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.
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 04/15/2011 12:28 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
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.
At least in my case - no and no.
It freezes randomly but pretty often, no relation to sending emails.
The IMAP and SMTP servers are defined by IP address, not hostname. But even if that was the case, a software that blocks the UI completely while waiting for something in the background? Sounds like 1999 all over again.
On 04/15/11 12:45 PM, Florin Andrei wrote:
On 04/15/2011 12:28 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
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.
At least in my case - no and no.
It freezes randomly but pretty often, no relation to sending emails.
The IMAP and SMTP servers are defined by IP address, not hostname. But even if that was the case, a software that blocks the UI completely while waiting for something in the background? Sounds like 1999 all over again.
my local SMTP server is intentionally configured to verify delivery addresses before it accepts a mail. sometimes this causes delays.
On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 2:07 PM, Florin Andrei florin@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
On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 02:30:10PM -0500, Jeff wrote:
On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 2:07 PM, Florin Andrei florin@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.
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"
There is another setting that can apparently cause high CPU usage. Preferences>Advanced>General>Advanced Configuration>Enable Global Search and Indexer (don't have Thunderbird handy, so that path might be slightly off.)
On 04/15/2011 12:30 PM, Jeff wrote:
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"
It's unchecked already.
On 4/15/2011 3:46 PM, Florin Andrei wrote:
On 04/15/2011 12:30 PM, Jeff wrote:
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"
It's unchecked already.
I experienced a similar problem with Thunderbird on Windows. For me, it ended up being folder compaction. Changing the settings on compaction (Tools/Options/Advanced/Network & Disk Space) reduced the frequency that folders are compacted, and thereby my frustration, but did not eliminate them. I agree that the UI should not be affected by maintenance functions.
Hope this helps.
Michael Davis Profician Corporation
Florin Andrei florin@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 Friday, April 15, 2011 8:56 PM -0600 Devin Reade gdr@gno.org wrote:
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.
If you're willing to build it from source, subscribe to the mulberry-devel list and check recent posts for instructions on how to build on Linux. I'm maintaining the Win32 build of the "shared" development branch. Another participant maintains the Linux build system and converted it to use the auto tools.
The main drawback to Mulberry is that it doesn't display images, and its HTML rendering is primitive. But if you're like me and deal primarily in text, and want to only open images and attachments explicitly (good way to avoid infections), Mulberry works great.
It's particulary wonderful if you have a huge hierarchy of folders. I've got literally hundreds of mailing list folders, with procmailrc feeding mail into each, and Mulberry is great for detecting new mail in all of them efficiently.
Mulberry has a great Reply selection dialog. When you reply to an email, a dialog optionally appears letting you easily select which correspondents will go in the To/Cc/Bcc fields, and whether the reply is really a reply (with References header) or a New Message. Again, very useful for dealing with mailing lists when you want to start a new thread.
You can configure multiple "identities" representing what will populate the
From and Reply-to fields and what outbound servers will be used. An
identity can inherit from another identity, changing only what's unique, so you can create a default identity and the others can have minimal setup.
Each mail folder can have an identity associated with it, and this is inherited by child folders or can be overridden. Folders can also have unique notification sounds.
I don't use Mulberry's filtering system because I use procmail on the server for that, but I know a system is there should you need that.
Kenneth Porter shiva@sewingwitch.com wrote:
--On Friday, April 15, 2011 8:56 PM -0600 Devin Reade gdr@gno.org wrote:
Check out Mulberry. http://mulberrymail.com/
The main drawback to Mulberry is that it doesn't display images, and its HTML rendering is primitive. But if you're like me and deal primarily in text, and want to only open images and attachments explicitly (good way to avoid infections), Mulberry works great.
I would actually consider the image aspect an advantage rather than disadvantage, but YMMV. Most images in email seem to related to signatures, auto-appended organization, or spam-related (what little slips through my filters). If it's actually an image of interest, I can right-click and select to view or extract it, the former of which uses the OS's default image viewer (eog for CentOS, iirc).
It also avoids the issue of web-bugs put into html email.
Yes, the html rendering is primitive, but I don't usually notice as I have mulberry configured to show the text part of multipart mail, which works just fine in most cases. A few html-only newsletters I get are the only things that are so rendered, and they always have links to online versions.
It's particulary wonderful if you have a huge hierarchy of folders.
Agreed, along with the rest of the observations.
Devin
On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:07:39 -0700 Florin Andrei florin@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
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:22:05 +1000 Bob Hepple bhepple@promptu.com wrote:
A hearty vote for sylpheed from me - http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ ...
I'm using it now on Linux, briefly tested it on Windows.
Thumbs-down: scanning all the folders initially takes longer than Thunderbird. Every once in a while it re-scans them, during which time the folder list is not accessible.
Thumbs-up: But it does that in a more predictable way than Thunderbird, and there are no mysterious lock-ups of the UI (when it re-scans, it clearly says so, and only the folder list panel is greyed out, not the Composer or whatnot).
