Hi guys!
At this point it’s been a while since I don’t use a mail client, last time Evolution sorted my need of Activesync compatibility and I used it extensively. But these days I no longer need that, as I’m planning to use just protonmail and maybe also sync gmail to it (although for gmail I kinda prefer the web). Reading through the comments on the app I saw mentions about Betterbird…What’s your thoughts on this?
Thunderbird.
Betterbird is a fork by a developer who was booted off the project. I’ve looked at the project and it’s literally built on top of drama. It’s not a good look, and it does not feel like it’s professionally developed.
Evolution is also really really good, but it’s a GNOME app. I currently use GNOME and I am not oblivious at how nice the experience of using native apps of it is, but I also know that they don’t follow you “well” if you migrate to something else. Make no mistake, Evolution will absolutely run on a KDE desktop, but it won’t feel as integrated.
Thunderbird is amazing. It’s in active development and it’s going through a major visual overhaul / update I really like. It’s cross-platform at heart and it looks and works the same on all platforms. It also has the nicest calendar on Linux. Overall, I pick Thunderbird as my client because it’s amazing, has a lot of development, has all the features I need and it’s made to be cross-platform, so it’s not “soft-tied” to any desktop enhancement or GUI toolkit.
I tried "Better"bird for around a month, a year or so ago. Until I hit a bug and submitted a bug report and got this reply:
That’s best reported as a Thunderbird issue with exact steps to reproduce.
and later this:
As a first step, we suggest to install the current ESR 91 version of Thunderbird in parallel and see whether the issue exists there.
I personally don’t see what’s the point of using an email client, if it refers to another email client for submission of some bugs, or if it asks you to install another email client to solve them. I told them and they explained that they’re a small team and that
BB is a TB downstream project (fork) and we cannot possibly fix all 14.000 upstream issues.
The turning-point for me was that they simply closed my bug report and, when I told them that that was a let-down, they said:
Users like yourself, who refuse to cooperate or support the project via a donation, are a total let-down indeed, especially if they feel entitled to get a fix.
which was unfair because I do recurring donations to all software I use regularly. But OK, I can simply donate directly to Thunderbird and use that directly.
So I went back to Thunderbird and have been using it without problems since then; they fixed that and other bugs in the meantime. Thunderbird supports all major forms of authentication from what I’ve seen, so I use it for my work account and other free accounts, all in one.
Wow…I’ve been reading a bit about the drama involving this guy. It really seems to show that’s the attitude that got him kicked out of TB in the first place. Yeah, I’m gonna steer clear of the “better” bird.
I wish I remembered more details but the consensus seemed to be to stick with Thunderbird. I use it every day and the new v115 really made it feel new again.
I’m still on 102.13, what did you like about 115? I assume it was more than just another skin change?
115 made Thunderbird UI more customizable and consistent. The idea was to get rid of some of the cruft which accumulated over the last 10 years and make development easier.
But they’ll add features like Thunderbird Sync to share settings between different devices, like the upcoming Thunderbird Android (K9-Mail).
Big fan of Thunderbird. Their recent redesign is neat. You’ll have even more reasons in the upcoming month as they will be releasing a mobile app. Basically it will sync deleted and/or already read emails sent to you, really handy
The future thunderbird app is currently called k9 and available via fdroid and Google Playstore
I’m using Thunderbird and it works perfectly fine for me.
Still I also had to configure Evolution as I wanted the Gnome Calendar widget to display my events.
