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What is the best alternative to Mutt?
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Alpine
All
5
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Extremely user-friendly
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Con
Updates are not frequent
Alpine is not updated frequently. This means that new features, bug fixes or security updates come much later than in other email clients.
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Top
Pro
Can use the built-in text editor or can be integrated with another text editor
Alpine comes with pico, a lightweight text editor which can also be used as a standalone tool. It can also be integrated with vi, vim, emacs, etc... if the user prefers to do so.
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Top
Pro
On-screen contextual help
Alpine has contextual help that can be displayed on-screen. Removing the need to consult the man pages every time you forget a command or how to do something inside it.
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Specs
Based On:
None
Default Desktop Environment:
NA
Init-System:
OpenRC
OS Family:
Linux
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35
1
Mu4e
All
5
Experiences
Pros
5
Top
Pro
UI optimized for speed
The UI is designed to allow for quick keystrokes to get around and is pretty clean. Header View: Message View:
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Pro
Asynchronous
Heavy actions never block emacs, unlike most other emacs email clients.
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Top
Pro
Fully Search Based
Mu4e has no folders or other organizational tools, rather it relies on very fast search queries to help you find your mail.
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Top
Pro
Can write rich text emails
Using the (beta) org mode, Mu4e can compose fully rich text emails.
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Top
Pro
Built-in Autocomplete
Doesn't require you to import address books for autocomplete, learns from your emails just like Gmail.
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FREE
67
3
Mozilla Thunderbird
All
16
Experiences
Pros
10
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Pro
Free (as in freedom and beer)
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Top
Con
Development slowed to only focus on stability and security
Mozilla Thunderbird has slowed down its development of features to only focus resources on security and stability.
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Top
Pro
Available on Linux, OS X and Windows
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Top
Con
Outdated interface
Thunderbird's interface is very outdated and unpleasant. It feels more like a Windows XP application than like a modern MacOS one.
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Top
Pro
Good filtering system
Mozilla Thunderbird offers a flexible filtering system with the ability to set flags and read/unread, as well as sort/assign to new mail directories. There are also numerous plugins available to assist in the filtering.
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Top
Con
Terrible integration with macOS
Simple things - drag/dropping pictures doesn't work, for instance.
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Top
Pro
Very reliable
Version after version, Mozilla Thunderbird works as expected.
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Top
Con
Subject lines can (temporarily) disappear from the list
This is sporadic behavior.
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Top
Pro
Large assortment of plugins available
Mozilla Thunderbird offers a huge amount of extensions to expand the usability and options of the client.
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Top
Con
Serious bugs
Clicking on a subject line can bring up the wrong email.
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Top
Pro
Great flexibility
More options and extended settings than most power users could dream of. Get it working how YOU want.
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Top
Pro
Tabs for navigation
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Top
Pro
Lightning Calendar and Address Book integration
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Top
Pro
Consistent and involving a moderate learning curve
The app design of Mozilla Thunderbird has not changed significantly since its beginning, making its learning curve almost non-existent.
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Top
Pro
Send large files easy
Install pCloud plugin for Thunderbird and your files (upto 20 GB free storage included) will be received as download links
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, macOS, Linux
Search:
Yes
IMAP:
Yes
Exchange Support:
Yes
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Experiences
Free
854
271
Claws Mail
All
17
Experiences
Pros
11
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Pro
Low resource client
Claws Mail is a low resource e-mail client that is often default in low resource Linux distributions.
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Top
Con
Blocks and freezes all the time
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Top
Pro
Open-Source
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Top
Con
Saves passwords in plain format
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Top
Pro
Has many plugins for extra functionality
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Top
Con
Too much bloat
some people dont like the simple design of slypheed so they forked it and created claws mail but it has become so bloated since itsbeginnings.
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Top
Pro
Traditional user interface
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Top
Con
Saves emails in uncompressed format
This takes more space on the HDD.
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Top
Pro
Clean interface with 5 layout variants
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Top
Con
Interface looks old and setup is not easy
The icons as well as the rest of the interface look like an application from the early 90's, with this there is also no easy setup options built in like the more modern e-mail clients.
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Top
Pro
Saves emails in uncompressed readable format
Allows one to read archived emails with a text editor.
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Top
Pro
Has very strong filters
The filters a much stronger than in thunderbird.
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Top
Pro
Saves passwords in encrypted format
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Top
Pro
Has many themes
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Top
Pro
Also supported on Windows
This makes switching the platform easier.
