I know the audio was really wonky in this one, sorry about that. Going to figure that out. File complaints by following me on Mastodon. fosstodon.org/@thelinuxcast
Incorrect. If you work for a business that requires Outlook, with Office 365, you use Thunderbird with the Owl Plugin. It can even handle Company two Factor Authentication. Thunderbird is the only solution for this. Most businesses Disable IMAP and SMTP.
@ZombieRyushu good luck closing thunderbird by mistake instead of minimizing and missing important emails because thunderbird doesn't run in the background
@@marco31 I see, I understand what issues people might have, fortunately for me all the email clients I have are different providers, so I just have different tabs open for each of them, still though, for the ones where I have multiple emails I just use Firefox Containers
@@Adyel-YT Use bookmarks and pinned tabs. I gave up on Thunderbird years ago, it was clunky and slow. Switched to browser only 2 years ago and haven't looked back
I used Outlook in the past for work, now I use Evolution and I see no real difference. It gives me the same facilities; email; appointments; task list; holidays in my case of 2 countries and birthdays of all contacts :)
I'm not sure if I'd say email itself is the problem here, but "Office" in general. If you're stuck not being able to use Outlook because of work, I'd say there's a very high chance you probably need the other office apps as well which are also not on Linux. For personal email, I'm not sure I'd say Outlook is better, but we'd just have to agree to disagree on that one. I did like AirMail on macOS when I briefly used a MacBook, however. Funnily enough, when I use Windows, I still just use Thunderbird there too :P
Since I no longer need the calendar from outlook, I'm banking on thunderbird being "good enough" for me when I redesign my servers. I think it will be able to function.
I use Thunderbird with the calendar extension. Compatible with outlook, gmail and other servers. Also shows my google calendar and synchronises with my Samsung phone. What s the problem? My Outlook at my job? I have to log into it anyway.
I completely agree with this actually. Not having a good email client is one of the main reasons I stopped using linux as my main OS and started using Windows with WSL instead. Evolution was in theory the closest I had gotten to a good client, but for some reason it would break my wifi a few days after install, and I would have to delete files out of netplan every few days or it would break again.
I use Linux, and I hate email on Linux. Specifically, because I pay for Spark Email Client. I get a ton of emails, and smart email clients are a god send. Until they develop for Linux, I have to begrudgingly go to Gmail or use my phone.
While I haven't let this stop me from daily driving Linux, and I do most of my email on my phone now, I'm glad to hear that this isn't just me who thinks email on Linux kinda stinks.
I think, email "support" (hate that term btw) is heavily based on what users are used to work with and of course which needs are there regarding email. Is e.g. "calender" functionality part of it? For me, it's clearly not. But for others, especially in companies which relate heavily on outlook for their planning, it is for sure. The same applies to other "standard software" as it is called. That is often not the better software but it is established and people know it. But that is not related to linux at all. I'm a software developer and I can tell you, you experience exactly the same thing if you roll out a "2.0" of any given software. Users *will* complain. If you then, years later, roll out a "3.0", they yell at you in exactly the same way, as they did for the 2.0 but now want to stay with the 2.0 version. That said, of course there is enough software for linux out there, which lacks functionality and those which have bad UIs and so on. But there are also examples where it is the other way around. Blender e.g. is nowadays a standard tool not only to the linux community. Things change very slowly in that area. Any on many fields, it is still that developers write tools, that other developers use. Giving those tools in the hands of regular users will cause problems. Again, not related to linux at all. Linux is just the biggest playing field for such problems.
@@Bert-og9rk a while ago when i had to hand in an assignment that i wrote in libreoffice, the formatting was all messed up for the person opening it in docx. it was a while ago so maybe things have changed, but i really need the formatting to be perfect. especially since i need to use citations a lot too.
@@aa898246guess what, I used to submit papers made in MS Office and their formatting was all messed up because the teacher used a slightly older or newer version. MS Office is frankly a joke. The best thing to do is send a PDF or just use Google Docs. I ended up writing my papers in LaTeX
I use Outlook every day for work. It doesn't work at all for me, searching is completely broken on my machine. Beside that, I completely don't understand why anyone sees Outlook as "killer feature", it's just not really good. Thunderbird or Evolution are just as bad, I don't understand this discussion. What am I missing?
You said yourself that Outlook is meh, so I fail to see how Thunderbird also being meh is somehow bad. I have worked for companies who used Outlook, and I had no loss of functionality using Outlook in Firefox from Linux. The number of people who still need an email app is small and shrinking. The number of those people who also use Linux is even smaller. The number of people who don't switch to Linux because of this has got to be so small that I can't imagine anyone thinking that this is a problem which needs solving.
I completely agree. I use Thunderbird on Linux as it's at least minimally functional. Though I tend to actually manage my email on a mac where I'm spoiled for choice with different options that work for me. This was one of my biggest surprises when I switched my PC over to Linux. I wish I had hope that it would be addressed , but it doesn't seem high on the priority list.
Outlook in the enterprise is the default, and I've been in the Linux world for a very long time and there is not really any email client that is on par with Outlook. Outlook is not just a email client in the enterprise it is often the management of your work day- week etc It's everything. Linux has email clients that work fine as 'Email Clients' not work life management software.
