Email clients

The program you use to get, write and send your email is often referred to as a "client". This is to distinguish it from the programs that sit on servers that receive and process emails either sent to or sent from you. Email has become so important in our everyday life that I have observed that advocating one email client over another often takes on a fervor usually associated with religious beliefs. Here we'll look at some of the major email clients for Linux.

Evolution

Ximian's Evolution, part of the GNOME desktop project has received a lot of press lately. It is shaping up to be the only serious challenger to Microsoft Outlook's domination of the groupware scene. Seeing that it has all the features of Outlook, sans the virus problem, then you can see why it's getting some notice. If you're looking for a good email client that comes with scheduling tools, task management, address books and all those things that the busy yet organized person needs, than Ximian is probably the thing for you.

Kmail

Kmail is KDE's major email client. It is not a complete groupware solution like Ximian's Evolution, but its email management capabilities are very powerful. There is support for all major types of email transport, intricate configuration of mail filters, complete support for HTML formatted mail and other useful features.

Sylpheed

Japanese developer Hiroyuki Yamamoto has developed this fast, easy to use full-featured email client. This client is a big hit with developers as it offers really nice threading (the ability to keep track of all mails based on one original mail) and a fairly good way of managing different email accounts. If you have to respond to mail in different capacities (boss, friend, worker), Sylpheed offers the tools to do this all in one client.

Mutt

One of the most famous quotes in the Linux world is the one found at the top of the home page for Mutt: All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less.. This was said by Michael Elkins, who developed this email client. A lot of people will probably point out, and rightly so, that Mutt doesn't have a graphic user interface. That is true. However, this client is so popular in the Linux world that I just had to include it here. If you are a newcomer to Linux, you may not want to use Mutt just yet. Using it efficiently requires a well-written .muttrc file. This is the main configuration file that determines how Mutt is going to work. However, if you get used to Mutt, you are probably not going to ever switch. It's lack of a pretty interface is more than made up for by the ability you have to configure Mutt. After you have some months behind you working with it, emails will practically write themselves. If you handle a lot of email, this is the client you probably want to at least look into.