# e-mail client



## Matlib (Sep 7, 2021)

Since modern Thunderbird is what it is, I'm looking for a new e-mail client. My requirements are:

no GTK3, dbus, pulseaudio or similar junk
must have full IMAP support, not just for downloading new messages
must be able to handle HTML messages
Doesn't seem like much but still I am unable find anything that would just work.


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## monwarez (Sep 7, 2021)

With all those requirement, I can only see cli e-mail client.
For example: mail/getmail6 to retrieve mail (not sure that it have full IMAP support), mail/neomutt to read them, and for html read support, just use www/w3m
With the correct $HOME/.mailcap
Finally mail/msmtp to send mail.
And to manage the password you can use sysutils/password-store


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## zirias@ (Sep 7, 2021)

I'm very happy with mail/neomutt. Of course, "handling" HTML messages means piping them to a text browser, e.g. I use the following mailcap entry:

```
text/html;w3m -cols 72 -I %{charset} -T text/html -s | sed -e 's:^[[:blank:]]*$::' | cat -s; copiousoutput
```
*edit:*


monwarez said:


> For example: mail/getmail6 to retrieve mail (not sure that it have full IMAP support)


neomutt already supports IMAP. Not sure what would be missing there? For sending, any local MTA should do, e.g. I just use the dma from base configured to send everything to a "smarthost".


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## Geezer (Sep 7, 2021)

You want a fully functional HTML IMAP e-mail client, without any useless baggage. 

So do I. Have not found one yet.

With social media so popular, fewer people use e-mail, and there is less development and choice of e-mail programs, at both ends. Especially MTAs.

I will watch this thread in case any good ideas come up. But I still use thunderbird.


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## Matlib (Sep 7, 2021)

Here “handling” means to correcly display and compose HTML messages including images and tables  And I send and receive a dozen or dozens of such messages every day, so it cannot take 10 minutes of typing in the terminal to process one of them.

And yes, frankly a web browser based client like roundcube is the only reasonable thing that I've come across so far.


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## zirias@ (Sep 7, 2021)

Well, I still think HTML in email is a horribly wrong idea  – of course, if you want to _compose_ those things, a console-based UI won't do (while it's perfectly good enough to _read_ 99% of all HTML emails, cause they're just text with a few needless bells and whistles anyways).

Indeed, I use a roundcube installation on my mail server for the rare cases when I have to read an HTML mail where the text representation created by w3m won't do.


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## scottro (Sep 7, 2021)

As far as mutt and neomutt, I too, find them excellent.  It can handle imap, I use it on my work machine which I access remotely. Not sure about using getmail to retrieve IMAP. I have a page on mutt which has some neomutt info which might be useful, though its use of getmail is for pop3. https://srobb.net/mutt.html

On there, it also copies some instructions from an ArchLinux user for putting html mail into a browser when needed. As the GUI reliant become more and more common, sometimes, piping it to w3m isn't enough. 





						Mutt and HTML email - jasonwryan.com
					

Following on from my last post about Mutt, I have been tinkering more with the most suckless of mail clients to get it to deal with—of all things— …




					jasonwryan.com
				



Those instructions are for vimperator, I think, but work equally well for firefox.
Zirias you might even find those instructions more convenient than roundcube, (though as it's become my habit to do it that way, I'm definitely prejudiced).


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## zirias@ (Sep 7, 2021)

scottro said:


> you might even find those instructions more convenient than roundcube, (though as it's become my habit to do it that way, I'm definitely prejudiced


I tried something similar long time ago and wasn't really convinced ... much nicer to have the content directly in the terminal window . Maybe I'm lucky, but receiving an HTML mail where this isn't good enough really is ultra rare (once every few months).

Of course, if OP wants to _compose_ HTML mail, it won't help anyways


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## hardworkingnewbie (Sep 7, 2021)

Kmail does exactly that, it's no GTK3 and is able to handle HTML quite well. But I doubt that this is what you really want.