Increasingly, more and more Enterprises are shifting to Teams for some of those workflows. I know that where I work that is indeed the case. I find myself using Outlook less and less. Don't get me wrong, Outlook is still important, but we've found Teams to be a better tool for some of our workflows (even when we're working with outside vendors).
if your work life management is not tied to Exchange, I would recommend Evolution - works great for me for both email and calendar/tasks, integrates very well with Google Calendar too.
@@snowSecurityneeded No chance. And even if Microsoft does away with offline apps, you are still just using a "webapp" version instead. Same or similiar code base, its just only accessible online. But the point is, browser based apps feed in really well with the "PC as a subscription" concept that Microsoft is pushing. When you step outside of that mindset, offline apps still make a hell of a lot of sense.
I will agree with this as I remember when I first made the switch I really missed the Office suite especially Outlook. Overtime I just learned to live with the alternatives like Thunderbird and Libre Office, but honestly it is one of the things Microsoft does better. However I really have adapted and would never look back, but if Microsoft did start making Office for Linux, I would honestly consider it.
I use Thunderbird with my 3 personal email accounts. For me it's fine. If you do indeed need Outlook for work, I'd just run a VM. I have a Windows laptop that work provides so that's pretty easy for me.
Hi TLC, Thanks for your Video. I started on Windows and my first email was Thunderbird until I found The Bat! which I used more than 20 years until migrated to Linux and Thunderbird. As you say I miss a good mail client in Linux and I'm very happy to - at least - work with TBird
In fairness, Outlook is absolutely horrible in some ways as well. Search for instance of string matches in subject and body though it does handle to / from pretty well.
Email was not holding Linux back and gaming is no longer holding Linux back. It is the individual end user who is either too afraid or too complacent to try to take baby steps towards migrating to Linux again baby steps not cannonballing the damn Linux pool
Affraid or complacent? How about just not seeing any good reason to move to Linux? It doesn't do anything my Windows PC doesn't do (and some things - like gaming - Linux does worse), why would I invest my time in migrating?
@marekkedzierski8237 if you are able to accomplish the same daily task in a Linux operating system as you can in Windows and you have sense enough to know that you have no privacy in Windows and you do not own your own computer when you booted into windows thise reasons should be plenty good enough. If you cannot or refuse to see the value in such facts then you have a severe mental problem. The only games in the Lennox world that do not work one way or another are games that require Easy anti-cheat Tech just to run with the exception of Apex Legends. You can't sit there and tell me that the only games you play on your Windows computer require easy anti-cheat. Because if so you really need a life there was a plethora an ocean of games that have long been around many many years long before easy anti-cheat DRM was even a speck of sperm to be born with So no this is 2024 not even 2016. Gaming is no longer an excuse to not leave windows Apparently you have not even tried Linux because no it does not do gaming worse on the exact same games in fact it does it the same if not slightly better that has been a proven fact for easily the past four or five years straight So my guess is either you haven't even tried Linux at all ever, or the last time you tried it was easily before 2016 long before dxvk and proton and so many other wonderful software Technologies as well as Lutris ans Heroic Launcher were things. Or perhaps it was that you're running an Nvidia GPU and it's a well-known fact that it's kind of a Russian Roulette chance of getting that working properly depending on the individual driver as well as the Linux kernel version and a few other recipes. But in the AMD World it just works because the correct GPU drivers are already baked into the Linux kernel But you want to make a comment about how Linux doesn't do what Windows does or allows you to do?. If you mean Lennox doesn't allow you to enjoy doing the things you normally do while being spied upon yes you're right because save for maybe one or two rare examples the Linux world doesn't give a crap what you do with your PC because in the Lennox World your PC is actually your PC you control it including the updates and how they work unlike in windows. Good luck
@@motoryzen Honestly a rant about "being spied on" and " not owning your computer" does nothing to convince normal people to move to Linux. In fact such rants are one of the reasons I stay away - they remind me too much of a street preacher yelling about sin - I tend to stay away from crazy people and their ideology.
@tristen_grant if it has nothing to do with you then why did you even bother to post a comment about having a few gamea that dont work in Linux? (Facepalms)
My university email (Outlook) security policy requires us to log into the email account every X hours and it requires double authentication when it's used on the browser, so using it on the browser is freaking annoying. Thunderbird requires me to log in once and that's it. However, there are things in Thunderbird that I really don't like, not only the UI, so I fully agree with you here.
Recently I tried the Outlook PWA and its great. Though I dont think it has many of the advanced features of Windows Outlook. I use PWA for Teams too. Way better than the electron version imo, due to newer Chromium version, support for new Teams, and so on.
I don't think the problem is the UI of these programs. The UI of Outlook looks identical to the website. The problem for me is that both Outlook and Gmail have great automatic filtering. The standalone programs don't replicate those filters but dump all messages in one place, which makes them unusable if you're getting lots of messages. I need the "Focused"/"Primary" filter as the main inbox, and only look in the other categories occasionally.
