Thunderbird vs. Evolution? ... and a bigger question

[Dvdre]

I played around briefly with Evolution before blowing away an earlier install and rolling back to 9.04. My two main personal e-mail accounts are Gmail and Yahoo mail, and I have an unused Att.net e-mail account.

Gmail seemed to flow right in, but Yahoo was sticking for me.

But does it make sense to do these Webmail services in Thurderbird or Evolution and what are the reasons you would do that? Sure, one spot for e-mail.

Do you let the mail stay on the webmail server? Do you pull in all your old e-mail or just your new stuff?

The webmail sites aren't perfect, but they're not horrible either.

[jlhaslip]

I have found that Evolution is quite adequate for my purposes.
I tried Thunderbird, which I had been using on a Windows box prior to running Linux, but had trouble with adding the Lightening extension, so Evolution became the answer. That was several releases ago, so maybe T-bird and the calendar extension are okay now, don't know.
Like you, I use Yahoo and Gmail web-based mail accounts. I retain the mail on the servers, only downloading them to the Evolution client when they are new. It has saved me a couple of times when I have deleted an email locally, but there is a copy still on the Server. :P

[tacantara]

I use a Palm smartphone, and it syncs directly to Evolution. I haven't looked in to whether Thunderbird will support that feature. Just on that basis, I prefer Evolution. The GUI is also pretty good, as it is fairly familiar to me coming from the MS Outlook environment. Bottom line is that it's all about personal preference. At least you can test out both at no cost :)

[pootan]

I think it's best to leave them on the server so that when you do a reinstall like me and forget to backup up your email client you will still have those important emails.

[nortexoid]

I prefer Evolution because it's integration with gnome. I often just click on the clock applet to display today's tasks and events, which is handy. Reminders are also sent if needed. There's other integration (e.g. with Tomboy) that makes it better, at least in that respect, than Thunderbird.

I use Evolution with gmail (imap), hotmail (pop) and a school account hosted by google (imap). It works great. I've also subscribed to a bunch of google calendars in Evolution. All of this stuff has worked pretty much flawless, with the exception of some gcals that got mucked up somewhere.

The web interface of gmail does a better job at searching your emails, but Evolution is actually quite good. Basically all my mail is left on the server (except for the POP stuff which downloads onto my computer, by necessity as it's POP). I noticed, however, that with gmail if you set up the sent-mail folder to be the gmail server-side one then two copies are placed there. So it's best to keep one locally and gmail automatically creates one server-side. I actually like this option, i.e. having sent mail stored both locally and on gmail.

[Kubro]

I've been using Thunderbird since 2003 in MS XP until I was finally able to make the complete jump to Ubuntu in October. I had very little trouble simply starting up Thunderbird in Ubuntu with the profile I'd saved from MS-XP. Frankly I was surprised, considering all of the extensions and addons I'd installed. Btw, Lightning works very well in Ubuntu. I want to give Evolution a try simply because of the integration nortexoid mentioned, however I've found it very difficult to import my files from Thunderbird to Evolution. I was surprised how this transition has been seemingly overlooked. I use Thunderbird heavily at work and personally, managing six email addresses, four work, and two personal inlcuding gmail, and yahoo. IMAP and POP both. From what little I've seen of Evolution I like the calendar, and contacts much better than Thunderbird, but have not found the management of my hundreds of email folders as easy to manage. Thunderbird makes this very easy. Granted I've spent all of 20 minutes messing around with Evolution compared to years with Thunderbird. Also I'd have to say Evolution just looks better and I hope to be able to take advantage of all of the integration when I discover how to easily migrate to it.

[scottuss]

I personally prefer Thunderbird after being made to use it in a previous job. Evolution started getting on my nerves in some ways, so it was a logical switch for me.

Of course, personal preferences vary. One thing I have noticed: Evolution tends to be less stable than Thunderbird. Again, that's on my system(s) and may be related to something else.