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Top
Pro
Good support for Google's services
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Specs
Platforms:
BSD, Linux, Mac OS, Solaris, Unix, Windows
Search:
Yes
IMAP:
Yes
POP3:
Yes
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Experiences
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256
42
Evolution
All
15
Experiences
Pros
7
Cons
7
Specs
Top
Pro
Supports exchange servers
Evolution is one of the few Linux desktop e-mail clients that's supports exchange servers.
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Top
Con
Can't choose different settings for each mail account
Settings have to applied to all mail accounts.
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Top
Pro
Great integration with Gnome environment
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Top
Con
Limited configuration options
Cannot format date as preferred.
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Top
Pro
Manages contacts, tasks, calendar and memos as well
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Top
Con
RAM heavy
Very heavy on RAM usage.
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Top
Pro
Excellent GPG support
The integration with GPG is excellent. You can sign, encrypt, decrypt, authenticate and verify GPG signatures and GPG signed/encrypted email messages. All of that is just a setting away.
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Top
Con
Poor integration in any non-GNOME desktop
It is written with GNOME in mind.
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Top
Pro
Good support for Google's services
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Top
Con
No configuration messages
Although base functions like bullets, numbered, or pre-formatted text are possible, you can't select or set the font for your messages. Not even serif or sans serif. Which is a bit spartan TBH.
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Top
Pro
Clean interface with 2 layout variants
Going to View > Preview has the option of switching between "Classical View" and "Vertical View".
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Top
Con
Can be wobbly with EWS
Don't be surprised if you have to reboot it a couple of times during a working day, because error messages are piling up (e.g. connection lost, can't sync, can't store appointment, read only). Then again, is this Evolution, or what it connects to? And since such an occasional reboot is dwarfed by the fact that MS365 seems to make full IMAP/ SMTP access (close to) impossible (nice meeting invite, THX, but when is it?), just reboot and get some work done...
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Top
Pro
HTML rendering is great
Of the many email clients available on GNU/Linux, Evolution has the best HTML renderer. It renders HTML and the entire email content exactly like it would appear on a full blown web browser. Not many email clients are capable of doing that.
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Top
Con
Only available on Linux
If you have to switch to another platform for whatever reason, you will need to search for a different email client.
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Specs
Platforms:
Linux
Search:
Yes
IMAP:
Yes
Exchange Support:
Yes
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Experiences
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298
84
Mailspring
All
19
Experiences
Pros
7
Cons
12
Top
Con
Can't use without creating a Mailspring ID
There is no need to create a third party ID for an email client. What if the Mailspring closes in the future - can't install a previously downloaded Mailspring software any more to continue using it or access your stored emails?
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Top
Pro
Great integration with Gmail
Mailspring has great integration with gmail features and tags.
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Top
Con
Slow updates and bug fixes
It takes months to fix some simple bugs. For example, they can't fix bug with notifications on mac OS from April 2019! Upd: they fixed it after 6-7 months
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Top
Pro
Neat UI
The UI is very well designed and neat.
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Top
Con
Unstable, have to keep fixing passwords
You have to keep "updating the password" because it continuously finds it hard to sync with multiple Outlook accounts.
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Top
Pro
Read receipts and link tracking
Activity tracking is built into Mailspring so you get notified as soon as contacts read your messages and can follow up appropriately.
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Top
Con
Pro subscription model
To use some features, like contact profiles and link tracking more than a few times a month, you need to pay for a Pro subscription.
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Top
Pro
CPU / battery efficient
Mailspring uses a C++ sync engine designed to be as efficient as possible, so you can leave the app running and not see your laptop battery life drain away.
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Top
Con
No addressbook
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Top
Pro
Unified inbox
Using a single inbox for all of your email accounts helps you get more done in less time. Mailspring supports every major mail provider—Gmail, iCloud, Office 365, Outlook.com, Yahoo!, and IMAP/SMTP—so you have a single, streamlined command center for all your messages.
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Top
Con
No way to see messages as plain text
And HTML is only optional.
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Top
Pro
Snoozing support
You can swipe to archive / snooze messages and specify when you'd like them to resurface in your inbox.
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Top
Con
Does not support Microsoft Exchange
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Top
Pro
Unlimited number of accounts
Only in the paid version though.
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Top
Con
Very limited user interface
No way to see the messages as a list, no way to rearrange views.
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Top
Con
No portable windows (.zip) bundle available
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Top
Con
Does not support POP
Just IMAP.