I had no idea that email clients on Linux platforms were so bad compared to Outlook in terms of functionality (you killed me there, I wasn't expecting that at all). But if the situation is that bad then it's always good to point out the problem and expose it to the general public. The heads up is appreciated.
Let's cut you off halfway through for just a moment. Aside from exchange support (which we might consider a valid "software" limitation that prevents the adoption of linux), how "good" is outlook? You're entire arguement seems to revolve around this concept that Thunderbird and other popular linux mail clients are just not "good". But is Outlook, actually any good either? Yeah, Thunderbird and others might look a little dated, but I daresay they have all the features that Outlook has (at least all the features a person would need on a daily basis). So are they good? I think they are good enough!!! Just like Outlook is good enough, which is fortunate because Microsoft isn't offering an abundance of choices in mailing clients.
I never used anything but Thunderfart, ever since I sent my firstest eMail some time in the mid-90s. So I didn't have to get to get used to a new program when I switched to Linux.
Evolution also works with O365 and OAuth, also supports Cisco DUO combined with OAuth. Only huge downside I find with it is that the exchange/O365 GAL lookup isn't the smoothest experience, not bad, but not great.
I've been saying over and over that there is no direct office replacement on linux and outlook is a part of that. Windows 11 finally got me to mostly move to linux but I have a mini PC for office because I *need* word, excel and outlook and the web versions don't do everything the local clients do especially for outlook.
@@ettoreatalan8303 There are a number of options if you only need basic functionality and if you can get by with them that's great, but not what we are talking about here.
I have also struggled to find a good email client on Linux. I mostly just use a web browser, but prefer to use a dedicated email program for reading PGP encrypted emails. I would like something with minimal mouse usage, any suggestions?
When you have a single email account, this is the easiest approach to be sure. But when you have multiple email accounts (gmail for junk, proton mail for important communications, aliases for other purposes), having access to all of those accounts in one window through Thunderbird is preferable.
Are you planning to do a video on the backdoor discovered in XZ Utils? It's something which I'm sure that many Linux users would like to know more about.
ThePrimeagen did a great video on how it occurred and had a guy with him the video with security creds to iron out the confusing parts. Frankly, the subject matter is WAY over Matt's head to explain.
I totally agree with you. I am trying out a number of Linux distros at the moment and I am very disappointed with the email clients available in Linux because I find them all very hard to read. I cant figure out how to make the font size larger and the spacing between messages greater. In Windows 10 I use EM Client, which I find excellent for legibility, but unfortunately it is not available in Linux. When I first tried Thunderbird I was immediately put off by the sight of a long list of emails jammed on top of one another with hardly any space between them. Furthermore the font size was so small that I could hardly read them. When I looked at the menu options I was put off by the sheer number of them. I don't want to have to do extensive fiddling with innumerable settings when I open a new email client. I just want something that's simple and readable right from the beginning.
i don't do much with email so i don't mind thunderbird. i would agree with the difference between Microsoft Office and Thunderbird and Libre Office hurting linux for work. i think pdf/no good alternative to adobe probably annoys me the most. i just want to sign a form with ease.
I typically just use gmail in Firefox for typical emails but when mailing lists come into question, I go to the site they're hosted on and send my email there (which is also in Firefox).
I have multiple email accounts but i just put them in a dedicated firefox installation with container tabs for each account. Personally I think the lack of modern Microsoft Office support is the primary thing that's preventing further Linux usage in the workplace.
TBH, the last thing I'd want to do is to be a support person for someone using an Outlook client on Linux (that would inevitably happen, if such a thing existed)... At work, I'm just hoping MS would fix a few more things in the Outlook web client, so I wouldn't need to touch the native app ever again.
The native e-mail clients for Linux already fail at the simple setup of an automatic out-of-office message, when an employee is on vacation, for example. For die-hard Linux nerds, such a feature makes no sense, as Linux is their hobby, leisure activity, purpose in life, but companies expect such a feature since MS Outlook has had it for decades.
@@RogerioPereiradaSilva77 I assumed that MS Exchange on a Windows server is out of the question if you are already using Linux on the desktop. I didn't express myself clearly enough. Sorry.
8 месяцев назад+1
I think not a lot of people did not switch to Linux because of email client. Most of the email user use the browser/web client. Most of the people did not switch to Linux because of lot of popular online games not working under it. A lot of professional artist not switching to Linux because of adobe. MS Office is a nightmare. And the biggest problem is when you learn in school about how to use a PC it will definitely be under Windows OS and most of the PC users not a tinkerer.
strange... I don't know a single person who uses an email client on Windows unless it is outlook for work and always thought Evolution was the closest thing to that on Linux
I don't think anyone sees Libreoffice as a MS Office replacement, it's a simpler version, so it's closer to a Google Office replacement. Onlyoffice and WPS Office are more akin to MS Office
I've tried Thunderburd in a new design... adding an email was a quest!😅 Only gmail actually worked out but not fully. Likily I do not need Outlook for work.
Kmail and Evolution used to be decent. Evolution looked too much like Outlook last time I used it (many years ago). Currently on Windows and using Thurderbird because it is cross-platform and I loathe Outlook.
