I have used the whole Kontact suite for many years.

Cheers,
Olav

Hello:

Vernon wrote:

... Thunderbird apt-get install thunderbird for a graphical e-mail client.
... Alpine apt-get install alpine. as a text based e-mail client.

...

All the boxes seemed to check: it was a similar front end and the Sylpheed-Claws FAQ indicated that it had what to me was a deal-breaker PMail feature: selective mail download.

...

Sounds like you are still using POP3 to retrieve your mail. If so, way past time to switch to IMAP. With IMAP, e-mail clients like Alpine only download the mail headers and not the e-mail contents. The e-mail doesn't get downloaded until you try to view it. This behaver can also be achieved in Thunderbird by unticking the Synchronization & Storage->Keep messages in all folders for the account on this computer. This is the way I run Thunderbird and messages only get downloaded when I click on them.

The extensions are a plus, I need just six for my setup. I think Thunderbird is a reliable and professional tools, he can be used also in a enterprise environment and surely I suggest it for small and medium business.

If I recall correctly, after trying out Eudora and some other whose name I cannot recall, I finally settled on Pegasus Mail as my email client.
This was way back then, as I went from W3.11 to W95.
Never looked back.

When I (finally) switched to Linux, it was because I was confident that I would be able to (via Wine) have PMail as my email client and this had the benefit of my being able to have my favourite photo tool (IrfanView) at hand without having to switch OSs.

I was sure that I could eventually manage to do without IrfanView but not without PMail.   

A couple of years ago, I thought that maybe there was an email client out there in Linux-land that could replace Pmail.
After searching through what was available I came across one which looked as it could do: Sylpheed-Claws.

All the boxes seemed to check: it was a similar front end and the Sylpheed-Claws FAQ indicated that it had what to me was a deal-breaker PMail feature: selective mail download.

So I installed Sylpheed-Claws to try it out but found none of that was there and there was no mention of it anywhere save that FAQ.

I asked at one list list but got no reply so I asked at another and got this:

How 'selective mail download' is in any way comparable (nearest thing) to 'receive size limit' is beyond me.

So ...
Pegasus Mail it will be, rightfully so as it has proven to be excellent and has served me very well for almost 25 years.
I have not been able to find anything to use as a suitable replacement in Linux.

I just hope to someday be able to settle my debt with David Harris.

Cheers,

A.

I use Alpine apt-get install alpine. as a text based e-mail client. Alpine has a very intuitive interface and is easy to use.

As an aside, the University of Washington, the original developers of Pine and IMAP has switched to Gmail as it continues toi transition from an institution focused on higher learning to an institution focused on the bottom line.

Geoff

Another option is Interlink Mail & News: https://binaryoutcast.com/projects/interlink/

Is this available in Devuan? I don't see a package for it in Synaptic Package Manager.

This then still works and interlink wanted to update, so I let it do this and then let it restart and this also worked. I do not know if there are security problems with having the program owned by me rather than root.

I checked the network traffic with wireshark and it does seem to be encrypted as I would expect.

Geoff

I get the impression that Interlink is to Thunderbird as Pale Moon is to Firefox. As a Pale Moon user this is pleasing.

I had to set up my mail account manually, but simply copying the settings from Claws is quite easy!

I'm not sure where would be a sensible place to install it, maybe /usr/local/.

The memory size is under 200 MB and seems very responsive.

I also came across the web site "Alternatives to"

https://alternativeto.net/software/inte … -and-news/

Which offers alternative software offering.

Geoff

Another option is Interlink Mail & News: https://binaryoutcast.com/projects/interlink/

Nope:

I will not use use software that discriminates 32bit architectures.
But since Debian6 days or even earlier I'm happy enough (the keyboard shortcuts should be better) with Evolution and so I just can forget it.

Although further observation spotted that Evolution has quite a number (8?) of other processes between 20 and 80 MB.

I have the impression that Claws is the most responsive, although Evolution and Thunderbird are not very far behind.

On the subjective question of the look and feel, I am used to Claws and I like that it seem tight and compact in its use of screen space. When I had tidied up the layout of the other two and lined them up side by side, however, it turns out that the other two were no worse.
I thought that Evolution looks a bit more elegant, although it is currently displaying links in white. On the grey background of the headers this is not very good, but on the white background of the message body, they are invisible! After fiddling with the preferences>Mail Preferences and turning off and then on the "use the same fonts as other applications", the links are now showing in black!
Thunderbird shows the links in blue, while Claws shows links in green.
When I first ran Thunderbird I was unhappy with the way the menu and toolbars were arranged around the top of the window which I found untidy and unhelpful. With a little bit of tidying up I am more relaxed about it, although this not my favourite arrangement.

On the security front, Claws have the Webkit based "fancy" html plugin deprecated, because of its use of Webkit. As far as I can tell Evolution also uses Webkit and one of its dependencies is libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37. It also appears to have a couple of other processes running, which have Webkit in their names.
I do not know what Thunderbird uses for HTML rendering.

Geoff