Which email client do you use?

20-100

I've been using Thunderbird so far as the best compromise between features (in particular calendar and address book), ease-of-use and "system-friendliness" (i.e. not eating up all the system's resources). I've also tried Evolution, but though it rates high on features, its ease-of-use and system-friendliness scores are very low.

I've tried to use Thunderbird 78.2.2 on NetBSD but it doesn't work, so I'm looking for an alternative, hence my question.

Cthulhux

One tool for each purpose, usually - e.g. NeoMutt for e-mail, other services for a calendar.

20-100

Which one for calendar?
And does NeoMutt support CardDAV address books?

Cthulhux

Again, an address book is a different application... 🙂

20-100

Managing the address book can of course be done with another application, but if the email client cannot use it, it's no use even creating one.

Then, once you have all your contacts in an electronic address book to use from your email client, you don't want to enter all your contacts again in your smartphone, so you need to store your address book on a server using a widely supported standard. This is even more the case if you need to share contacts with other people (e.g. your colleagues, your wife).

The same applies to appointments: you may want to manage your calendar with another application, but scheduling appointments is done through email messages, so you email client needs to interact with your calendar server.

Because of course, I want to use the same laptop both for home and work usage. I'm lucky enough to be allowed to choose the OS I run as long as my work is done, it would be a pity not to jump at that chance... 😉

20-100 What version of NetBSD are you on?
Also what version of pkgsrc?

I remember a few people complaining about thunderbird being broken for a short period of time. Maybe a downgrade or upgrade could solve your issue?

EDIT: Found the thread although I don't know if it helps 🙁
https://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-users/2020/09/21/msg032291.html

20-100

NetBSD 9.99.75 amd64 and repository is http://cdn.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/amd64/9.1/All
I have also tried 9.0, but they seem identical.
If it's just a matter of waiting for an update, no problem: I have other things to do in the meantime (e.g. getting i915drmkms to work on my NUC6 and Ideapad, trying to resurrect the eclipse package). 🙂
I was afraid Thunderbird's behavior would be caused by more serious issues, I would be happy if it were just a version mismatch. 🙂

qik

I'm looking into packaging GNOME's Geary, but haven't tried it yet.
Mostly checking mail on my Macbook or through a web client.

josema

I am using right now claws mail right now, because of the problems with thunderbird. It has calendar, as a plugin, and addres book.

20-100

josema I've tested Claws a few months ago and found it nice. 🙂
I've seen it uses XML files to store contacts, so I could write a CardDAV to XML converter, but not the other way round.
Its vCalendar plugin uses an IMAP folder to store appointments - not what I expected, but I think I could do with it.

nia

I used sylpheed when I needed to send pgp mail because it makes it easy, also fairly lightweight

I typically send mail by sshing into mail.netbsd.org then opening mutt

Why doesn't Thunderbird work? it should, it receives regular testing.

20-100

Everything pertaining to email accounts remains empty: clicking the icon to create an account does nothing, when copying my .thunderbird directory from another machine, the left pane (with all mail accounts and folders) remains empty, the drop down menu a la Android (the button with the 3 horizontal bars) does nothing.

I'm running 9.99.75, though, and (as expected of HEAD) it is not very stable. However, Firefox works fine.

cabpacedilla

I get a nghttp2 version conflict when I do make install in Thunderbird pkgsrc folder in 9.2 i386

trinity

It's not very interesting but I just use webmail in Firefox. I've heard mutt is good but I haven't gotten around to learning how to use it.

JuvenalUrbino

cjb elm-me

Elm is nice, simple and intuitive; I use it wherever I have a mbox phisically stored on a said system (which includes public access Unix systems like SDF, as well as my mail server). Used to be my go-to, in conjunction with getmail, before I would discover mutt.

trinity I've heard mutt is good but I haven't gotten around to learning how to use it.