Maybe it's just me but I actually like Thunderbird a lot. And opt to run it on every OS. I absolutely hate MS's mail programs. Apple's is good, but Thunderbird's look and feel is exactly what I want
YOu are correct! Not having Outlook prevents me from Mainlining Linux, especially since I use Inbox Rules (which aren't fully compatible with the Web Version), so when I use Linux and the Web Outlook, half my inbox rules don't work which then screws up my inbox anyway! It's a serious problem, the only solution I can think of is to just run a VM with Windows.
I am not familiar with current Outlook, but I'm assuming "Inbox Rules" would be a feature that allows filtering incoming email to specific folders and possibly do other automatic things based on incoming mails. Funnily enough, that was precisely the feature that made me switch to using Linux exclusively for a period of several years back from around 2000. At the time, I was already using Linux part time, and I was subscribed to a bunch of different mailing lists, so I would receive typically a few hundred emails per day, and sorting them into folders were basically a requirement to keep my sanity partially intact. I tried using a good handful of different mail clients on Windows, including Outlook (not just the Express, but the actual full Outlook), and not one of them would sort really as I wanted. The last email client I used was Eudora, and I was almost happy with it, but it still had some issues. One thing that would cause sorting to fail was different language character encodings. Another was failing to distinguish between replies to mails I had sent. If someone responded directly to me, it should go in my inbox. If they responded to my mail on the mailing list, it should go in the mailing list folder. Then I found out about fetchmail. It was reasonably easy to set up, and right from the start it just worked. When it came to migrating my old email I was lucky. The last client I had used on Windows was Eudora, and it just so happens that it stored its mail in exactly the same format as a standard unix mailbox, so I just had to copy the files over, and that was it. About half a year later, I realized that since I no longer needed to boot into Windows to read mail, I hadn't used it for several months, so I deleted the partition. It's funny how people can have entirely different experiences based on their different requirements.
For me the things I have to run windows for (in a vm) are: Altium Designer Affinity products (photo, designer, etc.) Altium is a big one for me. Sucks. Affinity supposedly runs in wine but building wine to get it to work makes me rage lol.
People resist change. Those of us who went to Linux did so because some outside stimulus triggered the fight or flight instinct and we went. For me, Linux was an escape from corporatism. Well it seems as though Linux is becoming Linux, Inc. that's probably not the opinion of most Linux users so they'll stay but my brain is wandering over in the direction of FreeBSD now. A mass migration away from the corporate infestation depends on a triggering of that instinct.
Pretty much the majority of pro work environments per se, like it or not, involves conferencing and emailing. By far, despite how much I love the penguin world, both have been a nightmare on Linux, because mostly enterprise uses MS Teams and Outlook, which are horrible, even on Windows.
Ranting that Thunderbird doesn't have MS Exchange is like ranting idk Libre Calc for no compatibility with Excel VB scripts. It's some proprietary MS product so no one is forced to comply with that. It doesn't have any functionality I know of which is only available in MS Exchange. If it's a company environment than You follow company recommendations. If a company as a whole wants to switch to Linux than They could abandon Microsoft products. You can't eat a cake and have a cake. Of course if they manage to implement compatibility with Exchange than it's great but it's not a reason to rant IMO. And even if they manage to bring Exchange to FOSS world than MS can entirely change the protocol in next update so..
I don’t think that there are any good email clients on any platform. Apple’s mail client is the best one I have used but I don’t think it’s markedly better than thunderbird
Exchange works in thunderbird by paying something like $10/year. I did this so I could access a client's email system, and I wasn't upset in the least. Thunderbird is meh, but that's how I felt about Outlook - so I don't really care. I'm making it a point this year to make donations to OS projects and keep an eye on the smaller ones that don't get much love.
My mail accounts are handled by a webapp. Never has been a problem for me. I even uninstalled my Thunderbird as it's more hassle to use. I just don't get what the big deal is. But that's just me.
*Emacs, FTW!!!* (Just kidding: I've barely scratched the surface of Emacs.) Email is just a utility for me. I don't give much more thought to the client than I do to the envelopes my snail mail arrives in. I do prefer a client, though, to minimize the number of browser tabs I inevitably end up scrolling through. I resisted HTML email until I was forced to concede I was fighting a losing battle (I still think email should be plain text). These days, I read most of my email on my phone (Outlook). I just switched my system to openSUSE Aeon (formerly MicroOS). Photography keeps me from going full Linux. The tools on Windows/Mac--and I'm not talking just about Adobe--are way ahead of FOSS and seem likely to remain that way. I can't get a print in Linux that's not a fuzzy, color-shifted mess, but the same images, printed from Mac or Linux, are framed and hanging on my wall. And there's no printing utility on Linux equivalent to Qimage on Mac and Windows. I'm not alone: Richard Brown, the creator of MicroOS (Aeon) uses a Mac for photography (as he mentions in this video: ruclips.net/video/lKYLF1tA4Ik/видео.htmlsi=BD3C50gRmuFGko3I). I'll probably make the switch to Mac, since Windows has become entirely too annoying, but for now I'll chuck a second NVMe drive into my ThinkPad so I can dual boot (Aeon requires separate drives for dual boot) and reload Windows. I'm also a ham radio operator. The apps I use for that hobby all have Linux ports, Linux equivalents, or run on WiNE.
