Kurt Lieber wrote:
OK, I've read with great amusement all the chest-thumping going on about MUAs, MTAs and how Microsoft email products are things that you scrape off the bottom of your shoe.I, for one, am brand-spanking new at Linux and have yet to find a Linux MUA that meets my needs. I really do like Linux and would like to transition over to it for my desktop machine, but because of it's weakness on the MUA side, I haven't been able to do so. ("weakness" is my perception - you can prove me wrong by continuing to read) So, here's a list of my requirements and I'm hoping you guys can point me to an MUA that meets them. If so, I'll gladly switch over to Linux full-time and forswear Microsoft forever. :)
I'll be the first to say that linux is lacking a good mail client (I also hate outlook, BTW) but there're some good choices out there once they become stable/feature complete. First off, if you want a client that does this/that/theother like/similar/almostlike Outlook, your best choice is... guess what... Outlook! However, I'll go ahead and recommend:
1.) Evolution (http://www.ximian.com/apps/evolution.php3) which looks a _lot_ like Outlook before you customize all the stupid outlook features away (it's still under development though -- version 0.10 -- so you'll probably have to install a lot of extra/new libraries to run it and it probably still has some bugs). I don't run Evolution but I know a couple people that do and have been pretty satisfied with it... it does support multiple IMAP servers too.
2.) Mozilla Mail/News (http://www.mozilla.org), which I currently use. This one is also under development but if you run one of the stable releases (0.9.2 is the latest) you shouldn't have too much trouble. I have two POP3 accounts on different servers configured (it even supports multiple smtp servers). Mozilla also supports IMAP but I believe it's a relatively new feature.
3.) Aethera (http://www.thekompany.com/projects/aethera/index.php3?dhtml_ok=0) the new KDE MUA from The Kompany... I don't use it and don't know anyone that does but The Kompany is known for producing good product so I'd definitely give it a try if you don't like either of my other suggestions.
Before I get flamed, there are plenty of other _stable_ and fully functional Linux MUAs out there (pine, mutt, emacs' mail client, etc) but, judging from your post, I doubt that you'd be interested in them since they tend to emphasize functionality over aesthetics/ease-of-use.
Hope that helps...
