When comparing Mozilla Thunderbird vs Konversation, the Slant community recommends Mozilla Thunderbird for most people. In the question“What are the best IRC clients for Windows?” Mozilla Thunderbird is ranked 9th while Konversation is ranked 16th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Free (as in freedom and beer)
Pro Available on Linux, OS X and Windows
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.
Pro Very reliable
Version after version, Mozilla Thunderbird works as expected.
Pro Large assortment of plugins available
Mozilla Thunderbird offers a huge amount of extensions to expand the usability and options of the client.
Pro Great flexibility
More options and extended settings than most power users could dream of. Get it working how YOU want.
Pro Tabs for navigation
Pro Lightning Calendar and Address Book integration
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.
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
Pro Regularly maintained
Konversation is still being updated with new features and bug fixes. Konversation 1.5(released January 15, 2014) has added plenty of major features.
Pro Notifications
Konversation has an OSD(On Screen Display) feature that gives you an overlay message anytime your nick is mentioned. This means you won't be interrupted from your work and reduces the need to keep the window open.
Pro Plenty of useful smaller features
Koversation is full of features to make IRC simpler and smoother. It comes with tools like a channel bookmarker, the ability to insert special characters easily and the "URL catcher", which gives quick access to any links mentioned in the channel.
Pro Quick Buttons
The Quick Buttons features allows you to set a button to any IRC command that you frequently use. It has several defaults such as whois, and kick but a button can be created for any command you need.
Pro Very professional UI design
Cons
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.
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.
Con Terrible integration with macOS
Simple things - drag/dropping pictures doesn't work, for instance.
Con Subject lines can (temporarily) disappear from the list
This is sporadic behavior.
Con Serious bugs
Clicking on a subject line can bring up the wrong email.
Con Updating to a new version overwrites configuration settings
Colors, fonts and autojoin behaviors may be customizable, but backing up the settings prior to updating the software is imperative.
Con Crashes when trying to download search results (on Ubuntu 16.04)