I don't like microsoft, so I would never use outlook. I use gmail because of my phone anyways. It is just how that goes, Android phone. I am so used to all my work-arounds on linux mint that it all works out ok on my little network.
I think it's even a bit broader than that for those folks. We may as wells say that those particular people are by and large MS-Office users and they simply want Office. I was that way as well prior to moving to Linux 10 years ago. What got me to finally cut the MSFT umbilical cord was when I received a suggestion from a long-time Linux person who suggested that I focus on accomplishing the tasks as opposed to focusing solely on the software that's used to perform those tasks. Today, I use Evolution and my web browser for email and I use LibreOffice.
@@JHSaxa I don't think anything on Linux supports Exchange natively except for Evolution with its EWS plug-in. It is possible to bridge that gap though by using DAVMail which sorta of works as a "proxy" that converts back and forth the proprietary stuff sent by Exchange via EWS onto open standards so that regular productivity clients can work with it. DAVMail is not a bad solution per se but it can be a little flakey with large mailboxes whereas Evolution works flawlessly.
I know the audio was really wonky in this one, sorry about that. Going to figure that out. File complaints by following me on Mastodon. fosstodon.org/@thelinuxcast
Incorrect. If you work for a business that requires Outlook, with Office 365, you use Thunderbird with the Owl Plugin. It can even handle Company two Factor Authentication. Thunderbird is the only solution for this. Most businesses Disable IMAP and SMTP.
@ZombieRyushu good luck closing thunderbird by mistake instead of minimizing and missing important emails because thunderbird doesn't run in the background
Hi TLC,
Nothing to complaint on my part; I value more your contents...
I just use the browser for email, I honestly forgot that email apps existed.
It's impractical to check each email individually when managing multiple email addresses across various business, work, or educational purposes.
i did too until i switched to sparkmail on macos and i just dont want to go back, wish it had a linux port but it is what it is
@@marco31 I see, I understand what issues people might have, fortunately for me all the email clients I have are different providers, so I just have different tabs open for each of them, still though, for the ones where I have multiple emails I just use Firefox Containers
@@Adyel-YT Use bookmarks and pinned tabs. I gave up on Thunderbird years ago, it was clunky and slow. Switched to browser only 2 years ago and haven't looked back
Same here
I used Outlook in the past for work, now I use Evolution and I see no real difference. It gives me the same facilities; email; appointments; task list; holidays in my case of 2 countries and birthdays of all contacts :)
I'm not sure if I'd say email itself is the problem here, but "Office" in general. If you're stuck not being able to use Outlook because of work, I'd say there's a very high chance you probably need the other office apps as well which are also not on Linux.
For personal email, I'm not sure I'd say Outlook is better, but we'd just have to agree to disagree on that one. I did like AirMail on macOS when I briefly used a MacBook, however. Funnily enough, when I use Windows, I still just use Thunderbird there too :P
I thought this video was going to be about how kernel devs communicate on mailing lists
Same lol
😂
You're totally right. Email support on Linux sucks, and Exchange support is a lot of that.
Since I no longer need the calendar from outlook, I'm banking on thunderbird being "good enough" for me when I redesign my servers. I think it will be able to function.
I use Thunderbird with the calendar extension. Compatible with outlook, gmail and other servers. Also shows my google calendar and synchronises with my Samsung phone. What s the problem? My Outlook at my job? I have to log into it anyway.
I completely agree with this actually. Not having a good email client is one of the main reasons I stopped using linux as my main OS and started using Windows with WSL instead.
Evolution was in theory the closest I had gotten to a good client, but for some reason it would break my wifi a few days after install, and I would have to delete files out of netplan every few days or it would break again.
I use Linux, and I hate email on Linux. Specifically, because I pay for Spark Email Client.
I get a ton of emails, and smart email clients are a god send. Until they develop for Linux, I have to begrudgingly go to Gmail or use my phone.
While I haven't let this stop me from daily driving Linux, and I do most of my email on my phone now, I'm glad to hear that this isn't just me who thinks email on Linux kinda stinks.
I think, email "support" (hate that term btw) is heavily based on what users are used to work with and of course which needs are there regarding email. Is e.g. "calender" functionality part of it? For me, it's clearly not. But for others, especially in companies which relate heavily on outlook for their planning, it is for sure. The same applies to other "standard software" as it is called. That is often not the better software but it is established and people know it. But that is not related to linux at all. I'm a software developer and I can tell you, you experience exactly the same thing if you roll out a "2.0" of any given software. Users *will* complain. If you then, years later, roll out a "3.0", they yell at you in exactly the same way, as they did for the 2.0 but now want to stay with the 2.0 version. That said, of course there is enough software for linux out there, which lacks functionality and those which have bad UIs and so on. But there are also examples where it is the other way around. Blender e.g. is nowadays a standard tool not only to the linux community. Things change very slowly in that area. Any on many fields, it is still that developers write tools, that other developers use. Giving those tools in the hands of regular users will cause problems. Again, not related to linux at all. Linux is just the biggest playing field for such problems.