Then, depending on your requirements, you may want to have a look at my how-to if you haven't already

cjb

elm-me and emacs.
fite me.

pfr

Honestly, for anything that more involved than just reading and composing emails I just use the web client (gmail/protonmail) in my browser (firefox).

But for simply reading and composing mail and downloading attachments I use heirloom-mailx and you can read the mailx thread if you're interested. I'm also looking into s-nail as a replacement.

CiotBSD claws-mail ;-)

Never heard of it before but it looks neat.

cjb elm-me

I might look into this. So far I can't find any noob friendly setup guides though.

JuvenalUrbino Elm is nice

Dont suppose you've done a how-to for Elm?

CiotBSD

claws-mail ;-)

and for caldav/cardav, use vdirsyncer :p

JuvenalUrbino

pfr Dont suppose you've done a how-to for Elm?

I can share my client configuration file (~/.elm/elmrc) if you want. This is written for plain elm (but should work on elm-me too) and is meant to be used with a classical .mbox spool file (stored at /var/mail/$username). As a matter of fact, I mainly use it on SDF.

# what editor to use ("none" means simulate Berkeley Mail)
editor = /bin/vi

# The full user name for outbound mail
fullname = My Full Name

# signature file to append to messages...
signature = $HOME/.signature

# do we want dashes above signatures? (News 2.11 compatibility and convention)
sigdashes = ON

# automatically copy message being replied to into buffer?
autocopy = ON

# save a copy of all outbound messages?
copy = ON

# local mail spool
maildir = /var/mail/myusername 

# directory for temporary files to be stored
tmpdir = $HOME/.elm/tmp

# program used to display messages
pager = less

#  where to save received messages to, default file is "=received"
receivedmail = INBOX

# folder to which a copy of outgoing mail is automatically saved
sentmail = Sent

# prefix sequence for indenting included message text in outgoing messages...
prefix = >_ 

# how to print a message ('%s' is the filename)
print = lpr -Plw2 %s 

# where to save copies of outgoing mail to, default file is "=sent"
sentmail = Sent 

# the shell to use for shell escapes
shell = /bin/sh 

# how to sort folders, "Mailbox" by default
sortby = Reverse-Received

# how to sort the alias list, "Name" by default
aliassortby = Name

# should the default be to delete messages we've marked for deletion?
alwaysdelete = ON 

# should the default be to store read messages to the "received" folder?
alwaysstore = ON 

# should the default be to keep unread messages in the incoming mailbox?
alwayskeep = ON 

# should we use the "->" rather than the inverse video bar?
arrow = ON 

# should the message disposition questions be displayed (ON) or
# auto-answered (OFF) with the default answers when we resync or change folders?
ask = ON

# would you like to be asked for Carbon-Copies information each msg?
askcc = ON 

# automatically copy message being replied to into buffer?
autocopy = ON

# do we want to be able to mail out AT&T Mail Forms?
forms = OFF

# should we keep folders from which all messages are deleted?
keepempty = OFF

# should we display the three-line 'mini' menu?
menu = ON

# would you like a copy of a message you send to an alias you are on???
metoo = OFF

# when using the page commands (+ - <NEXT> <PREV>) change the current
# message pointer...? 
movepage = ON 

# just show the names when expanding aliases?
names = ON

# when messages are copied into the outbound buffer, don't include headers?
noheader = ON

# start up by pointing to the first new message received, if possible?
pointnew = ON

# prompt for a command after the external pager exits?
promptafter = ON

# emulate the mailx message increment mode (only increment after something
# has been 'done' to a message, either saved or deleted, as opposed to
# simply each time something is touched)?
resolve = ON

# save messages, incoming and outbound, by login name of sender/recipient?
savename = ON

# save outbound messages by login name of sender/recipient even if the
# associated folder doesn't already exist?
forcename = OFF 