What you want is basically something which does not exist - a lightweight yet full featured mail client which supports HTML writing and display. That's quite the contradiction in itself due to the HTML part, so this is like chasing unicorns. Interesting idea, but makes no sense.


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## zirias@ (Sep 7, 2021)

Kmail behaves quite nice and IMHO has a clean and useful UI, _but_ it relies on the pretty heavy-weight akonadi, so I'd also guess it's out here 



hardworkingnewbie said:


> That's quite the contradiction in itself due to the HTML part


Not necessarily, it seems. For sending HTML mail, it's still the common recommendation to e.g. only ever use "inline" styles. I conclude many MUAs supporting HTML do it pretty poorly. A simplistic engine for that could probably be lightweight. Doesn't mean something like that actually exists, of course


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## Argentum (Sep 7, 2021)

Zirias said:


> Kmail behaves quite nice and IMHO has a clean and useful UI, _but_ it relies on the pretty heavy-weight akonadi, so I'd also guess it's out here


This is what I just wanted to say. I used to use this, long time ago... Then switched to Thunderbird. 
But, I think it was OK.

deskutils/kmail


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## hardworkingnewbie (Sep 7, 2021)

Zirias said:


> Not necessarily, it seems. For sending HTML mail, it's still the common recommendation to e.g. only ever use "inline" styles. I conclude many MUAs supporting HTML do it pretty poorly. A simplistic engine for that could probably be lightweight. Doesn't mean something like that actually exists, of course


I am pretty convinced that the OP wants something WYSIWYG like in order to create HTML emails, and having not to do this manually. This really narrows down the number of possible options a lot. What it even unnecessarily further narrows down the list is his refusal to use the libraries which nowadays come with such an application.

Other options in general: Evolution, GNU Balsa, Trojita, Geary, Sylpheed Claws. Im terms of spirit and such Claws comes the nearest to the ideal so far on X11 aside the lack of an HTML editor.


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## Alain De Vos (Sep 7, 2021)

If you don't mind gui's : claws,sylpheed,thunderbird.
For text: alpine


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## sko (Sep 7, 2021)

I've been using [ports]mail/claws-mail[/ports] for several years now. I'ts lightweight and fast.

HTML email is a bad/stupid idea, but if you really want to see cluttered html messages instead of the *actual* content of a message, claws offers 2 plugins to view html messages: [ports]mail/claws-mail-dillo[/ports] and [ports]mail/claws-mail-litehtml_viewer[/ports] I have the latter installed in case someone sends me an rfc-ignorant message without plaintext (and I actually care enough to view the html part).
Of course claws defaults to writing text-only messages and also supports external editors (e.g. vim).

There are also plugins e.g. for pgp or sieve available.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Sep 7, 2021)

I haven't used Sylpheed (or claws) in ages but it was lean and did everything you want, albeit HTML mail was a tad funky. I hate HTML mail though so never used it. Looks like Sylpheed uses GTK+ but the author's site hasn't had any updates for a year.


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## diizzy (Sep 7, 2021)

Why not use a web client?


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## kpedersen (Sep 7, 2021)

sko said:


> claws offers 2 plugins to view html messages: [ports]mail/claws-mail-dillo[/ports] and [ports]mail/claws-mail-litehtml_viewer[/ports] I have the latter installed in case someone sends me an rfc-ignorant message without plaintext (and I actually care enough to view the html part).


Yep, and the good news is that in-email HTML standards are a lot more reserved so dillo's engine is still able to stand a good chance at rendering it correctly. No Javascript bullsh*t basically.

For mailing lists I tend to use Mutt (mainly because configuration is cleaner/simpler/deterministic compared to GUI alternatives). Most of them also stick to plain text and it all flows quite well.


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## mer (Sep 7, 2021)

claws works nicely, trojita does the job as an IMAP email client.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Sep 7, 2021)

Pretty sure claws works well for IMAP also - I have exclusively used IMAP for years so I have access to email anywhere.


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## kpedersen (Sep 7, 2021)

diizzy said:


> Why not use a web client?