I have issues with the way Linux E-mail clients handle SPAM.
I use and love Thunderbird.
Emacs. I just had to do it.
not having clear compatibility between something like onlyoffice/libreoffice to docx/ms word is also massive.
Is there an issue about saving and opening MS office file formats that i don't know about?
I havent had much issues.
@@Bert-og9rk a while ago when i had to hand in an assignment that i wrote in libreoffice, the formatting was all messed up for the person opening it in docx. it was a while ago so maybe things have changed, but i really need the formatting to be perfect. especially since i need to use citations a lot too.
@@aa898246guess what, I used to submit papers made in MS Office and their formatting was all messed up because the teacher used a slightly older or newer version. MS Office is frankly a joke. The best thing to do is send a PDF or just use Google Docs. I ended up writing my papers in LaTeX
@@Bert-og9rk yes, lo fucks them up
OnlyOffice for me tends to have no format/compatibility issues like LibreOffice has had for me with fonts, graphics, and layouts.
I use Outlook every day for work. It doesn't work at all for me, searching is completely broken on my machine.
Beside that, I completely don't understand why anyone sees Outlook as "killer feature", it's just not really good. Thunderbird or Evolution are just as bad, I don't understand this discussion. What am I missing?
You said yourself that Outlook is meh, so I fail to see how Thunderbird also being meh is somehow bad.
I have worked for companies who used Outlook, and I had no loss of functionality using Outlook in Firefox from Linux.
The number of people who still need an email app is small and shrinking. The number of those people who also use Linux is even smaller. The number of people who don't switch to Linux because of this has got to be so small that I can't imagine anyone thinking that this is a problem which needs solving.
I completely agree. I use Thunderbird on Linux as it's at least minimally functional. Though I tend to actually manage my email on a mac where I'm spoiled for choice with different options that work for me. This was one of my biggest surprises when I switched my PC over to Linux. I wish I had hope that it would be addressed , but it doesn't seem high on the priority list.
Outlook in the enterprise is the default, and I've been in the Linux world for a very long time and there is not really any email client that is on par with Outlook. Outlook is not just a email client in the enterprise it is often the management of your work day- week etc It's everything. Linux has email clients that work fine as 'Email Clients' not work life management software.
adding to this, Honestly, the killer app for Linux is not Adobe or games it's Office 365
microsoft is pushing every version of office 365 these days to be browser based tbh I think the app will be a thing of the past eventually.
Increasingly, more and more Enterprises are shifting to Teams for some of those workflows. I know that where I work that is indeed the case. I find myself using Outlook less and less. Don't get me wrong, Outlook is still important, but we've found Teams to be a better tool for some of our workflows (even when we're working with outside vendors).
if your work life management is not tied to Exchange, I would recommend Evolution - works great for me for both email and calendar/tasks, integrates very well with Google Calendar too.
@@snowSecurityneeded No chance. And even if Microsoft does away with offline apps, you are still just using a "webapp" version instead. Same or similiar code base, its just only accessible online. But the point is, browser based apps feed in really well with the "PC as a subscription" concept that Microsoft is pushing. When you step outside of that mindset, offline apps still make a hell of a lot of sense.
I will agree with this as I remember when I first made the switch I really missed the Office suite especially Outlook. Overtime I just learned to live with the alternatives like Thunderbird and Libre Office, but honestly it is one of the things Microsoft does better. However I really have adapted and would never look back, but if Microsoft did start making Office for Linux, I would honestly consider it.
Excellent video, Mat. Your insights resonate perfectly with my thoughts.
I use Thunderbird with my 3 personal email accounts. For me it's fine. If you do indeed need Outlook for work, I'd just run a VM. I have a Windows laptop that work provides so that's pretty easy for me.
Hi TLC,
Thanks for your Video.
I started on Windows and my first email was Thunderbird until I found The Bat! which I used more than 20 years until migrated to Linux and Thunderbird.
As you say I miss a good mail client in Linux and I'm very happy to - at least - work with TBird
In fairness, Outlook is absolutely horrible in some ways as well. Search for instance of string matches in subject and body though it does handle to / from pretty well.
I've got no problem with keeping people who love Outlook away from Linux.
Email was not holding Linux back and gaming is no longer holding Linux back. It is the individual end user who is either too afraid or too complacent to try to take baby steps towards migrating to Linux again baby steps not cannonballing the damn Linux pool
Affraid or complacent? How about just not seeing any good reason to move to Linux? It doesn't do anything my Windows PC doesn't do (and some things - like gaming - Linux does worse), why would I invest my time in migrating?
@marekkedzierski8237 if you are able to accomplish the same daily task in a Linux operating system as you can in Windows and you have sense enough to know that you have no privacy in Windows and you do not own your own computer when you booted into windows thise reasons should be plenty good enough. If you cannot or refuse to see the value in such facts then you have a severe mental problem.
