Arch Linux

dawid.loubser

Member

Registered: 2012-08-09

Posts: 23

[Solved] Any alternatives to a very buggy Evolution Mail 3.6?

Hi All,

I've kind-of had it with Evolution mail. I've been running 3.x for a long time, and it's always been a very "klunky" experience, with constant issues of hanging, bad HTML mail rendering, and the occasional (twice in a year) need to fix it in the terminal after upgrades (completely corrupted mail stores, etc).

The reason why I put up with it, is that I really want to at least use an application suite where my contacts are centrally managed (Evolution Data Server) and other apps (like Empathy chat) can re-use the central contacts store. Other mail clients manage their own contacts internally in an isolated island (e.g Mozilla Thunderbird). I really want to use a Linux desktop environment where the *basics* (such as centralised contacts) are in place. I mean, we are in 2012. I've been promised flying cars and a semantic desktop :-)

After the update to GNOME 3.6, I have well and truly had it with Evolution. Every now and then it starts to recursively spawn "Saving user interface state" and "Unknown background task" tasks that just bring it to its knees, requiring a process kill. It cannot be regarded as anything more than alpha quality software, and it's starting to cost me a lot of lost productivity.

This is only e-mail, right? It's been around since before 1980. Surely there are alternatives for an intelligent, integrated suite of e-mail/calendar/contacts on the linux Desktop? What do you gentleman and ladies use? Mutt is starting to look real good, and that's just sad for a previous Apple user that switched to Arch Linux (which has generally been a wonderful experience in all non-mail aspects).

I'm at my wits' end, and looking for some advice from fellow users of the thinking man's Linux...
Surely GNOME/Evolution can't be "it" in terms of offering competition to the Apple/Microsoft desktop?

Last edited by dawid.loubser (2012-11-05 08:09:36)

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: [Solved] Any alternatives to a very buggy Evolution Mail 3.6?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Li … il_clients

It basically depends on your needs. I prefer light programs, so use mutt. Claws and sylpheed are good too, imo.

As for your contact management needs, maybe others can help you out.

dawid.loubser

Member

Registered: 2012-08-09

Posts: 23

Re: [Solved] Any alternatives to a very buggy Evolution Mail 3.6?

I'm not really looking for a stand-alone client, but a modern, integrated desktop communication experience. GNOME/Evolution offers this in theory, but in practice, the quality of the software is just not there. What I want are along the lines of:

• Integrated, centralised management of my contacts, with apps updating the central store as I get more info about contacts via different channels (e.g. the contact provides a picture of himself on his google talk account, my address book, not having a picture, is updated. This works nicely in GNOME 3.6)

• Desktop search: I search for "Bob", I get both Bob's contact and e-mails from him as results. Check.

• Bob's birthday is published via, say, Google talk. Bob's contact is updated, and a reminder is placed in my calendar. Check.

Use-cases like these are absolutely basic, and to be expected of any modern desktop environment, never mind the hundreds of more sophisticated possibilities that we should be realising. I hope the answer is not "your options are: GNOME+Evolution, or KDE". I really don't want to switch to KDE, and I have so many pet projects, I don't particularly want to start writing the next generation desktop communications suite... I'm just surprised that this common use-case for real humans seems so poorly addressed in the Linux world.

I'm really annoyed that, after a pretty workable GNOME 3.4 experience, the upgrade to 3.6 has been so flaky in many respects. I always boasted that, if I had to give my grandma a simple, no-nonsense desktop, it'd be a GNOME/Arch setup. After having to spend hours fixing my machine after the upgrade to 3.6, I'm not so sure anymore...

But, back to my problem: What are the options for integrated communications/calendar on Arch that don't suck?

*david_a*

Member

Registered: 2009-06-19

Posts: 80

Re: [Solved] Any alternatives to a very buggy Evolution Mail 3.6?

I'm not really looking for a stand-alone client, but a modern, integrated desktop communication experience. GNOME/Evolution offers this in theory, but in practice, the quality of the software is just not there. What I want are along the lines of:

• Integrated, centralised management of my contacts, with apps updating the central store as I get more info about contacts via different channels (e.g. the contact provides a picture of himself on his google talk account, my address book, not having a picture, is updated. This works nicely in GNOME 3.6)

• Desktop search: I search for "Bob", I get both Bob's contact and e-mails from him as results. Check.

• Bob's birthday is published via, say, Google talk. Bob's contact is updated, and a reminder is placed in my calendar. Check.

Use-cases like these are absolutely basic, and to be expected of any modern desktop environment, never mind the hundreds of more sophisticated possibilities that we should be realising. I hope the answer is not "your options are: GNOME+Evolution, or KDE". I really don't want to switch to KDE, and I have so many pet projects, I don't particularly want to start writing the next generation desktop communications suite... I'm just surprised that this common use-case for real humans seems so poorly addressed in the Linux world.

I'm really annoyed that, after a pretty workable GNOME 3.4 experience, the upgrade to 3.6 has been so flaky in many respects. I always boasted that, if I had to give my grandma a simple, no-nonsense desktop, it'd be a GNOME/Arch setup. After having to spend hours fixing my machine after the upgrade to 3.6, I'm not so sure anymore...

But, back to my problem: What are the options for integrated communications/calendar on Arch that don't suck?

