Preferred E-mail client

What is your preferred E-mail client software

  • Total voters
    68
I can't remember why I jumped ship from K9 to Bluemail and now Fairmail. I'm pleased with the growth even though I paid for the Pro version of it.
 
freezr said:
Why?

Both are excellent OpenSource project, sometimes joining efforts is a good thing, isn't it? ?
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There are issues with html emails and I prefer text based emails. Since Fairmail does not render the html code you can avoid the images and spoofed email links.
 
What should an email client exactly do?

Before using pine/alpine I used the normal BSD mail program. I used metamail for reading attachments.
Pine/alpine became necessary when I needed to get my mail from an imap server and send with smtp
(instead of using sendmail as client). Of course there is the solution of getting mails with fetchmail
and continue using mail and metamail, but it is not comfortable at a time in which we receive
so much attachments and html mail. Then appeared new requirements: encryption, and unfortunately xoauth2.

I resist till today to use a gui program for reading email, also to use a mail client that gets all emails and
store them locally, then I preffer to use fetchmail or mbsync. I do not know a better alternative than alpine.

And if support of encryption were more comfortable in clients, then we were all using encryption and the
world would be different.

I think there is no really perfect mail program ...
 
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Reactions: dnb
The last time I used an email client, it was geary on linux. It was very simple and clean. Before that I used mutt in terminal for probably a decade.

I have 3 email accounts: protonmail, microsoft and google but the latter two forward to protonmail and I use the web interface on PC and app on phone/tablet.
 
hruodr said:
I resist till today to use a gui program for reading email, also to use a mail client that gets all emails and
store them locally, then I preffer to use fetchmail or mbsync. I do not know a better alternative than alpine.
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I use fetchmail configured for pop3 retrieval and messages left on the server. Fetchmail then writes them in my ~/Mail folder via nmh so each email is a separate file(#mh format). Mutt has a macro <G> that invokes fetchmail. I was looking at alpine but I could not figure out how to change the email format, in alpine, from mbox -> #mh. How did you setup fetchmail w/ alpine?
 
shepper said:
I was looking at alpine but I could not figure out how to change the email format, in alpine, from mbox -> #mh. How did you setup fetchmail w/ alpine?
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I use alpine to read "online", do not use fetchmail. I used once fetchmail for downloading the mails in the unix mailbox
in mailbox format running it separately from the command line, and then used alpine to read the unix mailbox.

Alpine does not support maildir, unless you apply a patch:

Maildir patch for Alpine

A patch to give Alpine and UW-IMAP maildir format support. Available for the latest release of Alpine.
alpineapp.email

I normaly download alpine and compile it, but never used maildir. If you use it, then perhaps bettter to use mbsync
than fetchmail.
 
ralphbsz said:
Please explain why. What attack vector are you worried about?
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I would be agnostic about smartphone-related threats, expecting all sorts of meanness from them.

1 - there is some difference between the software environment of the smartphone and regular computer. Usually my FreeBSD workstation has some security settings (according to the Handbook). What's more, if I'm reading mail locally from a monitor that's connected to a mail server, I'm dealing with an even more meticulously configured system with jails for various services. Previously (before FreeBSD) I used just Gentoo with the hardened profile and the hardened kernel. Even in the case of a simple workstation, I have a fairly minimalistic environment, which consists of xmonad + Emacs, from which I do not expect any insidious trick :). Finally, all of these programs are open source and have been built by myself on my binary host (it doesn't matter if it's FreeBSD or Gentoo).

In the case of a smartphone, we are dealing with a lot of programs, only some of which are open. All this big top is teeming in a system that is difficult to consider as trusted, ads can sometimes even be shown there :confused:

2 - as a result of using mobile ISP, I can't properly filter IP access using ipfw for imap/submission ports.

3 - I guess mobile clients can't provide SSH connections using u2f, for example.

Finally, it's not about security, but using mutt (or some Emacs-based email client) is inconvenient from a smartphone screen. For example, mutt will use vi (or Emacs evil-mode) control method.
 
dnb said:
I would be agnostic about smartphone-related threats, expecting all sorts of meanness from them.

