I'm a Thunderbird user almost since day one, but now I'm looking for something else. For whatever reason, it doesn't work well for me - every once in a while it becomes non-responsive (UI completely frozen for several seconds, CPU usage goes to 100%) and I just can't afford to waste time waiting for the email software to start working again. My main desktop platform is Linux, but I need a client that works the same and looks the same on Windows too. Email server is IMAP with a pretty hefty account: over a hundred folders, hundreds of thousands of messages total (server-side filtering with Sieve). Typically it's a remote session, over VPN. So the client better work well, and be glitch-free. The issues with Thunderbird might be related to the size of my IMAP account, plus the VPN latency - but frankly, I don't care, the client needs to hide all that stuff from me, do the updates or whatever in the background, instead of blocking the UI until it's done. Ironically, it blocked when I was done with this paragraph and I hit Enter. Sticking it to the man one last time, I guess. Any suggestions? Thanks. -- Florin Andrei http://florin.myip.org/
On 04/15/11 12:07 PM, Florin Andrei wrote:> I'm a Thunderbird user almost since day one, but now I'm looking for > something else. For whatever reason, it doesn't work well for me - every > once in a while it becomes non-responsive (UI completely frozen for > several seconds, CPU usage goes to 100%) and I just can't afford to > waste time waiting for the email software to start working again. >I think T-bird gets locked up when its SENDING mail if the server takes too long to reply at the early stages of the protocol. that or DNS lookups take too long.
On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 2:07 PM, Florin Andrei <florin at andrei.myip.org> wrote:> I'm a Thunderbird user almost since day one, but now I'm looking for > something else. For whatever reason, it doesn't work well for me - every > once in a while it becomes non-responsive (UI completely frozen for > several seconds, CPU usage goes to 100%) and I just can't afford to > waste time waiting for the email software to start working again. > > My main desktop platform is Linux, but I need a client that works the > same and looks the same on Windows too. Email server is IMAP with a > pretty hefty account: over a hundred folders, hundreds of thousands of > messages total (server-side filtering with Sieve). Typically it's a > remote session, over VPN. So the client better work well, and be > glitch-free. > > The issues with Thunderbird might be related to the size of my IMAP > account, plus the VPN latency - but frankly, I don't care, the client > needs to hide all that stuff from me, do the updates or whatever in the > background, instead of blocking the UI until it's done. Ironically, it > blocked when I was done with this paragraph and I hit Enter. Sticking it > to the man one last time, I guess. > > Any suggestions? Thanks.By default Thunderbird creates a local cache for IMAP accounts -- for large accounts, this can be problematic. Have you tried disabling the local synchronization? Account Settings -> Synch & Storage -> Uncheck "Keep messages for this account on this computer" Or at least that's where it is in Windows T-Bird. -- Jeff
Florin Andrei <florin at andrei.myip.org> wrote:> I'm a Thunderbird user almost since day one, but now I'm looking for > something else.Check out Mulberry. <http://mulberrymail.com/> It hasn't been updated in a while, but don't let that scare you off. It's a very solid mail reader for Linux, Mac, and Windows. It does all the usual mail-related protocols, included crypto, authentication, filtering (server and I think client side), address books, scheduling, etc. To put into perspective, my client talks to four different IMAP accounts, the largest of which has 326 subfolders and 530,000 messages. The only bug that I seem to run into with the latest version is if the SMTP server isn't available when you send your first message after starting up, then the message you sent doesn't get kicked out of the local spool until you send the 2nd message. (Earlier versions would retry periodically; maybe there's a config setting somewhere I've not noticed, but it hasn't annoyed me enough to track it down.) If you're installing on CentOS you will need, IIRC, one of the compat-libc RPMS to be installed. Use ldd to figure out which one. Just grab the mulberry client. Don't bother with the mulberry admin tool; it's intended for large scale deployments. Devin
On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:07:39 -0700 Florin Andrei <florin at andrei.myip.org> wrote:> I'm a Thunderbird user almost since day one, but now I'm looking for > something else.A hearty vote for sylpheed from me - http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ ... or anything else that uses MH-style mailboxes instead of the monolithic mbox ones that TB and similar programs use. To me, that's the biggest scaling issue - TB puts all your mails in one huge file per topic ie INBOX SENT TRASH CENTOS etc - at least, it used to, haven't used it in _years_. With MH-style mailboxes, you have one file per message, one directory per topic. Much more scalable, manageable. Sylpheed has linux and windows packages available. Solaris, AIX. HP-UX, Tru64, IRIX, MacOS, *BSD ports are all mentioned as working. It is lightweight but seems to do everything I need a mailer to do. Not sure about packages ready-built for Centos although building from source shouldn't be hard. A quick google found this: http://www.melvilletheatre.com/articles/el5/sylpheed-3.1.0-1.i386.rpm FWIW - the compiled version is in the fedora mainstream. BTW - sylpheed has file import and export filters for mbox and outlook. Have fun! Bob -- Bob Hepple <bhepple at promptu.com> ph: 07-5584-5908 Fx: 07-5575-9550