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Top
Con
Does not support multi-user installation (Windows)
But instead installs to the user's home directory.
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Top
Con
UI is sluggish (Windows)
Click and only after a tiny delay (~half second) something happens.
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Experiences
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338
115
Geary
All
23
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
13
Specs
Top
Pro
Straightforward and simple UI
Setting up accounts is a simple as putting in the users e-mail address and password.
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Top
Con
No PGP
No encryption available.
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Top
Pro
Native GNOME application
It looks and works like a GNOME application should, so it Just Works™.
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Top
Con
No horizontal layout
There is no optional horizontal layout for those that want to be able to view their emails headers across the full screen.
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Top
Pro
Fast and responsive
Geary is faster than most e-mail applications, upon starting the program or even just browsing in folders.
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Top
Con
Made for Gnome 3
It may look out of place in any other desktop environment.
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Top
Pro
Beautiful UI
Everything about the look and feel of Geary is a breath of fresh air after the clunkiness and ugliness of it's competitors.
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Top
Con
No incoming message rules
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Top
Pro
Lightweight
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Top
Con
Too basic
Very Basic, cannot format date, cannot create new folders - What!!
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Top
Pro
Threaded conversations
Threaded conversations means all subsequent replies are view-able underneath the initial e-mail.
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Top
Con
Not seen as a secure app by Gmail
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Top
Pro
SQLite DB for email
It uses SQLite DB for storing email messages from all accounts in one single DB file. This makes it portable as in you can just copy one SQLite DB file and move your offline mail content to another PC/location. Also, one SQLite DB file for all messages means it is incredibly fast.
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Top
Con
No native Exchange support
Whilst possible if your Exchange server and account are using Davmail as a proxy, at the moment you can't natively add an Exchange account.
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Top
Pro
Work in background
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Top
Con
Development is pretty dead
No real development since October 2017. This should be changed from a "Con" to a "Pro" as the Librem 5 smartphone has Geary as the default email application. There is ongoing development happening as can be seen at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/geary/commits/mainline
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Top
Pro
TNEF support
Support for Outlook-specific email attachments (TNEF).
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Top
Con
No Pop3 support
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Top
Con
Bad HTML rendering
The HTML rendering of email messages is not full fledged. Some messages can appear a bit off compared to their appearance on browsers
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Top
Con
No images in HTML signatures
Whilst it is possible now to add a HTML or plain text signature per account, there is no support for per images in the signatures. This is a must for when an employer imposes a set signature with images.
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Top
Con
Its bloated
IT requires many GNOME dependencies or it will be unusable on the most non other X11-desktops
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Top
Con
No proxy support
Seems like it can't retrieve email from behind proxy.
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Specs
Platforms:
GNU/Linux
License:
LGPLv2.1
Search:
Yes
Developer:
The GNOME Project
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Experiences
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109
50
Gmail
All
20
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
11
Specs
Top
Pro
Best support for Gmail features
Since both the Gmail Android app and Gmail itself is made by Google, the app supports all features Gmail offers (like labeling/starring) and gets new features implemented early - usually as soon as they are announced.
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Top
Con
Sorting mail by Unread is unintuitive
Nearly every other mail app has a clear way to sort mail by Unread. In Gmail app you can do that only by typing “label:unread” in the search field.
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Top
Pro
Incredibly fast, advanced & predictive search
Gmail brings much of the functionality and power of Google's search engine to the app's search. You can use operators such as label:, is:, OR, has: among others, define date ranges, limit search to specific groups and so on. And, you can do it all amazingly fast. The search will also try to predict what you're trying to search for before you've even finished your query and offer up those results.
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Top
Con
Very limited HTML composing
Composing of HTML formatted mails is very limited. No inline images and only some basic text formatting options.
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Top
Pro
Google Drive integration
The app allows inserting files from Drive straight to email or uploading attachments to Drive before sending them out. It will also notify if the person you're sending the file can open the file or if you should change the sharing settings for that file beforehand. Finally, you can choose which one of your Google accounts you want visible in the app.
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Top
Con
Focused mailbox
There should be a way to disable focus mailbox completely.
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Top
Pro
Google Calendar integration
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Top
Con
Too bright, no dark theme
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Top
Pro
Comes bundled with Android for free
Not only is the application free, it comes bundled with the Android OS by default so you don't even have to bother downloading it.
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Top
Con
Advertising has been added to the client
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Top
Pro
Threaded conversations
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Con
Too heavy
It should be lightweight.