1 - there is some difference between the software environment of the smartphone and regular computer ) Usually my FreeBSD workstation has some security settings (according to the Handbook). What's more, if I'm reading mail locally from a monitor that's connected to a mail server, I'm dealing with an even more meticulously configured system with jails for various services. Previously (before FreeBSD) I used just Gentoo with the hardened profile and the hardened kernel. Even in the case of a simple workstation, I have a fairly minimalistic environment, which consists of xmonad + Emacs, from which I do not expect any insidious trick :). Finally, all of these programs are open source and have been built by myself on my binary host (it doesn't matter if it's FreeBSD or Gentoo).

In the case of a smartphone, we are dealing with a lot of programs, only some of which are open. All this big top is teeming in a system that is difficult to consider as trusted, ads can sometimes even be shown there :confused:

2 - as a result of using mobile ISP, I can't properly filter IP access using ipfw for imap/submission ports.

3 - I guess mobile clients can't provide SSH connections using u2f, for example.

Finally, it's not about security, but using mutt (or some Emacs-based email client) is inconvenient from a smartphone screen. For example, mutt will use vi (or Emacs evil-mode) control method.
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Something you haven't said about Mutt.
Technically, apps without a GUI are also more secure.

Security and Complexity
Complex code is buggy and hence insecure
We thus have four challenges
1 To the extent possible, eliminate complexity
2 Protecting the unavoidably complex (i.e., buggy) application code from
attackers
3 Presenting a simple interface to the world
4 Ensuring that our security code is simple

A GUI is an additional thing that can be attacked, and makes security more complex. It is also one of the most attacked things.
This is why creating and managing a NAS via the command line is more secure than using TrueNAS or similar GUI software.
This also applies to email apps so you probably have a very secure setup right now.
 
shepper said:
I use fetchmail configured for pop3 retrieval and messages left on the server. Fetchmail then writes them in my ~/Mail folder via nmh so each email is a separate file(#mh format). Mutt has a macro <G> that invokes fetchmail. I was looking at alpine but I could not figure out how to change the email format, in alpine, from mbox -> #mh. How did you setup fetchmail w/ alpine?
Click to expand...

My preference is to use a local dovecot IMAP server, that way you can use various clients without bothering about the underlying storage.

I prefer getmail over fetchmail. fetchmail supports protocols that hardy anyone uses but has poor support for IMAP retrieval. The original getmail was dropped from ports with python2 , but there is a fork using python3.
 
I had some issues with mutt's built in mh handling
Code: 
set mbox_type = mh
but it has been awhile and I cannot recall the details or comment if it was improved upstream.

Mutt handles imap4 to my satisfaction.

So I use mutt/fetchmail/nmh on my work station where I archive/backup emails in $HOME and just setup mutt with imap4 on my portable devices. That way I have a consistent email user interface. I tried getmail and did not find it superior for my admittedly narrow use case. Overall, I tend to lean toward apps coded in C over python.
 
I find it easier setup not to use fetchmail or getmail. And leave all emails on the imap-server , and an MH-local-box just in case.
Setup of mutt,alpine,sylpheed,claws is straitforward & easy.
 
Yes, but I use gmail as pop3 with getmail. If this is an issue with gmail's authentication that they started in May, my page covers it (to spam the page again,https://srobb.net/mutt.html ). Just search for May 30 on the page where I (hopefully) clearly explain the workaround.
If that's your question, and the explanation isn't as clear as I think it is, please let me know.
 
scottro said:
If that's your question, and the explanation isn't as clear as I think it is, please let me know.
Click to expand...
The problem is xoauth2. Google does not allow any more to just log in with the password. And comes always
with new requirements.

I had always used alpine with gmail, online, without downloading, till now.
 
Voltaire said:
evince: 43.0, gvfs: 1.50.2_1, nautilus: 42.2, thunar: 4.16.11, xfce: 4.16, xfce4-desktop: 4.16.1

The above apps require it. But I agree, samba shouldn't be a hard requirement for any of those things.
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I've a vague recollection that I have built Xfce4 without samba. I think the only hard dependency on samba there is from gvfs.

Thunar only needs gvfs for the optional "Trash Panel Applet plugin" and the xfce ports depend on thunar.

It looks like evince has an optional dependency on nautilus which in turn optionally depends on gfs.
 
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