How to install sylpheed, one of the best desktop email clients for Linux

[rosslaird]

If, like me, you use IMAP instead of POP for your mail, you may have experienced some difficulty with the popular email clients (kmail, evolution, thunderbird). And you may also have had difficulty with the lack of customization, or poor spam filtering, or lack of features of some of these email clients. You may even have experimented with mutt, which is a wonderful email client but which works from the command line only.

Sylpheed, a lesser-known email client (given its features, I can't figure out how it remains so obscure), is like mutt for the desktop: a gtk application with outstanding functionality and features.

If you want to try it out, here's how you go about getting the most recent version and all the fancy extras:

1. Open a terminal. Download and register the signing key for the sylpheed sources:

wget http://colino.net/colin.publickey
sudo apt-key add colin.publickey

2. Change your /etc/apt/sources.list to include the sylpheed sources (you can use gedit or any text application for this; I will use nano here, since we're already in the terminal):

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Go to the end of the file (page down a few times) and add this:

#Sylpheed sources
deb http://www.sylpheed-claws.net/ubuntu/dapper/ ./

Save the file (ctl-o), and exit nano (ctl-x).

3. Then update your sources:

sudo apt-get update

4. Install sylpheed:

sudo apt-get install sylpheed-claws-gtk2

This will pull down whatever is necessary to install the basic application.

5. Install extras. Sylpheed has very many extensions and plugins. Take a look at them all by doing this:

sudo apt-cache search sylpheed-claws-gtk2

Take a look at this list (note the spamassassin plugin, the trayicon plugin, the html viewer, etc.). You can get quite a few of the plugins by installing the plugins packages:

sudo apt-get install sylpheed-claws-gtk2-plugins sylpheed-claws-gtk2-extra-plugins

Or, you can get them individually, by specifying them on the apt-get command line, eg:

sudo apt-get install sylpheed-claws-gtk2-spamassassin

6. Open sylpheed. You will find it (in gnome) under Applications --> Internet --> Sylpheed Claws gtk2

Spend a few minutes looking around and setting things up. If you like, you can customize the interface (as well as many other things) to use various themes. I use the tango theme (TangoClaws). The complete list is here:

http://www.sylpheed-claws.net/themes.php

To use a theme, download it, unpack it, and navigate to the unpacked directory in sylpheed under Configuration --> Preferences --> Themes. Install the theme, then select "Use this".

You may also be interested in various scripts for use with sylpheed (address conversion etc.):

http://www.sylpheed-claws.net/tools.php

The feature set of sylpheed is very rich, flexible, and functional. You might find that it becomes a little addictive...

Enjoy.

[lagagnon]

And what Ross failed to point out but alluded to in his reference to mutt is that Sylpheed is blindingly fast and uses a tenth of the resources that Thunderbird, Evolution and other heavyweight email programs use.

Boot it up and you will think you are using a command line program - it is that fast. I love it.

[bmt]

I came across Sylpheed-Claws as a refugee from Evolution (troubles with multiple POP/SMTP accounts and Palm sync). It's refreshing to get back to a mail client instead of an integrated suite, for speed and efficiency.

[rollps]

Hi,

just discovered sylpheed and loving it so far... so fast

BUT it stores mails in a folder "accountname" right in the /home directory...

and I don't want to see this folder all the time ! I mean it's like a config stuff so it should be hidden basically.

and I can't find a way to change this setting, though I'm sure it's possible, isn't it ??

thanks

[tturrisi]

Sylpheed & Sylpheed-Claws are in the Ubuntu repositories already, been using Claws for years cause it has more features than its parent.

[rollps]

ok I found the way to move the default directory where mails are stored :

-edit the file ~/.sylpheed-claws/folderlist.xml using gedit
-change the path to where you want it
-and move your ex folder to the new place if you want to keep your old mails
-that's it !

[berserker]

ok I found the way to move the default directory where mails are stored :

-edit the file ~/.sylpheed-claws/folderlist.xml using gedit
-change the path to where you want it
-and move your ex folder to the new place if you want to keep your old mails
-that's it !

Thanks! That was bothering me, too!

Anyone know how to get S/MIME working? I've installed the plugin but it complains that it can't find the secret key. I've searched the web trying to find out how to install my digital certificate in sylpheed-claws to no avail.

[bmt]

Sylpheed & Sylpheed-Claws are in the Ubuntu repositories already ...

Well, very old versions are in the repositories, with little chance of them being brought up to date for existing Ubuntu releases.

[Sebastral]

Does anyone know how to do thunderbirds 'fetch headers only' option in sylpheed?

[Sebastral]

Sources for edgy;

#Sylpheed sources
deb http://www.claws-mail.org/ubuntu/edgy/ ./