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Top
Pro
Safely automatically displays images
The app does not require a confirmation to show images as Google now hosts the images on their own servers making it safe. You can still disable the automatic displaying of images in the settings if you wish.
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Top
Con
Limited notification buttons
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Top
Pro
Tabs to automatically organize your e-mail
Gmail offers the ability to automatically organize your mail into specific categories: Primary Social Promotions Updates Priority Each of the categories can be disabled and you can move your mail around from category to category or set your own rules which sender should be put in which category.
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Top
Con
Changed theme and can't change it back!
Did it without permission and it looks terrible! Washed out look, solid white background with black lame fonts.
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Top
Con
Search results are not good
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Top
Con
No intrinsic p2p encryption option
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Top
Con
Cluttered
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Specs
Publisher:
Google Inc.
File Size:
Varies with device
Required Android Version:
Varies with device
In App Purchases:
None
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Experiences
FREE
282
134
Sylpheed
All
4
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
1
Top
Con
No encrypted mailbox
Likely hasn't been done by anyone since Calypso/Courier back in the 00's.
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Top
Pro
Reliable
No issues with stability or stuff going missing.
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Top
Pro
Comprehensive settings
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Top
Pro
Very very lightweight
It is simple and very lightweight where claws mail added a lot of bloat like themes and plugins slypheed keeps it simple.
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46
40
ripgrep
All
10
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
4
Specs
Top
Pro
Fast
ripgrep has performance similar to raw grep but provides similar level of usability as The Silver Searcher or ACK.
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Top
Con
Does not support encodings other than UTF-8
If you need to search files with text encodings other than UTF-8 (like UTF-16), then ripgrep won’t work. ripgrep will still work on ASCII compatible encodings like latin1 or otherwise partially valid UTF-8. ripgrep may grow support for additional text encodings over time.
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Top
Pro
Supports VCS ignore files
ripgrep can speed up by ignoring files matched by pattern in ".rgignore" (deprecated), ".ignore" (since rg-v0.2.0), and VCS ignore files (e.g., currently only ".gitignore").
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Top
Con
Does not support decompression
If you need to search compressed files, ripgrep doesn’t try to do any decompression before searching.
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Top
Pro
Speedy even with Unicode (UTF-8) searches
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Top
Con
Does not support arbitrary lookahead/lookbehind assertions
However, it's supported since ripgrep v0.10.0 (2018-09-07) https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#0100-2018-09-07
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Top
Pro
Lock-free parallel recursive directory search
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Top
Con
Does not support backreferences
However, it's supported since ripgrep v0.10.0 (2018-09-07) https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#0100-2018-09-07
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Top
Pro
ripgrep lets you only search certain types of files via file type whitelist
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Specs
License:
MIT/Unlicense
Supported platforms:
Windows, MacOS, Linux
Written in:
Rust
Threaded:
Yes
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Experiences
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39
1
The Silver Searcher (Ag)
All
7
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
2
Top
Pro
Really fast
It is written in C. It is up to 10 times faster than ack.
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Con
You have to remember commonly used options and add them as flags everytime
You are not able to define options in a config file as there is none. (You have to use a shell alias or wrapper script to get your default options.)
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Pro
Simple syntax
Ack-compatible.
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Top
Con
Cannot add custom file types
All file types ag is able to search for are baked into the executable. There is no way to add new ones neither via command line nor via (the not existing) config file. The only way is a pull request on github and waiting for a new release.
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Top
Pro
Ignores files in .gitignore by default
It ignores file patterns from your .gitignore, .hgignore and .ignore. This can be a bit buggy though.
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Top
Pro
Supports PCRE RegExp
Supports RegEx like look-ahead/behind (only fixed length lookbehind however).
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Pro
No need to manage another config file or learn a new config syntax
Everything is managed with command line args, meaning you can store commonly used options through .bashrc aliases, bash scripts, and/or autocompletion. There is no config file format to learn or extra dotfiles to manage.
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33
2
tmux
All
12
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Easily split panes
There is a keyboard shortcut that makes it easy to split a window and create more panes.
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Top
Con
Poorly designed key binding
Counter-intuitive keyboard shortcuts make tmux very hard to use and learn.
