[Users] Suitability of using Claws instead of KMail ?

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 09:53:01 +1000, Peter
<peter777 at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> Hi Tristan,
> 
> On Monday, 24 April 2017 9:45:07 PM AEST Tristan Miller wrote:
> > In KMail2, as in KMail, my mail was stored in maildir folders, so
> > the easiest migration path to Claws Mail was to set up a local IMAP
> > server -- Dovecot -- and copy over my maildir folders.  I then set
> > up an IMAP account in Claws Mail pointing at the local IMAP
> > server.  
> 
> Quite a number of people on this list have suggested a Dovecot
> server. I notice the server on our website is Dovecot. I'm not sure I
> want to go through the learning curve there though to set one up
> locally. 

You could use the IMAP for gmail. That's what I did in order to do a
"hello world" proof of concept of moving mail from Kmail2 to Claws. But
sending all this stuff out the Internet might be so slow that it would
be quicker to build your own Dovecot.

How private are these emails? If you don't care about Google's ability
to mess with them and give them to others, you could just try copying
all 62,000 messages to a gmail account you create (hopefully with full
SSL). It will probably take hours to days.

Personally, I'm a huge believer in having your own IMAP server, for
reasons I'll reveal later in this email.

> 
> The 'mess' that has resulted from akonadi makes that db not equal to
> what I see on the file system at present. Trying to hunt for tools to
> look at the MySQL db in a sensible view. By that I mean to export all
> emails from akonadi in a structured layout, the same as the KMail
> folder heirarchy.

The minute the KDE folks strayed from mbox and maildir, I knew it was
going to be the kind of trouble you mention, and I bailed ASAP. The
betrayal I felt when Kmail became Kmail2 (with akonadai) was so
complete that I vowed never to let an email client take possession of
my messages again. So now I keep my messages on my Dovecot IMAP server,
and use my email client just to look at them, search them, and to send
replies. I even do my filtering with procmail rather than Claws. The
result is if Claws had an influx of 200 programmers all wanting to
prove their worth by making simple email into a lifetime achievement by
throwing standards in the garbage and doing it their own way, I could
be up and running with another IMAP aware email client tomorrow.

It's a secure feeling.
 
SteveT

Steve Litt 
April 2017 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
     of the Successful Technologist
http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques