best light simple POP3 e-mail client for xfce / xubuntu?

[bluepowder7]

so i'm on 8.04 xubuntu, and would like a single basic pop3 e-mail client to just scan my inboxes and let me read mails. pop3 is enough, since it's safer and if i really want to reply or get involved, i can just log in to the actual e-mail account and do the real work there.

so, what's the best, light, simple, xfce-ish client to use? the default is thunderbird, but isn't that overkill for just pop3?

i would require:
* graphical
* can read multiple accounts
* can set refresh / check rate (global is fine, per-account would be ideal)
* very light, just check the inbox, no other folders (like sent, spam, etc)

[HermanAB]

mutt

[bluepowder7]

hmm, mutt seems to be text based. is there a nice yet simple gui'd version of it?

how's claws-mail?
EDIT - ok, i don't like claws at all. my inbox had 51 messages, and yet it managed to pull in over 500, the newest of which seemed to be a year old.

[bluepowder7]

bump - any other suggestions?

[timzak]

hmm, mutt seems to be text based. is there a nice yet simple gui'd version of it?

how's claws-mail?
EDIT - ok, i don't like claws at all. my inbox had 51 messages, and yet it managed to pull in over 500, the newest of which seemed to be a year old.

That sounds like an issue with "leave email on server" which probably has a setting in Claws. Generally I set my email reader to delete emails from the server at the time I download them. If you've been keeping them on the server for over a year, this is why they all downloaded. You probably have to:
a) delete all old messages from your email server or
b) download them all to Claws and delete them from Claws after downloading.

You might have to dig around in the Claws settings and preferences.

I've never used Claws, but it's supposedly what you are looking for. I have tried Sylpheed (a relative of Claws) on Windows and it seems to be about on par with Outlook Express 6 in terms of "lightness" (that is, it is very light on system resources compared to Thunderbird).

Good luck.

[sujoy]

i am using claws, with gmail
and in gmail settings theres an option that lets you download all messages in inbox or just the ones arriving afterwards

[bluepowder7]

ok, yes my two accounts are with GMail, but on each of those accounts, the actual INBOX on the GMail side is no more than 50 messages. the rest are all filed and archived into the "all-mail" folder with whatever tags and labels i want. so, the INBOX is not 500 items long, but 50. also, the INBOX has recent messages, and not stuff that's at least 1 year old. that's the weirdness i'm seeing with Claws - it pulls in 500+ messages from what it thinks is GMail's inbox, yet there's at least 1 year old and don't match up with anything that www.gmail.com shows me i have.

so, i dunno, i installed Claws and set up the 1st account just to check it out, and got an instant "WTF?" reaction.

oh, also, i don't want to delete messages from the server - i just want a client that'll say "hey, this is what's currently in your account's INBOX, read it and if you wanna reply or delete it, go to the webmail version cuz i'm just a stupid reading client and all i can do is read - i can't send or delete or touch your server stuff at all"

[Olav]

oh, also, i don't want to delete messages from the server - i just want a client that'll say "hey, this is what's currently in your account's INBOX, read it and if you wanna reply or delete it, go to the webmail version cuz i'm just a stupid reading client and all i can do is read - i can't send or delete or touch your server stuff at all"

You probably want a client that can handle the IMAP protocol (Claws does). Then it will still let you send mail, but you can configure it so that it puts your sent mail into a folder of the remote mailbox as well - so you will keep all your mail in a centralised location (I gather this is what you worry about).

[bluepowder7]

You probably want a client that can handle the IMAP protocol (Claws does). Then it will still let you send mail, but you can configure it so that it puts your sent mail into a folder of the remote mailbox as well - so you will keep all your mail in a centralised location (I gather this is what you worry about).

well, all i want it to do is read, nothing more - which is why i'm thinking POP3 is the safe way to go (i've been known to make the odd mistake).

i'd feel a whole lot more comfortable with an unintelligent-POP3 interface than with an IMAP just in case i bugger up a setting or it gets autobuggered (somehow) - i dunno, a stray quark sneezes on my hard drive and rearranges the machine-alphabits.

if claws is as light as it gets in the GUI realm, then i might just scrap the whole idea. pity, as it seems like such a simple task - use POP3 to do read-only on my inbox (and only inbox, no other folders).

[timzak]

Sylpheed is lighter than Claws. Have you tried it? It's very similar looking to Claws, but stripped down even more. According to Synaptic, claws-mail uses 3117 kB of disk space while Sylpheed uses 1507 kB. The latest version of Sylpheed is 2.5.0, but Hardy's repositories have 2.4.8. At least with Claws, you can use their custom repository to get the latest version (3.5).

Edit: there is a setting in Sylpheed called "Download all messages (including already received) on server"

I wonder if leaving this unchecked will get what you are looking for.