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Top
Pro
Windows linked to sessions
tmux calls the individual shell instances windows. They are displayed like tabs in the status line. These windows can be shared between different sessions, so that any given shell instance can be in any number of tmux sessions used for different purposes or by different users. This allows configurations like the following example: User A: wAB, wA1, wA2; User B: wB1, wAB, wB2
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Top
Con
Bad scrolling support
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Pro
Preserve the state
As long as you don't close your session, you may even lose your SSH connection, it'll keep your state just as it was. So you can resume where you left off (via tmux attach).
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Con
No builtin telnet or serial support
It's considered bloat by the maintainers and for this reason there's no builtin support for them.
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Top
Pro
Maximize screen space
As a tiling window manager, it'll make use of all the space. As you have multiple workspaces and you can resize, etc. you can adjust to see what matters most.
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Top
Pro
Frequently updated
Tmux is in a state of constant development. Updates are frequent and bug reports usually get an answer within days.
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Top
Pro
Customizable
Open ~/.tmux.conf to get started. You can customize keybindings, the bottom status bar, color schemes, the clock screen, your time zone, and more.
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Top
Pro
Mouse support
Mouse support can optionally be enabled, allowing e.g. scrolling with the mouse wheel, or switching panes with mouse clicks.
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Top
Pro
Only need to learn a few keyboard shortcuts and commands to make much headway
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Specs
License:
ISC license
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130
7
gnus
All
3
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Everything is customizable
Yep, really. From Outlook-mode, where Outlook-typical TOFU mails are “repaired”, up to a high-sophisticated scoring and SPAM filtering, footer lines with quotes, rules depending on the recipient, MIME formatting, boxquotes, etc.
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Top
Con
Difficult documentation
Originally a newsgroup reader, so its documentation uses Usenet terminology for everything -- which is confusing.
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Top
Pro
It supports IMAP and POP3
… but you can use DavMail to connect to Exchange server via EWS.
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21
2
Byobu
All
9
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Easy to get started
All of byobu's functionality is conveniently mapped to F1 to F12. It has a help menu to see keybindings and offers window tabs in an easy to interpret format. All this makes it easy to get started (can get in the way of power users, though).
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Top
Con
Can't be used as login shell
The byobu abstraction layers don't pass the parameters on to tmux or screen that indicate that they should run as a login shell. This means that you can't run 'ssh -t hostname byobu'. You need to use 'ssh -t hostname bash -l -c byobu'. A second implication is that the inner shell won't know to read the .profile file instead of the .$SHELLrc file. I know of no workaround for this.
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Top
Pro
Abstracts tmux and screen with a single user interface.
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Con
Comparatively heavy
byobu adds a lot of functionality to the default tmux display. Most of that can't be implemented using the internal variables tmux provides, but requires executing external scripts. This must be done on every update of the status bar, which happens once a second. That means that the system is performing a lot of forks and interpreting a lot of scripts for this "thin shell wrapper".
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Pro
apt-get or yum install byobu
If neither tmux nor screen are already installed, installs tmux. Both screen and tmux can be installled at same time. Switch between either easily.
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Con
Adds only a relatively superficial abstraction on tmux or screen
Byobu still uses GNU Screen or tmux as the backend, so from a usability perspective it doesn't add much in terms of new functionalities, instead it only adds a layer of abstraction on top of them.
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Top
Pro
Adds OS dashboard alerts
byobu has support for OS alerts when an event happens.
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Pro
Basic package in Ubuntu Server
Byobu package is part of the basic packages in Ubuntu Server distributions.
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Specs
License:
GPLv3
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27
4
cmus
All
12
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
4
Top
Pro
CLI only
CLI makes Cmus clean, fast and minimalist.
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Top
Con
No album art
cmus does not display album art
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Top
Pro
Does not use a lot of memory
Cmus only uses about 15 MB. This is a very small and light media player, which is ideal for people with low end hardware.
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Con
CLI only
No graphical interface is available for cmus. Everything is done through CLI (command line interface).
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Top
Pro
Good library structure
A lot of music players may act more like playlist viewers rather than a music library. cmus sorts by Artist > Year > Album.
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Con
Difficult to use
Cmus uses odd keyboard shortcuts such as "C" to pause, "E" to add songs to queue, and "4" to edit the queue.
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Top
Pro
Works very well with tags from MusicBrainz database
cmus will factor in additional data from the MusicBrainz database while sorting. For example sort orders for arist or album, and the original release date for an album (in the case of a re-release).
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Top
Con
Can't play wavepack files
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Pro
Fast
A lot of music players will be slow when starting if they have huge libraries, but CMus starts fast no matter the library size.