The OP was not satisfied with the poor state of Thunderbird. This is nothing compared to the dire state of web browsers


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## Geezer (Sep 7, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> The OP was not satisfied with the poor state of Thunderbird. This is nothing compared to the dire state of web browsers


I do not think the OP said that thunderbird was in a poor state. He wants an alternative.


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## sko (Sep 7, 2021)

Sevendogsbsd said:


> Pretty sure claws works well for IMAP also - I have exclusively used IMAP for years so I have access to email anywhere.


I've been using IMAP exclusively for easily 10+ years now, most of that time with claws-mail. So yes, it works very well.

As for webmail:
We're running Horde groupware which has a really nicely working webmail part that even works with sieve for e.g. filters/autoresponders and can edit ACLs for shared mailboxes. Some might say Horde looks "aged" - i'd say it is a sane UI, not that "mobile-optimized" bullsh*t that uses only 25% of your screen and forces you to constantly scroll like an idiot...
For personal use however I'd consider it quite overkill. I wouldn't want to set up and manage a fully fledged groupware only for my personal mailboxes.


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## kpedersen (Sep 7, 2021)

Geezer said:


> I do not think the OP said that thunderbird was in a poor state. He wants an alternative.


"Since modern Thunderbird is what it is"

To me that sounds like they are insinuating that these days Thuderbird is a heavy bloated mess. Though perhaps that is just me projecting 

The OP might be able to clarify.


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## Geezer (Sep 7, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> "Since modern Thunderbird is what it is"
> 
> To me that sounds like they are insinuating that these days Thuderbird is a heavy bloated mess. Though perhaps that is just me projecting
> 
> The OP might be able to clarify.



It is heavy and bloated. And yes, lets wait for the OP.

But I cannot see that it is in a poor state. Many times I have thought about changing, but for what it does, it is in a pretty good state.


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## kpedersen (Sep 7, 2021)

Geezer said:


> but for what it does, it is in a pretty good state.


In my mind, when something gets in such a bloated state, it cannot be said to be in a "good state".
Whereas even if something is 100% unmaintained, the code might still be in a great state.

Not all code needs to be maintained and for other projects (i.e Thunderbird), maintenance alone isn't enough, stuff probably needs to be removed, not added.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Sep 7, 2021)

sko said:


> HTML email is a bad/stupid idea


Personal opinions aside HTML emails is the agreed, accepted and expected standard in business environments since over two decades at last. So if you want to talk business, then you need to have it.


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## Geezer (Sep 7, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> In my mind, when something gets in such a bloated state, it cannot be said to be in a "good state".
> Whereas even if something is 100% unmaintained, the code might still be in a great state.
> 
> Not all code needs to be maintained and for other projects (i.e Thunderbird), maintenance alone isn't enough, stuff probably needs to be removed, not added.



It works. It does what it is supposed to (and quite a bit bit that may be useless too).

I cannot find any other WYSIWYG HTML IMAP, half stable clients.


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## zirias@ (Sep 7, 2021)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> Personal opinions aside HTML emails is the agreed, accepted and expected standard in business environments since over two decades at last. So if you want to talk business, then you need to have it.


Not really. 99% of those "business" mails include nothing but text *) (plus unnecessary noise) and nobody ever complained although I keep responding `text/plain` 

*) short of attachments of course, which every MIME-compliant mailer can handle…


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## astyle (Sep 7, 2021)

Hosting your own email server is a lot of work (I would know, I used to work in a shop that did that). However, as long as the email client can connect to the email and handle it properly, that is frankly the user's choice. The server admin's part is limited to configuring the server to correctly accept IMAP connections from clients like Outlook or whatever the user wants to use. Back in those days, I used Pine for email, the users in the office used Outlook (properly configured), and specific brand of email client was never an issue.

FWIW, I remember the days when IMAP vs POP3 used to matter, because of hardware limitations (disk space, bandwidth, persistent connections, etc). Those days are behind us, thankfully.


