the compose window after changing the signature [..] it has bitten me abou

> Evolution [..] has a bad data loss bug. It sometimes deletes the email body text in the compose window after changing the signature [..] it has bitten me about twice a month for the last two years. and > I might have been able to partially recover the message from the Draft folder if I’d retained my cool and acted immediately. It had been overwritten by an empty message instead. I must look into versioning my email draft folder at a later time. This person has a much greater tolerance for shitty software than I do. I'm certainly not a perfectionist and appreciate that almost all software has bugs, but come on! Arbitrarily deleting draft emails twice a month for two years? Requiring convoluted versioned draft folders to work around this glaring issue? Why are they punishing themselves like this?! They must find something really awesome about Evolution to deal with this level of annoying.

raheemm 6y ago
It reminds me that we humans are capable of going to great lengths to resist change, even when it creates shitty outcomes.
annoyingnoob 6y ago
Had the same thought. Did this person consider using different software? Why hurt yourself like that? Its no wonder that it will never be the year of the Linux Desktop.
- d2wa 6y ago
  Person/author here. Yes, I have considered other email clients. Evolution is the least bad of the available options and still sees active development. Most other clients don’t support CardDAV or LDAP so I can’t sync my address book. An email client is mostly useless without the contact details of the people want to contact. Newscommers to the email client market have all been proprietary subscription-based middleware instead of actual email clients. The market has been standing mostly still for the last 10 years.
  - the_pwner224 6y ago
    As others have mentioned, Thunderbird is the least worst option (in our opinions :). I use it with CalDAV/CardDAV synced to my Nextcloud instance. The three good options are KMail, Thunderbird, and Evolution. Everything else is CLI or lacks features like DAV. KMail and Evolution both bring in the entire KDE/Gnome PIM suite with daemons and other programs, making them not great unless you are using Gnome or KDE - as another HN commenter said about Java web applications, you wanted a banana and instead got the entire jungle and an angry gorilla. But they do integrate very well. Thunderbird is standalone. I tried Evolution for a week, about a month ago, and have used KMail and Thunderbird a lot. KMail is fully-featured, with native support for CalDAV/CardDAV and 'send later.' But it's incredibly complex and easy to misconfigure. When upgrading to a new computer recently, I tried doing an export => import to transfer data, but it apparently permanently borked the KMail installation on the new computer. Tried uninstalling/reinstalling and deleting all KDEPIM-related files in ~, and it still would not work... Even on my old computer I still kept Thunderbird installed along with KMail sometimes didn't work properly. Thunderbird is very straightforward to use and is quite stable. I use the TbSync add-on (Thunderbird has an official add-on repository like Chrome/Firefox). You'll also need the 'Provider for CalDAV & CardDAV', which adds that functionality to TbSync but is distributed as a separate add on. Set up cal/carddav account, then go to calendar, right click the toolbar => Customize, and drag the 'Synchronize' button onto the toolbar so you can force a synchronization if needed (in addition to the timer-based background sync). There's also a 'send later' add-on available. Aside from that, I only have a few minor issues with Thunderbird: To switch between HTML and plain-text emails, you need to shift-click the 'compose new email' button. Can't switch in the middle of composing; you'll need to make a new email and copy-paste over. Changing the default from HTML to plain text requires going into about:config. And you can't enable/disable text wrapping on the fly for plain text emails; it's an about:config pref. With Gmail accounts, it incorrectly lists the inbox/sent/etc. folders in a subfolder of the account (functions properly, but ugly). You have to right click the account, go to Settings => Server Settings => Advanced and set the IMAP Server Directory to '[Gmail]'. Finally, TB has its own Spam filtering mechanism. You can't