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Top
Pro
Customizable keybindings for a personal experience
You can add keybindings for just about anything - including seeking (forward/backwards 1 minute, for example) which isn't supported by all music players.
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Pro
No mouse required
cmus does not require a mouse as it runs in the terminal
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Pro
Open source extensions and scripts
On GitHub you can find the official WIKI where there are a dozen extensions and scripts from color themes to a lyrics viewer and the ability to play YouTube songs.
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122
25
Emacs
All
41
Experiences
Pros
30
Cons
10
Specs
Top
Pro
Keyboard-focused, mouse-free editing
Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. While true, I often find the mouse and menus handy for those lesser-used commands. An aide-memoir.
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Top
Con
Learning curve is long
While it's better than it used to be, with most functions being possible through the menu, Emacs is still quite a bit different from your standard editor. You'll need to learn new keyboard shortcuts.
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Pro
Total customizability
Customizations can be made to a wide range of Emacs' functions through a Lisp dialect (Emacs Lisp). A robust list of existing Lisp extensions include the practical (git integration, syntax highlighting, etc) to the utilitarian (calculators, calendars) to the sublime (chess, Eliza).
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Con
Sometimes the extensibility can distract you from your actual work
If I ever want to lose half a day, I'll start by tweaking my .spacemacs config file.
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Pro
It's also an IDE
You can debug, compile, manage files, integrate with version control systems, etc. All through the various plugins that can be installed.
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Con
Keyboard combinations can be confusing for new users
For example, for navigation it uses the b, n, p, l keys. Which for some people may seem strange in the begging. However they can be changed easily.
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Pro
Works in terminal or as a GUI application
You can use Emacs' command line interface or graphical user interface.
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Con
Documentation is not beginner-friendly
Although lots of good built-in documentation _exists_, I have after four years of Emacs as my primary editor not figured out how to actually make use of it, and rely completely on Google / StackOverflow for help.
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Pro
Self documenting
Emacs has extensive help support built-in as well as a tutorial accessed with C-h t.
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Con
User interface is terrible
I was using Emacs in the early 1980's, before there were GUIs. In fairness to Emacs, its original design was conceived in that context and is rather good at some things, like flexible ability to bind commands to keyboard shortcuts. Unfortunately, it didn't keep up with the times and fails to take advantage of the entire world of GUI design that's revolutionized computer science since then. So Emacs does 5% or what an editor should do quite will, and is surprisingly under-powered and old fashioned at the other 95%. To this day, it lacks or struggles with very basic things, like interactive dialogs, toolbars, tabbed interface, file system navigation, etc., etc. The things I just mentioned, are all present in some limited and inept form, but falls far short of current standard of good user interface design. For this reason, I would not recommend Emacs to anyone who is under 50 year old, or who needs power user capabilities. For casual, unsophisticated applications by someone who grew up with green screen character based computers, it's probably OK.
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Pro
Free
Licensed under GNU GPL.
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Con
Emacs lisp is very poorly designed
The language that's used for user customization, extensions, and for much of the basic editor functionality, is Emacs lisp, or elisp for short. I actually like lisp in general, especially Scheme, but unfortunately, elisp is one of the worst versions of lisp ever created, barely meriting being called lisp. It's very slow, impoverished in features, inconsistent, and rather inelegant in design. Elisp needed to be overhauled 20 or 30 years ago, but the Emacs developers were not willing to do the work. I believe this is one of the major reasons Emacs is so buggy, lacking in features, development is so slow, and consequently almost nobody uses it (or should use it) anymore.
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Pro
Great documentation
With 30+ years of use the Emacs documentation is very thorough. There are also a lot of tutorials and guides written by third parties.
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Con
Very poorly maintained
It's not clear to what extent Emacs is still supported. There's still some development taking place, but so slow that it's almost an abandoned project. There are numerous bugs in Emacs, many these days associated with start up and package management. When you search the Internet for solutions, you often find many posts, sometimes going back months or even years, with no clear fix.
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Pro
Vi keybindings through Evil mode
Evil mode emulates vim behaviors within Emacs. It enables Vi users to move inside the Emacs universe.
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Con
Hard customization
For customization, you need to learn Lisp.
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Pro
Provides org-mode
Advanced planning and publication which can start as a simple list.
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Con
A lot of jokes in this serious software
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Pro
Enormous range of functionalities (way beyond simple "text editing")
Through its programmability, a very broad range of functionalities can be integrated in emacs, turning it even into a "single point of contact" with the underlying operating system.
