Solved Email Client Recommendation (Thunderbird Alternative)

BSD-Kitsune

BSD-Kitsune

So as of recent Thunderbird on FreeBSD has taken a nosedive. Especially now that I can't run it without dbus, which I don't want on my computer.

So, does anyone have any suggestions for me? I need one that supports IMAP, I don't need contacts or calendar support. Something basic, something that doesn't require pulling in a full DE. GTK2 preferred but I'm open to anything really. I dislike Evolution and Kmail, so I'm not gonna go for those, but anything else you can suggest?
 
Yeah I forgot to say I'd prefer something that isn't text-based. Not that I have any aversion to text-based programs but I prefer for this type of program to be graphical.
 
I haven't used it in many years, but claws or mail/sylpheed (one was a fork of the other, I think) used to be pretty good. As for text clients, I have to recommend mutt. The biggest issue I have right now is that I am too lazy to figure out the syntax of imap-filter (or whatever it's called) to get filtering working well with imap. (Also, not sure of the exact port names of claws or sylpheed either, apologies).

If you did say, the heck with it, I'm going to go back to a text client, I'll recommend my own mutt page at https://srobb.net/mutt.html :)
 
I use version 14.8.12 of S-mailx which is the last version supporting IMAP (most recent release 14.9 has no IMAP support and 14.8.14 compiles without IMAP on BSDs due to certain dev decisions). S-mailx is the fork of abandoned mail/heirloom-mailx which was never ported to FreeBSD. Anybody remember the teTeX vs TexLive fiasco when FreeBSD kept teTeX in ports three almost 10 years after the teTeX project ceased to exist not to hurt the feelings of Hiroki Sato. Well mail/heirloom-mailx is new teTeX.

I have a great respect for mail/nmh and the only reason preventing me from using NMH is not the lack of IMAP support which is handsomely offset by the best mail format in existence, MH mail format (anybody still remember fundamental differences mbox vs maildir vs mh) but the fact that I work on many systems which typically come pre-installed with some version of Berkeley mailx.

Short of those two e-mail clients you might as well use web-browser to read your e-mail. Actually Roundcube is pretty good if you have to go that route.
 
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If you have your own mail server and you can pull in emails from several email outlets, you can use roundcube webmail.
 
+1 for Claws-Mail. Even with many accounts and _A LOT_ of messages, folders, shares and filters it is really fast and responsive and even after a few days runtime won't eat GBytes of RAM like Thunderbird does.

After 3 days runtime on this machine claws is @ 98M reserved / 473M virtual with ~100 folders/shares from 5 IMAP accounts.
 
Not really necro-bumping, this thread is only 6 weeks old ;) I have been bouncing around from email client to email client for years. I have never taken to web mail for whatever reason. I always come back to Claws because once it is set up, it just works and it's fast. The only gripe I have is for whatever reason it wants to check every...single...folder for new mail...every...time, I start it...I did go and set each folder to not do this but there has to be an easier way. I am sure it's just a single check box, given my luck :p
 
You can deactivate receiving/checking for mail on startup in the main preferences (Mail-Handling -> Receiving).
Within each accounts settings you can also activate the bandwidt-efficient mode, which only loads headers - this especially speeds up the first sync of a newly configured account by magnitudes. When keeping lots of archived mail in seperate folders, you can also choose to only automatically receive/check subscribed folders.
 
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