REVIEWS Email Suites YOU’VEKMail, Evolution, Thunderbird, and Claws Mail GOT MAIL Jürgen Acker, photocase.com Acker, Jürgen We examine the strengths and weaknesses of four popular mail clients: Post Office Protocol (POP) and Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). BY MIRKO ALBRECHT KMail, Evolution, Thunderbird, and Claws Mail. The ability to communicate with a se- lected user group via mailing lists is also n early challenge of the Internet Whether you use mail at the office or useful. Mail clients should support this pioneers was to find a way to at home, spam is a major concern. In by providing appropriate functions. On a Asend small text messages across fact, the bulk of all mail traffic is unso- modern desktop, the ability of a system a network. Despite criticism that sending licited advertising, and important mes- to integrate seamlessly is a major usabil- snippets of text was “not an important sages easily disappear into the black ity factor, and an essential application motivation for a network of scientific hole of the spam filter. Current mail cli- like a mail client should have intuitive computers” [1], email quickly became ents need a simple, flexible, reliable way controls. Also, a full-fledged address one of the world’s most important forms to filter spam. book or the ability to integrate an exist- of communication. Some computer users also like to en- The simple console-based text pro- crypt messages to provide protection GLOSSARY grams used by those Internet pioneers against sniffing or to have a digital sig- would never work today. Modern email nature to validate the sender. PIM: Personal Information Manager. clients must contend with new irritants The increased volume of mail traffic Software that manages personal data and documents such as contacts, ap- such as spam, intrusion, and skyrocket- makes effective sorting mechanisms es- pointments, tasks, notes, email, and ing volumes of email traffic. sential. At the same time, most users the like. have more than one account and may Sweeter Suites Mbox: A storage format for email where use their accounts for completely differ- all messages are stored in a large file. Email clients have evolved into elaborate ent purposes, but they still might want Maildir: Directory structure for storing suites that fulfill the user’s every wish. to read the mail from the same interface. emails in which each message is stored This article compares four popular email Any measure of a mail client is its sup- in a separate file. tools for Linux environments. port for popular mail protocols, such as 44 ISSUE 86 JANUARY 2008 044-050_email.indd 44 14.11.2007 18:49:19 Uhr Email Suites REVIEWS Figure 2: The simple wizard takes most of the headaches out of setting up an email account in KMail. vate). A dialog will prompt you to first enter a name and possibly the name of your organization, which it then adds to your email correspondence. The remaining tags are for configuring Figure 1: Freely selectable folder structures for managing multiple identities and intelligent your identity. For example, you can set filter rules keep KMail tidy. up an existing GPG key in Cryptography to attach the key to your messages and ing address book makes life easier for program window. The wizard does not specify a valid signature for the identity the user. offer presets for popular providers such you are configuring. as GMX or Google Mail. KMail The Settings | Configure KMail entry Advanced KMail [2] is part of the popular KDE gives you access to the client’s compre- In the area below Advanced, you can de- desktop (Figure 1). The software has hensive configuration options. fine the storage location for the Sent, been assigned a new release number to Besides the ability to create accounts Templates, and Drafts folders, and this is match the new desktop version; the lat- with different providers, KMail also lets also where you modify message tem- est version when this issue went to print you set up various identities, which is plates in the Templates tab. Check the was 1.9.8 (on KDE 3.5.7). useful if you want to separate private Use Custom Templates box and modify The software is not just an integrated communications from business mail the text for Reply to Sender, for example. KDE system component, but also part of (Figure 3). The Insert command button helps you KDE’s PIM solution, Kontact, which also add field commands for these templates. includes a newsreader, an address book, Identify Yourself The Image tab includes a gimmick: a calendar, an RSS reader, and a task To add an identity, click Add in Identities KMail will transmit a monochrome manager, all with a standardized GUI. and enter a name for your new identity photo or logo of 48x48 pixels along with KMail is also available as a standalone (e.g., Google Mail business, GMX pri- the message. application. When you launch the program for the first time, a wizard pops up to help you set up a mail account (Figure 2). As a user, you simply supply your name, mail address, and provider’s server addresses, and up comes the traditional three-panel KMail Overview The score in the overview shows the rating out of a possible total of 5. Usability/ system integration AAAAA Configurability AAAAA Filtering AAAAA POP account management AAAAA Security GPG/ HTML AAAAB Spam filter AAAAA Mailing lists AAAAA Address book/ contacts AAAAA Figure 3: KMail gives users many options in configuration dialogs. JANUARY 2008 ISSUE 86 45 044-050_email.indd 45 14.11.2007 18:49:29 Uhr REVIEWS Email Suites As a genuine KDE program, KMail in- tegrates seamlessly with the system, as long as you have KDE. An icon in the kicker will notify you of incoming mail, if so desired. Many major programs, in- cluding OpenOffice, offer to integrate KMail as the default email client and will pop up a message window with an address in it as needed. KAddressbook leaves little to be de- sired with respect to input options, and it also collaborates nicely with other low-level applications such as Kopete (IM) or konversation (IRC client). Evolution Evolution [3] is to Gnome and other Gtk- based environments as KMail is to KDE. Figure 4: Evolution is not available as a single email client, but as a complete PIM suite. This said, Evolution is not part of a PIM suite – it is a PIM suite (Figure 4). Be- Unfortunately, most mail programs If you do not know what kind of secu- sides email functionality, Evolution of- just ignore the free gift. rity your provider offers, you can press fers contacts, appointments, tasks, and Check server capabilities. It makes sense notes. The program does not let you Configuring Access to take a closer look at the versatile con- switch off the additional features and The Accounts tab lets you set up your figuration dialogs in KMail at least once. just use the mail client. The application mail accounts. KMail can access local Many of the functions take you to intelli- is thus fairly cluttered from an overdose mailboxes, Mbox and Maildir boxes, gent tools that can help take the head- of menu entries. IMAP servers, and POP servers, which aches out of daily mail handling if you will be used by most users. As a user, get them set up right. Evolution Identity you can specify whether to keep mes- Creating an account in Evolution is just sages on the server or have KMail delete Security as easy as in KMail; although users only messages on the server after retrieving. From a security point of view, KMail is have one identity, they can set up multi- Also, you can specify how long to keep state of the art. Click on Security in the ple accounts for it. To compensate for messages on the POP server. setup dialog to integrate your GnuPG key this drawback, you can assign different You can define up front how often and use keys provided by other contacts, names and organizations to the same KMail will attempt to retrieve new mail, and you can specify whether to use a identity. The program does not let you which target folder messages for the ac- key automatically or on request only. use different templates for different ac- count will use, and what message size to Also, it is just as easy to set up how counts, however. reject. The Tools tab gives you access to KMail will handle suspicious HTML mail You can enter a signature, although secure access methods. in the Read tab. You can opt to view the the function is slightly hidden, in Edit | mail or download linked content off the Preferences | Composer preferences | Sig- TIP: KMail in Firefox web. Security-conscious users will want natures. If you enter multiple signatures To use KMail in Firefox for frequent to avoid “features” of this kind. for different situations, you need to se- mailto links, enter about:config in the lect the right signature on the right of the browser’s address box. Then right-click Antispam and Antivirus Compose window. Other settings for anywhere in the window to drop down KMail has two useful wizards for inte- email are fairly uncomplicated, although the menu and select New | String. In the grating antivirus and antispam pro- first dialog field, type network.proto- grams; both links are located in the Tools Evolution Overview col-handler.app.mailto and then menu. KMail will automatically search The score in the overview shows the kmailservice. The changes are applied for installed software, such as Spam- rating out of a possible total of 5.