Thunderbird or Evolution?

Question

Before I upgraded from 10.04 to 10.10 (I formatted my harddisk and installed it), I used thunderbird.

Now I wanted to test out evolution. I think it's pretty good, because there are integrated notifications and encryption methods. Another thing is that there's a calendar integrated in evolution, but I can also install a calendar addon for thunderbird.

What do you think about it? Can you tell me the pros and cons of thunderbird and evolution? I don't know which program I should use.

I never used evolution before 10.10, I always installed thunderbird.

Should I move to evolution, or stay with thunderbird? I like both of them, I just need some pros and cons.

If you think both email programs are bad, tell me a better one.

Solution 1

If you are going to use MS Exchange mailboxes , evolution is the mail client. Thats the pro for evolution.

If you are using IMAP, POP accounts, thunderbird is better. Thunderbird also has an addon for the osd notifications. It is faster than evolution in retrieving emails and you get a lot of useful addons with thunderbird . Plus , in evolution, tables created in ms outlook are not shown. I think evolution does not read them but thunderbird does.

So my vote goes for Thunderbird.

Solution 2

Thunderbird is likely to become the default mail client as soon as its issues with calendar, contacts and messaging menu are solved. There aren't any blueprints on this yet but Maverick's one suggests this change in the future. So if you don't want setup Evolution now and then Thunderbird in the future, then I would go with the latter one.

Solution 3

I used both before, but now I stick to the trio fetchmail + mutt + msmtp, to retrieve, manage and send e-mail respectively.

Regardless of the pros/cons with Evolution VS Thunderbird, there isn't all that much difference between using any of the two (Evolution being slow with IMAP annoyed me though). Therefore, I suggest you have a look at mutt to see for yourself how a mail reader can be completely different.

Solution 4

Try both, I use evolution, I prefer it. I have used Thunderbird, it is good as well but does not work the way I want it to. So I use evolution. Use each one for at least a week. Then decide.

Solution 5

I'd +1 for Thunderbird, because its so simple to move the whole profile around (found this very userful when working with different computers + OS).

Also, as mentioned above, I found IMAP to be "slow" in Evolution - does Evolution support IMAP idle?

"Lightning" for Thunderbird + Google-calender Provider works perfectly for me, and with "Thunderbird Indicator App" ( ppa:ruben-verweij/thunderbird-indicator ) you get the tray-icon + notifications.

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Comments

[Maxime R.]

Good question, I used to use Thunderbird some years ago under Windows and Linux and never really used Evolution after switching to Ubuntu. I'll appreciate some pros cons too.

[omnidan]

@Maxime You misunderstood me :P I was Ubuntu 10.04 user, then 10.10, then 11.04 beta tester and now 10.10 again (I hated unity).

[Maxime R.]

I know my use case is a little bit different but i'm still interested by this question. And I'm using Gmail now ;)

[omnidan]

@Maxime Okay, I'm a gmail user too, and I really like the calendar features of evolution, because it works with Google Calendar. Another good thing is that evolution builds a tree-like structure of my mails. That's really useful, because I'm in many mailing lists :)

[omnidan]

What about the calendar? I know there's an addon, but are there osd notifications for the calendar addon of thunderbird?

[Ubuntuser]

afaik, the osd notification works for mails . there is a window pop up for any alarm or a meeting reminder.

[omnidan]

@Ubuntuser Yes I know that there's a popup, but is there also an osd notification?

[Ubuntuser]

no i dont think it does atm.

[Nerdfest]

I've found Evolution extremely slow with IMAP ... that was my big reason for going back to Thunderbird.

[Ubuntuser]

@Nerdfest: I completely agree. I think they need to rewrite the application!

[omnidan]

+1 for Thunderbird as standard mail client. I really like thunderbird, but I like the integration of evolution.

[omnidan]

I tried both, I think Thunderbird is a bit better :)

[Nerdfest]

There's notification integration fro ThunderBird in 10.10 ad earlier at least: launchpad.net/libnotify-mozilla/+milestone/1.1

[Nerdfest]

Notifications for ThunderBird are available ... works nicely, although I'm not sure about in 11.04 yet: launchpad.net/libnotify-mozilla/+milestone/1.1

[omnidan]

I'm now using the web interface with a browser notification addon ;)

[Deepak Rajput]

Evolution is best if you are using Ms exchange. Thunderbird for the rest

[Peachy]

Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.

[bob]

for sure it is different!!! (I am a bit scary to try it...)