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Comment by sebastian | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for not letting Thunderbird die. In my opinion it's still the best and most customizable opensource email client and there is just not a viable replacement.

Most of the open source email clients I have tested require you to run a local webserver and access the mail using a web browser with very limited features. All I want/need is a desktop app that can be customized to work similar to Gmail, pulls and deletes emails from remote SMTP/IMAP servers and allows me to create backups locally.

Thunderbird gives me that.

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It's been quite a while since I used it, but I recall Kmail being quite customizable. Indeed I actually remember it as being more customizable and had kind of been meaning to switch back to it from Thunderbird (but haven't actually done so because switching mail clients is a pain).

kmail is in terrible state and has been for while (can't even send text email by default for several weeks (months?). IINM a replacement is being developed and kmail is on life support until then.

-edit- found it, it's kube: https://kube.kde.org/

Oh huh. Didn't know that (because I had not in fact tried to switch back to it), thank you.

>the best and most customizable

Everything I've seen in the software industry suggests that these two qualities are at odds. The more config parameters there are, the more bugs and crap there will be. Unless by "best" you mean "most configurable" in which case, sure.

These days I run away from customizability. I'm actively choosing the least customizable software I can find.

I have not found this to be the case at all.

Do you have examples?

SAP? All other Enterprise Software.

I've found Mutt, Alpine, Sup and Notmuch all to be very good, depending on your needs.

https://www.postbox-inc.com/ is also a nice alternative (and mostly compatible to Thunderbird - at least when I migrated)

It seems really good, but it's not open source.

Even though Mutt, Alpine, Sup and Notmuch might work great for some people they seem to be accessible only from a terminal, emacs, etc and very text heavy. As much as I love spending time on the terminal, I prefer a GUI app for my email.

Postbox unfortunately doesn't support Linux, besides that while I don't mind paying licences for great software, it doesn't look like Postbox is fully opensource [1].

[1] https://www.postbox-inc.com/coveredcode

BTW what makes you prefer GUI over text almost-GUI? My experience with email is that it's 99% text.

I use gmail because of the labels (no, folders are inadequate), full-text search, and the fact that it runs in browser which I keep always open anyway. I wish there was a comparable open-source solution.

Mail that gmail sends isn't actually plaintext! ;)

If you use a not-busted mail client (like mentioned above) you can actually participate in project mailinglists.

TUI clients are where it's at.

> BTW what makes you prefer GUI over text almost-GUI? My experience with email is that it's 99% text.

For me it is the fact that setting up a GUI client takes 10 minutes and learning to use it even less. If it was the same with mutt, I would switch in a heartbeat.

I tried gnus and mutt in the past, but gave up on them after a few days. I was spending too much time tweaking the config, trying to remember shortcuts or googling how to get it to work the way I wanted to. IIRC even displaying Greek with an ok font was a problem on gnus. That was 10+ years ago, could be that the documentation is better now and a good-enough setup is easier to achieve.

My experience is that mutt is a tool which rewards the learning process with massively improved productivity.

By way of contrast, people who use Outlook or Thunderbird feel comfortable in ten minutes, but they never make much progress.

If you deal with a lot of email, using the right tools is important. If email is not your primary communications method, there's no point in putting in the time to learn more advanced tools.

> 99% text

I wish. My mailbox is 80% attachments or embedded image nonsense.

Postbox also has an old enigmail addon (based on v1.2 from 2011).

I wrote my own too - https://lumail.org/ - a console-based client which is half written in Lua, and completely scriptable.

Have you tried Sylpheed [1]? Sadly not well known but very mature.

[1] https://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/

Also Claws[1].

[1]: http://www.claws-mail.org/

Claws-mail does, too :)

Using claws-mail since 3 years, works really well (but I'm connected to the internet at all times, dunno how it works when out of connection)

If you're offline a lot you can use OfflineIMAP [1] or say rsync your Maildir.

Something like Mailspring (successor of Nylas N1) also allows for sending an e-mail later during the day.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OfflineIMAP

Is thunderbird customizable ? How so ?

I've been looking for ways to prevent it from opening tabs all around as this change to tabbed UX was forced upon users and confuses most of the people I maintain TB for, even to this day years later.

Is it customizable? That seems like a pretty strange question from someone that maintains it for a user base. Apart from "disabling" tabs what are you looking to customize? Having used TB since inception I might think a more apt question is "What can't you customize?".

I also don't think I understand your tab stance. You don't have to base your usage on tabs, do you? Personally, given the volume and types of mail I deal with, I was waiting for tabs for years. I just want the context menu option to "view message in conversation" to always exist. It dropped off a couple of builds ago and I can't seem to get it back. Usability of mail without this is decreased exponentially.

Not everybody is as computer savvy as you are - my parents don't notice tabs nor do they care about them.

So after a while their Thunderbird has hundreds of tabs open, without them noticing.

For them, it would be an improvement if tabs could be turned off (basically simplifying the UI).

I don't understand how that changes anything about customization.

But I do understand the tab stance. When anything changes in UIs that directly affects the entire experience it is almost always a hurdle, for sure, no matter how savvy, no matter how willing.

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