The only games in the Lennox world that do not work one way or another are games that require Easy anti-cheat Tech just to run with the exception of Apex Legends. You can't sit there and tell me that the only games you play on your Windows computer require easy anti-cheat. Because if so you really need a life there was a plethora an ocean of games that have long been around many many years long before easy anti-cheat DRM was even a speck of sperm to be born with
So no this is 2024 not even 2016. Gaming is no longer an excuse to not leave windows
Apparently you have not even tried Linux because no it does not do gaming worse on the exact same games in fact it does it the same if not slightly better that has been a proven fact for easily the past four or five years straight
So my guess is either you haven't even tried Linux at all ever, or the last time you tried it was easily before 2016 long before dxvk and proton and so many other wonderful software Technologies as well as Lutris ans Heroic Launcher were things.
Or perhaps it was that you're running an Nvidia GPU and it's a well-known fact that it's kind of a Russian Roulette chance of getting that working properly depending on the individual driver as well as the Linux kernel version and a few other recipes. But in the AMD World it just works because the correct GPU drivers are already baked into the Linux kernel
But you want to make a comment about how Linux doesn't do what Windows does or allows you to do?.
If you mean Lennox doesn't allow you to enjoy doing the things you normally do while being spied upon yes you're right because save for maybe one or two rare examples the Linux world doesn't give a crap what you do with your PC because in the Lennox World your PC is actually your PC you control it including the updates and how they work unlike in windows.
Good luck
I still have some games that refuse to work on Linux. Thats has nothing to do with me.
@@motoryzen Honestly a rant about "being spied on" and " not owning your computer" does nothing to convince normal people to move to Linux. In fact such rants are one of the reasons I stay away - they remind me too much of a street preacher yelling about sin - I tend to stay away from crazy people and their ideology.
@tristen_grant if it has nothing to do with you then why did you even bother to post a comment about having a few gamea that dont work in Linux? (Facepalms)
My university email (Outlook) security policy requires us to log into the email account every X hours and it requires double authentication when it's used on the browser, so using it on the browser is freaking annoying. Thunderbird requires me to log in once and that's it. However, there are things in Thunderbird that I really don't like, not only the UI, so I fully agree with you here.
Email and Calendar integration doesn’t seem to be great for me on Linux. I typically just “install” the web client or just the browser version.
Recently I tried the Outlook PWA and its great. Though I dont think it has many of the advanced features of Windows Outlook. I use PWA for Teams too. Way better than the electron version imo, due to newer Chromium version, support for new Teams, and so on.
I don't think the problem is the UI of these programs. The UI of Outlook looks identical to the website. The problem for me is that both Outlook and Gmail have great automatic filtering. The standalone programs don't replicate those filters but dump all messages in one place, which makes them unusable if you're getting lots of messages. I need the "Focused"/"Primary" filter as the main inbox, and only look in the other categories occasionally.
After MS basically coming out and saying that Exchange fubar'd with exploits beyond redemption, it's amazing to hear people still using it.
I had no idea that email clients on Linux platforms were so bad compared to Outlook in terms of functionality (you killed me there, I wasn't expecting that at all).
But if the situation is that bad then it's always good to point out the problem and expose it to the general public. The heads up is appreciated.
What is wrong with the Thunderbird layout? I can see the subject line and sender of each email; exactly what I want.
Let's cut you off halfway through for just a moment. Aside from exchange support (which we might consider a valid "software" limitation that prevents the adoption of linux), how "good" is outlook? You're entire arguement seems to revolve around this concept that Thunderbird and other popular linux mail clients are just not "good". But is Outlook, actually any good either?
Yeah, Thunderbird and others might look a little dated, but I daresay they have all the features that Outlook has (at least all the features a person would need on a daily basis). So are they good? I think they are good enough!!! Just like Outlook is good enough, which is fortunate because Microsoft isn't offering an abundance of choices in mailing clients.
I never used anything but Thunderfart, ever since I sent my firstest eMail some time in the mid-90s. So I didn't have to get to get used to a new program when I switched to Linux.
Firstist?
@@tristen_grant Firstest = before the first.
Happy to help and enlighten people.
Evolution works with Exchange
See, I didn't know that. I'm not an exchange user, so I just know what people tell me
Evolution also works with O365 and OAuth, also supports Cisco DUO combined with OAuth.
Only huge downside I find with it is that the exchange/O365 GAL lookup isn't the smoothest experience, not bad, but not great.
It works even with outdated exchanges (2007) with ews. The only other program that does that is emclient (sorry, only windows).
How about using Windows KVM + Winapps?
I've been saying over and over that there is no direct office replacement on linux and outlook is a part of that. Windows 11 finally got me to mostly move to linux but I have a mini PC for office because I *need* word, excel and outlook and the web versions don't do everything the local clients do especially for outlook.
OnlyOffice works quite well as a replacement for the basic features of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
@@ettoreatalan8303 There are a number of options if you only need basic functionality and if you can get by with them that's great, but not what we are talking about here.
Any other KMail users here? If not have you tried it and what doesn’t work for you?
I have also struggled to find a good email client on Linux. I mostly just use a web browser, but prefer to use a dedicated email program for reading PGP encrypted emails. I would like something with minimal mouse usage, any suggestions?
Create your own mail-server?
I've always accessed e-mail through a web browser, so this has never been a problem for me.