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## zirias@ (Sep 7, 2021)

astyle said:


> Hosting your own email server is a lot of work


I don't think we talked about servers here? Well except maybe for a local MTA just to get the mail off the machine (which dma(8) from base does perfectly with minimal configuration).

I just had a look at neomutt's documentation and it also supports submitting a mail directly with SMTP, so you wouldn't even need that. I still like to have such a tiny MTA in place on every machine, so I can collect system mails (periodic etc…) in a central place


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## hruodr (Sep 7, 2021)

Alain De Vos said:


> For text: alpine


I think, `alpine` is the best, if not the only cli client for reading from imap server.
You can also read html mail.

you can also try `gnus`.

`mutt` support of imap is not enough.


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## kpedersen (Sep 7, 2021)

Geezer said:


> I cannot find any other WYSIWYG HTML IMAP, half stable clients.


Very true and as far as I can tell Thunderbird is one of the only email clients that supports Microsoft's non-standard OAuth based "modern authentication" that so many institutions are locking themselves into.



hruodr said:


> `mutt` support of imap is not enough.


Why? Mutt's imap(s) implementation seems pretty good.


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## hruodr (Sep 7, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> Why? Mutt's imap(s) implementation seems pretty good.


If you want to read with `mutt` only the text of a message with attachment, 
you must download the whole message, including the attachment.


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## Matlib (Sep 7, 2021)

OP's opinion on Thunderbird is as follows: email client that stops receiving new mail several times per day, randomly hangs and uses 200% CPU, needs to run in some Swedish locale to display normal date yyyy-mm-dd instead of 1/2/3 because it cannot be configured otherwise, needs a plugin to normally format reply messages without this dumb blue indentation, and the plugin stops functioning after few months because they constantly change API, where the message gets smashed when pasting text from LibreOffice and needs some HTML editing skills to restore it, &c &c &c, such email client is less than ideal 

Claws mail switched to GTK3 since version 4. I tried Sylpheed but it can't connect to my dovecot IMAP server – “Rebuilding of the folder tree failed”.

Seamonkey emerges as an option.



diizzy said:


> Why not use a web client?



I'm testing roundcube. I used to use it many years ago and it's alright, but I'd really like to have a desktop app for that.


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## kpedersen (Sep 7, 2021)

Matlib said:


> Claws mail switched to GTK3 since version 4.


Ah painful. Can you perhaps build the older version?

I do wish the ports system provided infrastructure for keeping with known good versions. Claws possibly isn't popular enough to receive a proper fork. To be fair, if the ports could somehow support the older version of Thunderbird that would probably have been a solution too.

For software I really dislike latest versions of (LibreOffice, Gimp, Blender) I tend to run an old FreeBSD 9 jail. It is a bit more of a faff than you might like but it ensures you can run the software you actually want.

As for security, the older stuff was probably better too. Worst case scenario, its in a jail anyway.


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## Matlib (Sep 7, 2021)

There might be some vulnerabilities in older versions of Gecko.

Claws has a similar tree rebuilding problem to Sylpheed. Besides they don't support HTML anyway.


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## trev (Sep 8, 2021)

SeaMonkey meets most of not all pf the Op requirements - the latest 2.53.9 source successfully compiles on FreeBSD 12. I've bene using it for a couple of weeks now after upgrading from 2.49.5 and only one issue has emerged which is annoying but not fatal - the inline spelling checker now fails in FreeBSD whereas in 2.49.5 and before it worked. I've logged a bug but I doubt it will get much priority as Windows, macOS and Linux are the Seamonkey project's main focus.


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## astyle (Sep 8, 2021)

If OP needs a desktop client, why not just compile something workable from ports? Reading this thread, it really sounds like OP has a pre-compiled package, and something is seriously wrong, either with the system or the package itself, if the email client misbehaves like OP reports. One thing that comes to mind is mismatched ABI between the pre-compiled package and the base system, but I'd rather have more complete info (problematic package's version, OS version, and the like) before going any further down a path whose logic frankly rests on limited info at hand.


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## Argentum (Sep 8, 2021)

Matlib said:


> OP's opinion on Thunderbird is as follows: email client that stops receiving new mail several times per day, randomly hangs and uses 200% CPU, needs to run in some Swedish locale to display normal date yyyy-mm-dd instead of 1/2/3 because it cannot be configured otherwise, needs a plugin to normally format reply messages without this dumb blue indentation, and the plugin stops functioning after few months because they constantly change API, where the message gets smashed when pasting text from LibreOffice and needs some HTML editing skills to restore it, &c &c &c, such email client is less than ideal


This is strange. I have *3 Thunderbird installations*, all built from *ports*, and I have not seen such issues. I am using it every day with three e-mail accounts.


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## Geezer (Sep 8, 2021)

Argentum said:


> This is strange. I have *3 Thunderbird installations*, all built from *ports*, and I have not seen such issues. I am using it every day with three e-mail accounts.


I was thinking the same. Thunderbird seems to work well for me, both on desktop and laptop.


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## sko (Sep 8, 2021)

Argentum said:


> This is strange. I have *3 Thunderbird installations*, all built from *ports*, and I have not seen such issues. I am using it every day with three e-mail accounts.


I can confirm all those (and some others) on a daily basis from ~40 installations on Windows clients here.

By far the most annoying is the long-known-but-ignored bug that Thunderbird doesn't receive/show new emails, especially because I always get nagged with this crap and our mailserver is blamed.
Another major annoyance is their bug-ridden and half-baked PGP-implementation: Instead of using the battle-tested and working GnuPG toolchain that integrates with the rest of the system, they built their own, completely isolated solution that barely works and in return blocking enigmail. I wonder what kind of paint they sniffed while deciding and implementing this travesty...
Oh, and they already had 2 critical CVEs with their implementation; one where they stored the private keys unencrypted (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/mfsa2021-22/). The fact that they classified this as "low impact" tells everything about their attitude...


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## hruodr (Sep 8, 2021)

These programs read mail "offline", they download with imap the whole messages, synchronise
your client with the server, and then read mail.

Alpine downloads only what you want to read, first the headers, then a message you want to read,
then an attachment of it if you need it.

If you insist on the offline approach, you can separate the process to have more freedom in selecting your
mail program. You can use `mbsync` to download and synchronise messages, use a mail client
then to read the local mailbox. See here:









						mail, metamail, gpg, openssl, sendmail, fetchmail, etc AS MAIL CLIENT
					

This thread is dedicated to simple command line tools as mail client for normal desktop users, in order to show that FreeBSD has a past and a future as desktop system.  My contribution is to configure sendmail as smart host, in order that one can use normal mail to send mails. Perhaps someone...




					forums.freebsd.org


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## astyle (Sep 8, 2021)

hruodr said:


> These programs read mail "offline", they download with imap the whole messages, synchronise
> your client with the server, and then read mail.


that's POP3, not IMAP... knowing the difference helps you set up your email client right. FWIW, I actually disable POP3 on the server (if I have that option).


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## kpedersen (Sep 8, 2021)

astyle said:


> that's POP3, not IMAP... knowing the difference helps you set up your email client right. FWIW, I actually disable POP3 on the server (if I have that option).


I still took it that he was referring to imap. Mutt does tend to download any attachments with the individual message (though yes, it does leave the mail on the server).

Ways to improve this is is enabling cache (https://gitlab.com/muttmua/mutt/-/wikis/MuttGuide/Caching)

Though if some berk has attached 15 different images for their fancy corporate signature, Mutt does unfortunately fetch it all before opening the mail rather than upon request.

Luckily, not a deal breaker for me. It still manages to do this before something like Thunderbird would even have loaded up into memory.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Sep 8, 2021)

astyle said:


> that's POP3, not IMAP... knowing the difference helps you set up your email client right. FWIW, I actually disable POP3 on the server (if I have that option).


There are though programs around, which can copy an IMAP store locally to a Maildir file and do two-way-synchronization. In fact, mbsync is one of them, dovecot has such a tool (I guess dsync) and then there's offlineimap. 