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Con
Using Emacs on a new machine without your .emacs file
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Pro
Cross-platform
Works on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, BSD, and others.
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Pro
Integrates planning in your development process
You can jump straight from your org-mode files to programming tasks - and back - and build a seamless workflow.
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Pro
Versatile
Emacs is great for everything.
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Pro
Mini buffer
You can pass complicated arguments in the mini buffer.
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Pro
Ubiquity
Fully compliant GNU-emacs is available on many platforms, and they all understand .emacs configuration files.
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Pro
Rectangular cut and paste
Emacs can select rectangularly.
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Pro
Lisp customizations
With lisp customization, any behavior of Emacs can be changed. Update with pre-release patch can be also applied without recompiling the whole Emacs.
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Pro
Visual selection and text objects with Evil
Evil is an extensible vi layer for Emacs. It provides Vim features like Visual selection and text objects.
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Pro
dabbrev-expand (Alt-/)
Dynamic word completion.
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Pro
Support multi-line editing, multiple frame, powerful paren, crazy jumping style
Review the "Emacs Rocks" video.
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Pro
Has been widely used for a long time
The first verion of Emacs was written in 1974 and GNU Emacs in 1984.
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Pro
Helm plugin adds even more power to Emacs
Powerful commands, search, and more with the Helm plugin.
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Pro
GTK+ widgets support
Since version 25 you can run GTK widgets inside Emacs buffers. One of these is the WebKitGTK+, which allows the user to run a full-featured web browser inside Emacs with JavaScript and CSS support among other things.
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Pro
Excelent tutorial to get you started
The tutorial you are presented with at startup shows you exactly what you need to get started and teaches you how to use the built-in help yourself later.
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Pro
Interactive Shells
Emacs has a number of shell variants: ansi-term, shell, and eshell.
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Pro
Emacs provides magit, the best and most complete GIT interface
Complex git history editing become a breeze with very few keystrokes. And simple ones are quickly stashed in muscle memory. Git becomes an direct extension of your brain thanks to Magit. Cherrypicking, blaming, resetting, interactive rebasing, line level commit, spinoff branches... you name it, magit already has it and has typically all those 5 to 10 git CLI commands of higher-level patterns also tide to one simple shortcut (want to amend a commit three commits away ? forgot to branch out and you've got already N commits on master ? ... etc... ).
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Pro
Gnus
Managing several large mailing lists has never been easier using Gnus. The threading commands and the various ways of scoring articles means that I never miss important messages/authors, etc. A joy to use.
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Pro
Eshell is cross platform
You can use the underlying operating system shell as a terminal emulation in an Emacs buffer. Don't like the default shell for your configuration? You can change it to your liking.
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Pro
Excellent Lisp editing support
Built-in packages make editing Lisp source code feel natural.
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Pro
Use-package and org-mode
Missing some neural package that predicts actions, maybe in the next release ...
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Specs
Platforms:
Unix-like, macOS, Windows, Cygwin
License:
GPL-3.0-or-later
Multi Language Support:
Yes
Auto Complete:
Yes
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Experiences
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846
176
kmail
All
9
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Con
Buggy as of 2020
There are many bugs which are hard to track down in kmail, sometimes without any useful logs for troubleshooting. Sometimes the bugs are related to supportive applications like Akonadi, ect.
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Top
Pro
Proper kde intergation
Its the only graphical email client which is properly integrated into kde plasma.
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Con
Poor UX
The user experience of kmail is extremely poor comparison to Thunderbird or evolution on Linux.
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Pro
Has system tray icon
Good integration with plasma 5
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Con
Buggy related kdepim applications
kmail by itself isn't the only application which is buggy, the many of the kdepim applications are buggy as of spring 2020.
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Pro
Supports POP3 and IMAP mailboxes
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Con
No google support
You cant pass google 'Authentication' for the majority of the kdepim applications, The only support which works is via the kde 'online accounts' under 'system settings'. This only supports youtube and google hangouts integration.
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Con
Akonadi
Akonadi needs lot of ram
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Specs
Platforms:
Linux, Windows
Default Desktop Environment:
KDE Plasma
Search:
yes
Release Schedule:
yes
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Experiences
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15
6
Kontact
All
20
Experiences
Pros
17
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
Multi-account, multi-identity
Supports both multiple accounts from different servers / services simultaneously (both inbound and sending) as well as multiple identities. Incoming accounts have a default identity and it switches automatically to the correct identity depending on the mail folder you are in.