Maybe that's what Thunderbird does - re-scans the IMAP folders, but in a more sneaky way, and it's dumb enough to put a Big Lock on the whole interface. Hmm. I opened a bug report with them:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=650400
Florin Andrei wrote:
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:22:05 +1000 Bob Hepple bhepple@promptu.com wrote:
A hearty vote for sylpheed from me - http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ ...
I'm using it now on Linux, briefly tested it on Windows.
Thumbs-down: scanning all the folders initially takes longer than Thunderbird. Every once in a while it re-scans them, during which time the folder list is not accessible.
Thumbs-up: But it does that in a more predictable way than Thunderbird, and there are no mysterious lock-ups of the UI (when it re-scans, it clearly says so, and only the folder list panel is greyed out, not the Composer or whatnot).
Maybe that's what Thunderbird does - re-scans the IMAP folders, but in a more sneaky way, and it's dumb enough to put a Big Lock on the whole interface. Hmm. I opened a bug report with them:
I had a look around and found claws-mail (rpm from rf) that appears to be a fork of sylpheed but more features according to wikipedia - installed just fine - very responsive - the re-scan does take time, however you know what's happening as it tells you - not like tbird - it justs locks for indeterminate times on random occasions.
On 4/18/2011 12:58 PM, Florin Andrei wrote:
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:22:05 +1000 Bob Hepplebhepple@promptu.com wrote:
A hearty vote for sylpheed from me - http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ ...
I'm using it now on Linux, briefly tested it on Windows.
Thumbs-down: scanning all the folders initially takes longer than Thunderbird. Every once in a while it re-scans them, during which time the folder list is not accessible.
Thumbs-up: But it does that in a more predictable way than Thunderbird, and there are no mysterious lock-ups of the UI (when it re-scans, it clearly says so, and only the folder list panel is greyed out, not the Composer or whatnot).
Maybe that's what Thunderbird does - re-scans the IMAP folders, but in a more sneaky way, and it's dumb enough to put a Big Lock on the whole interface. Hmm. I opened a bug report with them:
Have you tried upgrading to a current release? Usually you don't get far reporting bugs in the many-years-old versions bundled in enterprise OS distributions to the upstream source that moved on long ago. I sort-of remember similar pauses in the 2.x windows version - and having that fixed may be the reason I switched to always using Windows/Mac/phone for email, even though I can't see a problem with the Linux version right now. I thought the pauses had to do with indexing for searches and switching to the threaded view which did always seem fast.
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:46:38 -0500 Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/18/2011 12:58 PM, Florin Andrei wrote:
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:22:05 +1000 Bob Hepplebhepple@promptu.com wrote:
A hearty vote for sylpheed from me - http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ ...
I'm using it now on Linux, briefly tested it on Windows.
Thumbs-down: scanning all the folders initially takes longer than Thunderbird. Every once in a while it re-scans them, during which time the folder list is not accessible.
Thumbs-up: But it does that in a more predictable way than Thunderbird, and there are no mysterious lock-ups of the UI (when it re-scans, it clearly says so, and only the folder list panel is greyed out, not the Composer or whatnot).
Maybe that's what Thunderbird does - re-scans the IMAP folders, but in a more sneaky way, and it's dumb enough to put a Big Lock on the whole interface. Hmm. I opened a bug report with them:
Have you tried upgrading to a current release? Usually you don't get far reporting bugs in the many-years-old versions bundled in enterprise OS distributions to the upstream source that moved on long ago. I sort-of remember similar pauses in the 2.x windows version - and having that fixed may be the reason I switched to always using Windows/Mac/phone for email, even though I can't see a problem with the Linux version right now. I thought the pauses had to do with indexing for searches and switching to the threaded view which did always seem fast.
I'm on the most recent version (3.1.0) on my fedora w/s and it has the same lock-up 'feature'. It doesn't really bother me much, but my IMAP server is on the local net therefore pretty quick. Actually, even working from home with the IMAP server being at the end of a sometimes busy interweb thingy, it doesn't _really_ bother me - although it can be noticable.
Cheers
Bob
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:46:38 -0500 Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com wrote:
Have you tried upgrading to a current release?
I'm running the same version like you: Gecko/20110303 Thunderbird/3.1.9 (except it's on Linux)
On 4/19/2011 4:56 PM, Florin Andrei wrote:
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:46:38 -0500 Les Mikeselllesmikesell@gmail.com wrote:
Have you tried upgrading to a current release?
I'm running the same version like you: Gecko/20110303 Thunderbird/3.1.9 (except it's on Linux)
Mine isn't configured for offline use - but I don't remember if that was the default for imap or if I set something when adding the account.
-
Bob Hepple -
Devin Reade -
Florin Andrei -
Jeff -
John R Pierce -
Kenneth Porter -
Les Mikesell -
Michael Davis -
Rob Kampen -
Scott Robbins