In fact so called indexing MUAs like notmuch, alot or sup have these as hard requirement because they don't pull off the emails by themselves.


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## Menelkir (Sep 8, 2021)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> There are though programs around, which can copy an IMAP store locally to a Maildir file and do two-way-synchronization. In fact, mbsync is one of them, dovecot has such a tool (I guess dsync) and then there's offlineimap.
> 
> In fact so called indexing MUAs like notmuch, alot or sup have these as hard requirement because they don't pull off the emails by themselves.


mail/fetchmail?

Fetchmail doesn't do exactly a two-way-sync but still, it's simple enough depending on the use case.


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## astyle (Sep 8, 2021)

Yeah, just the email client alone is not enough, you have to be familiar with the entire TCP/IP stack to have a working implementation of an email server. If you do it right (Mail server, MTA, networking all set up to work together), then MUA's only need to be told to use IMAP/POP3 and to supply authentication credentials, no need for a messy internal implementation of the missing details. A surprising number of shops seem unaware of that, and end up leaving email administration to Google and Microsoft.


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## kpedersen (Sep 8, 2021)

astyle said:


> Yeah, just the email client alone is not enough, you have to be familiar with the entire TCP/IP stack to have a working implementation of an email server.


Plus your IP range needs to not be blacklisted by SpamHaus (that cuts out a lot of consumer ISPs). Then you need SPF and DKIM records so it isn't enough just to have a dynamic DNS or dynamic IP (most residential ISPs in the UK use these).

And then you need to have nerves of steel to just hope that your business emails are getting through to valuable clients so you don't go hungry next month 

In the end it just isn't worth it for me, I tend to leave emails in particular to a couple of security firms who have done nothing but massage their established trust for decades haha.


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## rigoletto@ (Sep 8, 2021)

mail/trojita is quite good one, at least it was the last time I used it; however (if nothing was changed) it can just handle one mail account albeit you can run more than one instance at once.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Sep 8, 2021)

Implementing SPF, DKIM and DMARC is no necessity. You can run your own MTA quite fine without it. Having them though might increase the possibility that the big players in the email game, so Hotmail/Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo will accept your mails just as is.

Aside that SPF, DKIM and DMARC are often confused with technologies to battle spam, which is not true. These are instead technologies which do give you the tools at hand that others are able to tell if an email pretending to come from your domain is indead the real thing or fake and therefore probably spam/phishing attack/fraud/whatever. It is a tool to maintain the reputation of your mail domain somewhat out in the wild.

Of course when some of these tools were introduced, first early adopters were mostly spammers with their own domains.


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## kpedersen (Sep 8, 2021)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> Implementing SPF, DKIM and DMARC is no necessity. You can run your own MTA quite fine without it.
> [...]
> if an email pretending to come from your domain is indead valid, or fake and therefore mostly spam.



You certainly do need them if you want to have any hope that your emails you send will get through to anyone.


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## hruodr (Sep 9, 2021)

It is not difficult to implement them and in any case a good idea.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Sep 9, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> You certainly do need them if you want to have any hope that your emails you send will get through to anyone.


My experience is that most MTAs don't care about it. But since the few ones with user base in hundred of millions do, you better should have it because the chance somebody wants to send an email to there is high enough.


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## zirias@ (Sep 9, 2021)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> Implementing SPF, DKIM and DMARC is no necessity. You can run your own MTA quite fine without it.


Sure you _can_, but


hardworkingnewbie said:


> Having them though might increase the possibility that the big players in the email game, so Hotmail/Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo will accept your mails just as is.


this is an understatement. Most sites have _some_ kind of spam filtering that also expects these things. The "big players" are especially rigid and might outright reject your mail.


hardworkingnewbie said:


> Aside that SPF, DKIM and DMARC are often confused with technologies to battle spam, which is not true.


Oh well, fighting spam is not what they directly do, but it's the purpose they are used for. Spam filters these days give a negative score for their absence (and an even more negative score when they're present but fail).


hardworkingnewbie said:


> Of course when some of these tools were introduced, first early adopters were mostly spammers with their own domains.