fully disable it. Even if you go to account settings and disable junk filtering for that account, it still shows a button to mark as junk and overrides the J key for that. Annoying if you are used to vim controls and press J often. Also J has the homing nub on the keycap so I like pressing it a lot... KMail has all of this stuff built in / fixed, but is just way too complex and brittle. Actually, after seeing your article's screenshot of Evolution with KDE titlebars, and a person replying suggesting that Evolution is good for this purpose, I'm trying it out on KDE. Never thought that would happen! I don't use signatures so hopefully this bug doesn't affect me... I did have to separately install the gnome-keyring package to get it to remember the IMAP/SMTP password but aside from that it appears to work fine.
- b212 6y ago
  I love Linux for what it is, for the whole idea, being open, free and "democratic" but I tried using it while my Macbok was in service and oh boy, it's like having a Hackintosh 10 years ago, for work it was bearable but for "personal use"? I'd rather pay 5x more for something that "just works". And I did.
  - d2wa 6y ago
    The main difference for me is that there are more ways to rescue, recover, fix, and work-around issues. I’m typing this on macOS now. I run into about the same amount of issues on macOS as I do on Linux. The big difference is that I’m just f*ed on macOS whereas Linux leaves me with multiple paths to save myself out of troublesome situations.
  - iso1210 6y ago
    And that's exactly why I run linux, because it "just works", and has done for 20 years.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    My personal machine runs Linux because my professional experience is that macOS doesn't 'just work', and Linux is easier and less opaque to fix. I don't want to trawl through 'have you tried turning it off and on again' on Apple support forums, I want to find the text-based config solution in the Arch wiki, a man page, or unix.SE. (Yes that order, not `man` first, typically. 'Sue me'. Other than for executables I don't find it that 'discoverable' for what's available or might be relevant. I only recently discovered `man [7] hier` - but how was I supposed to know the page is called 'hier' (for hierarchy of course, but even that)? I got it from a unix.SE answer.)
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      The name apparently comes from "Version 7 AT&T UNIX", which is where the page first appeared.
Joeri 6y ago
Maybe they have an exchange mailbox? If you want exchange support on linux with full syncing of mail, calendar and tasks there are two options I know of: evolution and hiri. And hiri is paid abandonware. I’ve set up both, both are not good. Lately I’ve been using outlook web access, which is still bad, just not as bad. Really I guess I miss outlook for windows. There I’ve said it. Judge me if you will. Its search feature is broken, but everything else worked well.
- d2wa 6y ago
  Author here. My problem is related. However, I have a IMAP/CardDAV open-standards setup instead of ActiveSync/Exchange.
- deadbunny 6y ago
  Option 3: davmail[1] acts as a translator between Microsoft's proprietary protocols and open protocols. 1. http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ http://davmail.sourceforge.net/
- orf 6y ago
  You can use Thunderbird with a paid add on. It’s well worth it, because evolution is just bad.
yipbub 6y ago
Not quite arbitrary. He new that he could avoid it by not changing the signature afterwards.
- dhosek 6y ago
  And yet it still bit him twice a month? After the second time that happened, I would have deleted that program and smashed the hard drive to keep it from returning.
renewiltord 6y ago
I tolerated a lot of crap from Evolution to get sync to my Gnome calendar stuff and notifications. Eventually it was too much, though. Sad. Overall I liked the software but data loss is hard to stomach.
chungy 6y ago
Alternative take: I've been using Evolution as my main email client since 2008-ish, mostly on Arch and Debian systems. I have never encountered this bug, and I'm willing to bet most people have not either. The bug probably exists, and maybe with the magic set of configuration options, I could make it trigger too. But bugs can be finicky like that -- developers certainly don't like them, and it'll probably vanish pretty fast if they are able to reproduce it.