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Con
Crashes frequently
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Pro
Integrated calendaring
The integrated calendaring support means that incoming invitations can be accepted with a click and they get put into your calendar automatically.
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Con
Akonadi
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Pro
Supports multiple groupware servers and services
Besides being able to connect to any IMAP, POP3 and SMTP server, you can also connect your Google and Facebook accounts and access Kolab and Tine servers natively.
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Pro
Encryption
Fully supports PGP and S-MIME with built-in certificate management. Encrypt, sign and verify emails easily and securely.
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Pro
Built-in search
Searching for emails is simple with the search box in the main window which can scan through email bodies, email flags, recipients, etc. Lightening fast in recent versions.
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Pro
Plain text and HTML mail editing
Provides support for rich-text (HTML) mail editing, but kindly defaults to plain text. Also supports viewing HTML emails with several security features built-in.
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Pro
Contacts, Todos, Notes, Journals, Feeds ....
There are numerous components that come with Kontact that augment the mail experience including contact management, todo lists, note takers and an RSS feed reader, among others.
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Pro
Integration with kde plasma
Based on qt, and part of plasma suite, it integrates well with other KDE apps like kwallet, calendar, etc.
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Pro
Continuous, active development
Kontact has been actively developed for over a decade, with components such as the mail and calender going back even further. Development continues to this day with an active and responsive open source community made up of both volunteers and paid developers behind it.
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Pro
Solid offline IMAP
IMAP support is a strong point for Kontact, with offline mail and sync being transparent and automatic. Read and create mails on the go and everything syncs quickly and reliably when network connectivity is available.
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Pro
Spam, scam and adblock features
Supports spam filtering, scam detection and adblock for HTML mails.
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Pro
Keyboard friendly
Can be driven almost entirely from the keyboard. Moving an email, for instance, is a simple matter of hitting 'm' and then typing to filter through the list of folders that appears.
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Pro
Cross-platform
Works on Linux/BSD (all desktop environments and window managers), Windows and Mac.
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Pro
Threading
Has flexible and powerful options, from "traditional" conversation-style threading to organizing by date, by senders and receivers, .... paired with "keep replies in same folder" it is easy to track conversations over time.
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Pro
Filtering
Supports client and server-side filtering of mails by subject, recipients, mailing list, body text, etc.
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Pro
Very flexible user interface
You can make the Kontact UI look and function how you want. You can re-arrange the main interface, as well as make the list of mails show or hide almost anything you could need.
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Pro
Professional support
For enterprise deployments, having commercial support can be a big plus. Companies such as Kolab Systems provide professional support and consulting services for Kontact.
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Specs
Platforms:
Linux
Search:
Yes
IMAP:
Yes
POP3:
Yes
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Experiences
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51
30
Hiri
All
7
Experiences
Pros
1
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Con
Dead product
No release in well over a year, no support, and a permanent "never to be repeated" offer. This product is now looking like a con itself.
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Pro
Simple and modern UI/UX design
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Con
Not free
You have to subscribe to a paid plan to use it.
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Con
Cannot unsubscribe or cancel service
Cancellation requests go unanswered but the yearly invoices continue to arrive and credit card is charged.
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Top
Con
No POP3 support
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Top
Con
No IMAP support, only for Microsoft Exchange
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Specs
Platforms:
Linux, Windows, Mac
Search:
Yes
IMAP:
No
Exchange Support:
Yes
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Experiences
$5/M or 39$/Y
48
33
Newton
All
8
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Con
Subscription based
Newton costs $49.99 per year after the 14 day free trial.
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Top
Pro
Know who's emailing you
Newton grabs information from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter accounts linked to the sender's email address. It then displays information which can help you figure out who the emailer is, such as their job title and where they work.
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Top
Con
It's "stupid expensive"
$49.99/year? Really? And it doesn't cook, clean, or serve beer. There are better email apps for far less money.
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Top
Pro
Snooze incoming emails
You can snooze emails to come back at a convenient time - whether it be in 2 hours, or next Wednesday.
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Pro
Works across multiple platforms
While there is no Windows app, Newton is available on iOS, Android, and macOS, including Android Wear and Apple Watch.
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Pro
Logs messages to Salesforce
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Pro
Had everything you can dream of
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Specs
Platforms:
MacOS, iOS, Android
Search:
Yes
IMAP:
Yes
Exchange Support:
Yes
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Experiences
$49.99/YR
23
19
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