Integrated with every app on the desktop? KDE.

I believe you are stuck choosing between desktop integration and performance/quality; apparently "both" is not an available option.

Emacs/Gnus/bbdb?

Thunderbird?

Apple? Microsoft?

You may already have the best available.
I believe desktop integration is losing steam as Google and similar ventures take the integration outside the machine. A bad plan IMO, constructed to support disparate and poorly-built operating systems (including those on phones) but at the same time taking users' data away from them.

dawid.loubser

Member

Registered: 2012-08-09

Posts: 23

Re: [Solved] Any alternatives to a very buggy Evolution Mail 3.6?

Integrated with every app on the desktop? KDE.

I believe you are stuck choosing between desktop integration and performance/quality; apparently "both" is not an available option.

Not necessarily integrated with every app, but integrateable at least. Something using an infrastructure designed for integration, with basic integration already done between the basic components mentioned in my original post. I feared that I would have to choose between quality and desktop integration - this really saddens me, and must be a big stumbling block for the adoption of the Linux desktop.

Emacs/Gnus/bbdb?

Thunderbird?

Apple? Microsoft?

You may already have the best available.
I believe desktop integration is losing steam as Google and similar ventures take the integration outside the machine. A bad plan IMO, constructed to support disparate and poorly-built operating systems (including those on phones) but at the same time taking users' data away from them.

You are right, I don't want my data taken away from me, and it goes against my grain to rely on a free online service of a publicly-traded corporation 10,000km away from me for my personal communication needs. I want to own and manage my data, and I suspect so do many other Linux users...

I can only hope a renaissance of sorts will happen when people realise that they are no longer in control of their own data, and that hopefully then we will see the emergence of better desktop communication in Linux. I don't care about the masses, who will probably never care about this. I do care about the fellow computer geeks who understand and appreciate this, and are in search of something that at least matches what a Mac/Windows box could do a decade or so ago :-)

For the time being, I guess I have to slog it out with Evolution, and start filing bug reports in the hope that the quality may one day improve.

What surprises me, is that this thread has not drawn a single reply from a fellow frustrated user. I'd have loved a "me too" or two - why does everybody put up with this? You can't all be happy to be stuck in 1990 as far as integration of desktop communication is concerned? I have a lot of respect for minimalist, powerful, single-purpose programs, yet such a setup demands good integration between those components. Are there at least some forward-thinking projects on the go somewhere that is working towards this that anybody knows of?

I thank you for your reply :-)

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: [Solved] Any alternatives to a very buggy Evolution Mail 3.6?

I'd have loved a "me too" or two

I'm close to switching to Thunderbird too, after using Evolution for many years.

It's still in development, and being used by e.g. Fedora 18 and Ubuntu Quantal, so I have hope for Evolution getting stabilizing patches.

Evolution seems highly dependent on dbus - I've actually found the old dbus 1.4.x to be most reliable with evolution 3.6.1

twelveeighty

Member

From: Alberta, Canada

Registered: 2011-09-04

Posts: 1,096

Re: [Solved] Any alternatives to a very buggy Evolution Mail 3.6?

I'd have loved a "me too" or two - why does everybody put up with this? You can't all be happy to be stuck in 1990 as far as integration of desktop communication is concerned?

Okay - here goes: I am a 100% Linux user on my laptop/desktop so I rely completely on Linux apps/tools for my desktop apps for business. I manage a sizable business and get about 200/300 emails a day, need full calendar management for business meetings, need to manage my 10,000+ contacts.

I started out (many years ago) with Thunderbird then turned into a heavy Evolution user. Then switched to KMail for a couple of years. Then I made one of my better business decisions: I switched to Google Apps. I now manage all these functions with all Google's stuff: GMail, Calendar, Contacts, etc.

To preempt some questions: I first tried out using the IMAP integration of Google Apps to KMail/Evolution but one day just started using the native browser apps and never looked back. It takes some getting used to, but once you're used to it, I would never go back. The integration with all my mobile apps (Android or Apple based). My staff is about 80% Windows and they use Outlook, the 20% pure Linux users all use the browser apps too even though they have the freedom to use whatever they want for email, etc..

I do NOT work for Google or provide any services related to Google Apps, this is not a commercial :-)

Anyway: those are my 2c.

dawid.loubser

Member

Registered: 2012-08-09

Posts: 23

Re: [Solved] Any alternatives to a very buggy Evolution Mail 3.6?

twelveeighty, I respect your choices, and I'm glad it's worked out well for you. I personally don't like outsourcing my data to a profit-machine corporation in the United States, when I would much rather manage my own data here in South Africa. Especially considering that we are a good ten to fifteen years behind the rest of the world in terms of internet access. It's a personal choice, but I suspect many people would rather suffer through a bit more complexity, in return for which they get to own and manage their own data.

I guess I have to wait it out a while longer, as Evolution and KMail seems to be "it" by consensus. That's pretty sad, but if that's the price of freedom, I'll stick it out longer, and in the  meantime maybe look at integrating some of the higher-quality stand-alone mail clients with the Evolution Data Server for centralised contacts management at least.

Thanks for the responses all. I am marking the issue as solved, as the answer is a clear "No - there are no better alternatives on the Linux desktop currently".

Last edited by dawid.loubser (2012-11-05 08:10:29)