Only a fraction of spam is sent by systems that can afford that, so these tools still serve their purpose. Of course, combined with other filters (RBLs, heuristics, etc…)


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## Matlib (Sep 9, 2021)

Guys, this topic is about mail clients, not servers. If you're interested: 35% of spam and bot messages in my personal mailbox comes from GMail, so DKIM, SPF and stuff won't help you.​
Back to the business:



Argentum said:


> This is strange. I have *3 Thunderbird installations*, all built from *ports*, and I have not seen such issues.


I guess you're referring to the hanging problem. It depends on the mail server. It doesn't do that with my personal dovecot, but it does happen with our corporate (probably very buggy) server. Anyway, the other 101 annoyances are still there though.

Trojita looks tasty indeed, although the current version was released 5 years ago. I'll have a look anyway.​


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## zirias@ (Sep 9, 2021)

Matlib said:


> Guys, this topic is about mail clients, not servers. If you're interested: 35% of spam and bot messages in my personal mailbox comes from GMail, so DKIM, SPF and stuff won't help you.


Totally wrong conclusion. They don't help for the scenario "cracked mailbox on a large site", they _do_ help for the scenario "spam sent by botnets of infected (windows) boxes". Without them, you'd get tons more of spam.


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## Geezer (Sep 9, 2021)

Matlib said:


> Guys, this topic is about mail clients, not servers.



Dear OP, as usual this thread has begun redshift. What you consider your own thread is out of your control.

I too would like a better e-mail program. I don't think there is one.


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## hruodr (Sep 9, 2021)

Geezer said:


> I too would like a better e-mail program. I don't think there is one.


There is a best, one always wants better. But better and best are not necessary good (enough).

I am happy with alpine.


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## astyle (Sep 9, 2021)

Zirias said:


> Totally wrong conclusion. They don't help for the scenario "cracked mailbox on a large site", they _do_ help for the scenario "spam sent by botnets of infected (windows) boxes". Without them, you'd get tons more of spam.


Zirias , OP is right... As Geezer pointed out, the thread has taken off on a tangent. *Staying on topic is a vitally important skill for problem solving*, and yes, that applies to programmers, as well. Since the thread is supposed to be about email clients, the outtake would be that sometimes, it  makes sense to leave server implementation to a different shop that you know will do a decent job, rather than trying your hand at a homebrew solution. It can be compared to taking care of your teeth - yeah, there's stuff you can do at home (proper diet and brushing), but for serious treatment, you go to a dentist, you really shouldn't try that on yourself, because you'll do more harm than good anyway.

As for staying on topic of email clients - I'm gonna stick to my original advice:









						e-mail client
					

HTML email is a bad/stupid idea  Personal opinions aside HTML emails is the agreed, accepted and expected standard in business environments since over two decades at last. So if you want to talk business, then you need to have it.




					forums.freebsd.org


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## zirias@ (Sep 9, 2021)

astyle I couldn't care less about your lecturing. I didn't bring up the topic about servers or DKIM etc, but you won't stop me correcting wrong information about it.


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## Matlib (Sep 9, 2021)

> ...Without them, you'd get tons more of spam.



During the same period (Sep 2020-today) 9.9% of delivery attempts were rejected due to SPF failure. This doesn't filter out retries, so the actual number of blocked unique delivieries will be lower than that. Full SPF statistics are as follows:



*SPF return code**# connections**% connections*pass560743.3none376929.1softfail192514.8neutral3863.0fail8246.4permament error3232.5invalid SPF record1000.8temporary error3000.2


Out of those that did pass SPF and graylist, 4581 messages were more or less legit, 4164 were sure spam of which 1481 came from Google's servers.

I didn't bother to set up DKIM verification not to waste my time.

The trivial way to circumvent these is to use a permissive domain in return path, for example gmail.com that has softfail for all IP addresses (their SPF record ends with `~all`). But still, in the end you're left with thousands of spam messages per year coming from real gmail servers.


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## zirias@ (Sep 10, 2021)

Matlib said:


> Full SPF statistics


If you look closer at them, you see a lot of deliveries without SPF. The "big players" would already attach a strong negative score to that. Then, you have almost 15% "softfail", which is IMHO a design flaw in SPF, cause it's just inconclusive for the receiving party. Still, only less than half of the deliveries actually pass SPF.


Matlib said:


> Out of those that did pass SPF and graylist, 4581 messages were more or less legit, 4164 were sure spam of which 1481 came from Google's servers.


Neither SPF nor DKIM can do anything against spam sent via legitimate mail systems. There's no single "solution" to the spam problem anyways, but combining many approaches gives pretty good results …


Matlib said:


> I didn't bother to set up DKIM verification not to waste my time.


... and for filtering out the "botnet" (et al) originating spam, adding DKIM can improve that substantially, compared to only SPF.


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## fjdlr (Oct 13, 2021)

Well, /mail/thuderbird 91.*  no longer support movemail, after longtime using this client, i migrate to /mail/claws-mail on graphical mode
and using /mail/mutt on console mode
Bye thunder


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## grahamperrin@ (Oct 16, 2021)

fjdlr said:


> 91.*





Matlib said:


> Since modern Thunderbird is what it is, I'm looking for a new e-mail client. …



Matlib I don't expect this to sway you, but for the benefit of other readers (under the heading *e-mail client*):

*Thunderbird 91 Available Now* | The Thunderbird Blog (2021-08-12)

Ported to FreeBSD a few days ago: <https://www.freshports.org/mail/thunderbird/#history>

*Much* better, thanks to multi-process support. YMMV.


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## grahamperrin@ (Oct 16, 2021)

diizzy said:


> Why not use a web client?



I do, as a complement to Thunderbird and extensions, including Owl for Exchange.

Thunderbird



hruodr said:


> … download with imap the whole messages …



Not necessarily. 

Please be aware of Thunderbird preferences for IMAP, for example:






Matlib said:


> … stops receiving new mail several times per day,



– for which (probably):



Matlib said:


> … our corporate (probably very buggy) server. …





Matlib said:


> … randomly hangs and uses 200% CPU,



Was there a bug report? I don't recall Thunderbird behaving in that way.



> needs to run in some Swedish locale to display normal date yyyy-mm-dd instead of 1/2/3 because it cannot be configured otherwise,



Was there a bug report?



> they constantly change API,



Not constantly.



Matlib said:


> 101


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## Geezer (Oct 16, 2021)

Upgrading from 78.14.0 to 91.2.0_1 now, however long it takes to build. Will see if it is any better.


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## grahamperrin@ (Oct 16, 2021)

Geezer said:


> … build …



Link-time optimisation is on by default <https://www.freshports.org/mail/thunderbird/#config>. I'm curious: why build in your case?


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## Geezer (Oct 16, 2021)

grahamperrin said:


> Link-time optimisation is on by default <https://www.freshports.org/mail/thunderbird/#config>. I'm curious: why build in your case?




```
A preliminary scan has revealed the cached options of one port are
obsolete.  Please update or remove the saved options and try again.
  e.g. make -C /usr/ports/mail/thunderbird config
  e.g. make -C /usr/ports/mail/thunderbird rmconfig
```


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## Geezer (Oct 16, 2021)

After installing 9.whatever, it looks pretty much the same.


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## grahamperrin@ (Oct 16, 2021)

Geezer said:


> looks pretty much the same.



 POLA.


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## astyle (Nov 6, 2021)

I think this thread ended up in the wrong place after DutchDaemon renamed the Xorg forum to Display Servers. Probably a lot of other threads are now misplaced. Even if there's a good idea floating around, sometimes a quick-and-dirty approach does create a mess.


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## DutchDaemon (Nov 6, 2021)

The title of the forum changed, a literal change in a bunch of characters. No posts or threads have moved, so this thread must have been in the X.Org forum to begin with.


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