Sylpheed 2.0 messaging client pushes the envelope (Linux.com) [LWN.net]

Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier reviews version 2.0 of the Sylpheed email client on Linux.com "Since I started using email in 1995, I've been on a (seemingly) never-ending quest for the perfect email client. I've used text-based, Web-based, and GUI email clients, on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS, and have yet to find one mail user agent (MUA) that I'd consider "perfect." There are some really, really good MUAs -- such as Mutt and Mozilla Thunderbird -- but I haven't found the perfect mailer just yet. Sylpheed 2.0, however, is getting close."

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Sylpheed 2.0 messaging client pushes the envelope (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 16, 2005 4:36 UTC (Fri) by dilinger (subscriber, #2867) [Link] (9 responses)

I just tried it out, and was rather disappointed to discover that it doesn't appear to support SSL for IMAP. Sigh, back to (*gag*) evolution for me.

Sylpheed 2.0 messaging client pushes the envelope (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 16, 2005 5:22 UTC (Fri) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] (4 responses)

You could use fetchmail or getmail to retrieve the messages, and then use Sylpheed to read them.

Sylpheed 2.0 messaging client pushes the envelope (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 16, 2005 5:54 UTC (Fri) by dilinger (subscriber, #2867) [Link] (3 responses)

Sure, or I could switch to pop3, or I could use offlineimap.. But if I'm going to switch to a new MUA, there has to be some benefit to doing so. Having to work around missing IMAP features seems like extra work with little benefit.

Sylpheed 2.0 messaging client pushes the envelope (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 16, 2005 11:48 UTC (Fri) by deweerdt (subscriber, #18159) [Link] (2 responses)

I understand your POV, however isolating the mail retrieving (fetchmail) and sending (msmtp, postfix, ...) parts - I'm aware that it requires a little effort to setup - allows you to swap MUAs easily. I use mutt maily, but I'm able to use Thunderbird or Horde if needed.

Sylpheed 2.0 messaging client pushes the envelope (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 16, 2005 12:03 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

one of the key advantages of useing IMAP is that your mail remains in one place, no matter what machine you read it from.

saying that you need to pull a copy of the mail to your local machine (whichever machine you happen to be on at the time) and then deal with it there is a major change and regression.

now I realize that a lot of people only ever use one machine for reading mail and aren't bothered by this, but those of us whoend up useing many different machines to deal with our mail during the day _really_ don't want to end up with it spread all over the place so pulling a copy locally isn't a real option.

Sylpheed 2.0 messaging client pushes the envelope (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 16, 2005 20:33 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

> one of the key advantages of useing IMAP is that your mail remains in one
> place, no matter what machine you read it from.

As a bit of a side note, PINE supports remote configs stored on the IMAP server. It also supports remote address books. The upshot is that _any_ machine with a copy of PINE available can be _your_ copy of PINE without changing any state on the local machine.

IIRC Netscape had something similar where you could store your config on an LDAP server (probably because they also sold LDAP server software).

My Sylpheed supports IMAP/SSL

Posted Sep 16, 2005 8:10 UTC (Fri) by alextingle (guest, #20593) [Link]

I'm running Sylpheed-claws on Debian, and I read my mail every day through IMAP over SSL. I suppose the SSL support is a 'claws' patch - so you could just add it in to your build if you need it.

Sylpheed 2.0 messaging client pushes the envelope (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 16, 2005 18:09 UTC (Fri) by BradReed (subscriber, #5917) [Link]

The GtK2 build of Sylpheed-Claws is my email program of choice. It supports SSL for IMAP and many other features that vanilla Sylpheed doesn't.

The filtering is much better too.

SSL for IMAP

Posted Sep 17, 2005 4:44 UTC (Sat) by ringerc (subscriber, #3071) [Link]

Evolution's SSL support is pretty primitive, too. If you're looking for decent IMAP suport, thunderbird seems to be the way to go. Supports IMAP+TLS as well as IMAPs, supports client certs, etc.

Last time I checked Evolution only worked with IMAPs, not with the IMAP+TLS protocol (that allows the use of virtual mail hosting and generally doesn't suck as much). Worse, if the server demands a client certificate, it doesn't even understand the demand and tell the user they can't use the server - let alone supply one of the installed certs.

I still use Evolution, because I actually like the client. If they get around to supporting LDAP+TLS with client certs for address books, and HTTPs+client cert WebDAV for calendars, it'll be close to my perfect client. For now, I have to work around its braindead SSL limitations by tunnelling plain IMAP through ssh.

Sylpheed 2.0 messaging client pushes the envelope (Linux.com)

Posted Sep 17, 2005 11:17 UTC (Sat) by fergal (guest, #602) [Link]

Sigh, back to (*gag*) evolution for me.

I know what you mean. Evolution is the worst mail client in the world - apart from all the others :)