And this is A move to Evolution, written Jun 21, 2004, and concerning Uncategorized

So, I thought I’d try Evolution rather than Mozilla Thunderbird to read my mail. I start it up and it doesn’t show anything but errors: fortunately, that seemed to be a Debian bug, and was easily fixed. Once I got it configured with my IMAP server and started, I discovered that the pointless “Local folders” are there and are the default. Why? I’ve told you I’ve got a fucking IMAP server! Why would I want local folders? Disable them! Or make them not be the default. I set up my filters (to filter mailing list mail into certain folders), and then thought: I shall now read my mail. First thing I found is that the keybinding for “next unread message” was the rather random [ character. Ah well, that’s OK, I suppose. But that only means “next unread message in this folder“. It would appear that you can’t jump to the next unread message anywhere. That’s really, really annoying. So, looking further on, there’s no spam filtering, which Thunderbird has (rather successfully, too). When Evo starts up, I get a pointless “summary” page, like Outlook Today. So I thought: can I disable that? Looking around in the “Settings” (which is under the “Tools” menu; why is it not “Preferences” under “Edit“, like everything else? Could it be because Outlook has “Tools | Options“, I wonder?) I discover a “default folders” thing. So, set the default folder for Mail to the Inbox on my IMAP account; maybe that’ll make it the folder that Evo shows me. BAM! Crash. So I pick “inform developers” and get the Gnome “Bug Buddy” thing, which waits a bit while it gathers debugging information and then shows me a list of products, asking me to pick the one that caused the crash. How can you not know what it is? You’ve just stack traced the fucker! Anyway, I look for Evolution in the list: it’s not there. Look through the whole list, find “Ximian Evolution“. It’s called “Evolution“. It says so in the title bar. I don’t care who made it. If you want ego feeding, go to a vanity publisher. So I pick Ximian Evolution and I get “This Application has bug information, but Bug Buddy doesn’t know about it. Please choose another application.”

So I chose Mozilla Thunderbird again.

Comments

sil

Yes, I know the Evo guys have worked really hard. Yes, I know that it's in general an OK mail client. Yes, I know that lots of people are using it with success. Yes, I know that some of it might be the Debian packaging rather than Evolution itself. But I tried to use it as a mail client, and it crashed. I tried to file a bug like a good user, and it wouldn't let me. I'll try it again in Gnome 2.8.

Ian Bicking

I used Evolution for quite a while as well, but it never worked that well for me. The killer for me was horrible performance with my large IMAP folders (I'm not good at cleaning out my Inbox). Thunderbird has been way more consistent and usable. Maybe there's something interesting that Evolution doesn that Thunderbird doesn't, but I never found it.

Darryl

Yeah, Evolution has tasks and a proper addressbook. Other than that....

sil

Tasks. Whoo. I don't keep a task list on my computer, I keep it on my PDA, so that it can be both work tasks and home tasks. I can see how some people would find it interesting, but not me. Similarly, I want the addressbook in my mail client to know everyone's email address, and a short alias (so I can mail them by typing "bill" into the send box). That's pretty much all I need. Phone numbers go on my phone, and addresses are in my PDA, and those two are cross-synchronised. Plus, Evo crashes a lot, afaict ;-)

sascha

I've used evolution for years now, but since looking at 1.5 I went euch and moved to start using thunderbird.

The biggest problem with the evolution 'Junk' filtering is that its not friendly to other mail clients. I've even had problems using evolution on different machines and suddlenly seeing 200 spam messages in my inbox.

The 'Junk' folder in evolution that looks like another imap folder, isnt. I couldn't actually see my imap junk folder because evolution only displays its 'Junk' vfolder :(

all in all, evolution 1.4 was nice, evolution 1.5 has taken a few steps to alienate itself from my desktop.

NB. I need to access my email from web, home and work so if my desktop email client doesn't play nicely with the webmail client I'm not happy. Thunderbird plays very nicely, especially when I sync my junklistything between home and work.

Paul

Having used both evolution and thunderbird I must say that evolution disappoints me. Apart from the frequent crashes that it suffers, I also do not like its dependence on a whole bunch of gnome libraries.
I have been using mutt as primary email client and was looking for some gui client that would work with my five email accounts stored in maildir format. I used thunderbird but it does not have support for maildir folders. I know you have been searching too for a similar solution and wanted to know what did you settle for.

sil

I use Thunderbird and an IMAP server on localhost, so I can also use Squirrelmail to read my mail remotely (after some ssh tunnelling). You could do that to handle maildir; use an IMAP server that understands it.

Ian Ennis

I really enjoyed the integration that evolution has with MS products. This is becuase it allows me to work in linux seamlessly with clients and co-workers, without making my OS a topic of discussion. I look forward to the day when thunderbird (even if via sunbird)recognizes MS type calendar events and contacts. Oh and the junk mail filtering, what a relief. It’s so easy to use.

Michael Wardle

Hi Sascha

As I couldn’t find any preexisting bug report for the Junk folder hiding issue, I just filed bug 67393. I find that if the developers are aware of an issue, it’s far more likely to be fixed!

adam

used & still do use them both;

love evolutions handling of tasks & meetings (except the time & meeting print next to each other) & love the contact lookup applet that rocks! but evolution hates large >5g imaps & well i have my mail from 1992, all up their on the imap server, (by the way i need an email from 1997 today, the cost of recalling that from archives would have been much more than the storage costs for the last 8 years) & i’m not going to let anyone POP my ever expanding bubble

in a nut shell love evolution as a pim but hate it as a mail client, love thunderbird as a mail client but as a pim the scheduler add on is crap!

they should merge & make babies called “thunder-lution” an all in one solution!

this is why lookout has been so successful, they are quni-sexual… they will fuck with your mail, tasks, schedule & contacts. Actually the closest replacement i have found is kontact / kmail but i am a gnome boy at heart & kmail looks like crap in gnome

amanda

What I loved about evolution in the 3 days I spent using it was the "convert to task" option in my inbox (I really wanted a "push to calendar" option that would just let me pick a date and time).

The calendar/task/inbox integration is really useful, not for keeping true task lists but for clearing out my inbox.