raheemm 6y ago

It reminds me that we humans are capable of going to great lengths to resist change, even when it creates shitty outcomes.

annoyingnoob 6y ago

Had the same thought. Did this person consider using different software? Why hurt yourself like that? Its no wonder that it will never be the year of the Linux Desktop.

d2wa 6y ago
Person/author here. Yes, I have considered other email clients. Evolution is the least bad of the available options and still sees active development. Most other clients don’t support CardDAV or LDAP so I can’t sync my address book. An email client is mostly useless without the contact details of the people want to contact. Newscommers to the email client market have all been proprietary subscription-based middleware instead of actual email clients. The market has been standing mostly still for the last 10 years.
- the_pwner224 6y ago
  As others have mentioned, Thunderbird is the least worst option (in our opinions :). I use it with CalDAV/CardDAV synced to my Nextcloud instance. The three good options are KMail, Thunderbird, and Evolution. Everything else is CLI or lacks features like DAV. KMail and Evolution both bring in the entire KDE/Gnome PIM suite with daemons and other programs, making them not great unless you are using Gnome or KDE - as another HN commenter said about Java web applications, you wanted a banana and instead got the entire jungle and an angry gorilla. But they do integrate very well. Thunderbird is standalone. I tried Evolution for a week, about a month ago, and have used KMail and Thunderbird a lot. KMail is fully-featured, with native support for CalDAV/CardDAV and 'send later.' But it's incredibly complex and easy to misconfigure. When upgrading to a new computer recently, I tried doing an export => import to transfer data, but it apparently permanently borked the KMail installation on the new computer. Tried uninstalling/reinstalling and deleting all KDEPIM-related files in ~, and it still would not work... Even on my old computer I still kept Thunderbird installed along with KMail sometimes didn't work properly. Thunderbird is very straightforward to use and is quite stable. I use the TbSync add-on (Thunderbird has an official add-on repository like Chrome/Firefox). You'll also need the 'Provider for CalDAV & CardDAV', which adds that functionality to TbSync but is distributed as a separate add on. Set up cal/carddav account, then go to calendar, right click the toolbar => Customize, and drag the 'Synchronize' button onto the toolbar so you can force a synchronization if needed (in addition to the timer-based background sync). There's also a 'send later' add-on available. Aside from that, I only have a few minor issues with Thunderbird: To switch between HTML and plain-text emails, you need to shift-click the 'compose new email' button. Can't switch in the middle of composing; you'll need to make a new email and copy-paste over. Changing the default from HTML to plain text requires going into about:config. And you can't enable/disable text wrapping on the fly for plain text emails; it's an about:config pref. With Gmail accounts, it incorrectly lists the inbox/sent/etc. folders in a subfolder of the account (functions properly, but ugly). You have to right click the account, go to Settings => Server Settings => Advanced and set the IMAP Server Directory to '[Gmail]'. Finally, TB has its own Spam filtering mechanism. You can't fully disable it. Even if you go to account settings and disable junk filtering for that account, it still shows a button to mark as junk and overrides the J key for that. Annoying if you are used to vim controls and press J often. Also J has the homing nub on the keycap so I like pressing it a lot... KMail has all of this stuff built in / fixed, but is just way too complex and brittle. Actually, after seeing your article's screenshot of Evolution with KDE titlebars, and a person replying suggesting that Evolution is good for this purpose, I'm trying it out on KDE. Never thought that would happen! I don't use signatures so hopefully this bug doesn't affect me... I did have to separately install the gnome-keyring package to get it to remember the IMAP/SMTP password but aside from that it appears to work fine.
b212 6y ago
I love Linux for what it is, for the whole idea, being open, free and "democratic" but I tried using it while my Macbok was in service and oh boy, it's like having a Hackintosh 10 years ago, for work it was bearable but for "personal use"? I'd rather pay 5x more for something that "just works". And I did.
- d2wa 6y ago
  The main difference for me is that there are more ways to rescue, recover, fix, and work-around issues. I’m typing this on macOS now. I run into about the same amount of issues on macOS as I do on Linux. The big difference is that I’m just f*ed on macOS whereas Linux leaves me with multiple paths to save myself out of troublesome situations.
- iso1210 6y ago
  And that's exactly why I run linux, because it "just works", and has done for 20 years.
- OJFord 6y ago
  My personal machine runs Linux because my professional experience is that macOS doesn't 'just work', and Linux is easier and less opaque to fix. I don't want to trawl through 'have you tried turning it off and on again' on Apple support forums, I want to find the text-based config solution in the Arch wiki, a man page, or unix.SE. (Yes that order, not `man` first, typically. 'Sue me'. Other than for executables I don't find it that 'discoverable' for what's available or might be relevant. I only recently discovered `man [7] hier` - but how was I supposed to know the page is called 'hier' (for hierarchy of course, but even that)? I got it from a unix.SE answer.)
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    The name apparently comes from "Version 7 AT&T UNIX", which is where the page first appeared.

Joeri 6y ago

Maybe they have an exchange mailbox? If you want exchange support on linux with full syncing of mail, calendar and tasks there are two options I know of: evolution and hiri. And hiri is paid abandonware. I’ve set up both, both are not good. Lately I’ve been using outlook web access, which is still bad, just not as bad. Really I guess I miss outlook for windows. There I’ve said it. Judge me if you will. Its search feature is broken, but everything else worked well.

d2wa 6y ago
Author here. My problem is related. However, I have a IMAP/CardDAV open-standards setup instead of ActiveSync/Exchange.
deadbunny 6y ago
Option 3: davmail[1] acts as a translator between Microsoft's proprietary protocols and open protocols. 1. http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ http://davmail.sourceforge.net/
orf 6y ago
You can use Thunderbird with a paid add on. It’s well worth it, because evolution is just bad.

yipbub 6y ago

Not quite arbitrary. He new that he could avoid it by not changing the signature afterwards.

dhosek 6y ago
And yet it still bit him twice a month? After the second time that happened, I would have deleted that program and smashed the hard drive to keep it from returning.

renewiltord 6y ago

I tolerated a lot of crap from Evolution to get sync to my Gnome calendar stuff and notifications. Eventually it was too much, though. Sad. Overall I liked the software but data loss is hard to stomach.

chungy 6y ago

Alternative take: I've been using Evolution as my main email client since 2008-ish, mostly on Arch and Debian systems. I have never encountered this bug, and I'm willing to bet most people have not either. The bug probably exists, and maybe with the magic set of configuration options, I could make it trigger too. But bugs can be finicky like that -- developers certainly don't like them, and it'll probably vanish pretty fast if they are able to reproduce it.