# set the main prompt timeout for resynching...
timeout = 60

# display message title when displaying pages of message?
titles = ON

# are we good at it?  0=beginner, 1=intermediate, 2+ = expert!
userlevel = expert

# enable the weedout list to be read?
weed = ON 	

# what headers I DON'T want to see, ever.
weedout = "Path:" "Via:" "Sent:" "Date" "Status:" "Original" "Phase" 
	"Telephone" "Postal-Address" "Origin" "X-Sent-By-Nmail-V" "Resent" 
	"X-Location" "Source" "Mood" "Return" "Posted" "To:" "X-Mailer:" 
	"Full-Name:" "X-HPMAIL" "Cc:" "cc:" "Mmdf" "Network-" "Really-" 
	"Sender:" "Post" "Message-" "Relay-" "Article-" "Lines:" 
	"Approved:" "Xref:" "Organization:" 	"*end-of-user-headers*"

# alternative addresses that I could receive mail from (usually a
# forwarding mailbox) and don't want to have listed...
alternatives = dsidev!elmdev  dsirel!elmdev  elmdev@dsidev  elmdev%dsidev  

# list of delivery precedences allowed, or empty to allow anything
# precedence may be followed by optional ":priority" specification
precedences = special-delivery:urgent air-mail:urgent first-class bulk junk

# name of Character Set used with MIME text/plain Content-type
# US-ASCII is default. Be aware that if you use a national charset
# elm probably needs metamail to display US-ASCII. Elm tries to 
# know if that charset could display US-ASCII too, but the list
# of us-ascii compatible charsets is not yet complete
charset=US-ASCII

# name of Character Set which the display supports. This is independent
# of the above "charset".
displaycharset=US-ASCII

# list of Character Sets, which are more or less a superset of US-ASCII
# so we know that we can display messages with charset=US-ASCII without
# help of metamail
compatcharsets = ISO-8859-1 ISO-8859-2 ISO-8859-3 ISO-8859-4 ISO-8859-5 ISO-8859-6 ISO-8859-7 ISO-8859-8 ISO-8859-9

# would you like to use termcap/terminfo ti/te entries?
usetite = ON

# Value by which message count is incremented while reading a new mailbox.
# Setting this value to a number larger than one will speed up the time it
# takes to read a large mailbox when using a slow terminal.
readmsginc = 5

# time in seconds which Elm will wait after displaying a transient message
# and before erasing it.  Can be 0 or positive integer.
sleepmsg = 2

One may also fetch messages from the remote IMAP server of mail provider and store them locally as mbox, using mail/getmail. For example, my ~/.getmail/getmailrc meant to be used with mail(1) and xbiff(1):

[retriever]
type 		= SimpleIMAPSSLRetriever 
server 		= mail.riseup.net
username 	= encelado@riseup.net
port 		= 993
password_command = ( "/usr/pkg/bin/pass","mail/riseup.net" )

[destination]
type = Mboxrd
path = /var/mail/myusername

However, this would be an unnecessary workaround, as I'm pretty sure elm-me (with the built-in extensions) handles IMAP on its own

nia

I think a good question is: what tools do you use to organize the many mailing lists you are (obviously, as a BSD user) subscribed to?

Previously I used Thunderbird to automatically sort incoming mail into folders based on the contents of the CC field.

JuvenalUrbino

nia I think a good question is: what tools do you use to organize the many mailing lists you are (obviously, as a BSD user) subscribed to?

I rely on the Usenet mirrors (located at the muc.lists.netbsd* sub-hierarchy, like muc.lists.netbsd.users) so that I can have them organized nicely (messages separated per list, lists sorted alphabetically) on slrn. I use SDF as NNTP provider

CiotBSD

nia I think a good question is: what tools do you use to organize the many mailing lists you are (obviously, as a BSD user) subscribed to?

Hi, always claws-mail ;-)
It's really a MUA - Mail User Agent - simple to use, light and functional. My only complaint is that it doesn't handle web calendars properly, hence the need to use vdirsyncer.