When you have a single email account, this is the easiest approach to be sure. But when you have multiple email accounts (gmail for junk, proton mail for important communications, aliases for other purposes), having access to all of those accounts in one window through Thunderbird is preferable.
I've had no issues getting my exchange email working with thunderbird, personally.
Are you planning to do a video on the backdoor discovered in XZ Utils? It's something which I'm sure that many Linux users would like to know more about.
ThePrimeagen did a great video on how it occurred and had a guy with him the video with security creds to iron out the confusing parts. Frankly, the subject matter is WAY over Matt's head to explain.
@@MrSnivvel Okay. Thank you. I'll check it out.
There are tons of videos on this already. I don't see a reason for Mat to make one.
I totally agree with you. I am trying out a number of Linux distros at the moment and I am very disappointed with the email clients available in Linux because I find them all very hard to read. I cant figure out how to make the font size larger and the spacing between messages greater. In Windows 10 I use EM Client, which I find excellent for legibility, but unfortunately it is not available in Linux. When I first tried Thunderbird I was immediately put off by the sight of a long list of emails jammed on top of one another with hardly any space between them. Furthermore the font size was so small that I could hardly read them. When I looked at the menu options I was put off by the sheer number of them. I don't want to have to do extensive fiddling with innumerable settings when I open a new email client. I just want something that's simple and readable right from the beginning.
woah man this is such a small niche geeky community i love it, love how you talk
i don't do much with email so i don't mind thunderbird. i would agree with the difference between Microsoft Office and Thunderbird and Libre Office hurting linux for work.
i think pdf/no good alternative to adobe probably annoys me the most. i just want to sign a form with ease.
I use ElectronMail wrapper with Proton Mail. It does everything I need.
I typically just use gmail in Firefox for typical emails but when mailing lists come into question, I go to the site they're hosted on and send my email there (which is also in Firefox).
Thunderbird works fine for me. I don't get much email. Mail in de browser I just don't like.
I have multiple email accounts but i just put them in a dedicated firefox installation with container tabs for each account. Personally I think the lack of modern Microsoft Office support is the primary thing that's preventing further Linux usage in the workplace.
I hate outlook so much, it lets so much spam through while flagging 1/4 of important email as spam...
I think Thunderbird is fine, on KDE. IMO
I think Thunderbird is fine, on everywhere. Include on Windows
TBH, the last thing I'd want to do is to be a support person for someone using an Outlook client on Linux (that would inevitably happen, if such a thing existed)...
At work, I'm just hoping MS would fix a few more things in the Outlook web client, so I wouldn't need to touch the native app ever again.
I'm a web base email user. But never had a problem using these three email clients that I used to used. Thunderbird, KMail or even Evolution.
On the other hand, Outlook on Windows now permanently shows a “NEW” label on its taskbar icon.
The native e-mail clients for Linux already fail at the simple setup of an automatic out-of-office message, when an employee is on vacation, for example. For die-hard Linux nerds, such a feature makes no sense, as Linux is their hobby, leisure activity, purpose in life, but companies expect such a feature since MS Outlook has had it for decades.
WUT? Evolution has it and I've been using it for years with the company's Exchange server.
@@RogerioPereiradaSilva77 I assumed that MS Exchange on a Windows server is out of the question if you are already using Linux on the desktop. I didn't express myself clearly enough. Sorry.
I think not a lot of people did not switch to Linux because of email client. Most of the email user use the browser/web client. Most of the people did not switch to Linux because of lot of popular online games not working under it. A lot of professional artist not switching to Linux because of adobe. MS Office is a nightmare. And the biggest problem is when you learn in school about how to use a PC it will definitely be under Windows OS and most of the PC users not a tinkerer.
I would love an email app like the iPhone has
I've used outlook for a long time and still do at work. But I much prefer Evolution to it. And it does work fine with exchange
Agreed on Thunderbird. I can never get the settings right. Everything is too big.
I like Geary and Thunderbird but they have some major issues, especially if you get hundreds of thousands of emails.
strange... I don't know a single person who uses an email client on Windows unless it is outlook for work and always thought Evolution was the closest thing to that on Linux
Do people still use Pine?
I feel the same way for the entire office suite of apps. Libreoffice is not even close to being an “alternative” for MS Office for me.
I don't think anyone sees Libreoffice as a MS Office replacement, it's a simpler version, so it's closer to a Google Office replacement. Onlyoffice and WPS Office are more akin to MS Office
I also, might need to use windows for my job and school, while linux will do better at home.
I've tried Thunderburd in a new design... adding an email was a quest!😅 Only gmail actually worked out but not fully. Likily I do not need Outlook for work.
came here to finally find a good mail client. stayed for the laughs about thunderbird redesign being like plasma 5 to 6
Kmail and Evolution used to be decent. Evolution looked too much like Outlook last time I used it (many years ago). Currently on Windows and using Thurderbird because it is cross-platform and I loathe Outlook.
Maybe it's just me but I actually like Thunderbird a lot. And opt to run it on every OS. I absolutely hate MS's mail programs. Apple's is good, but Thunderbird's look and feel is exactly what I want
I have been using webmail since the 90s and it works.
Well at least Outlook is piece by piece being rebuilt as a web app.
YOu are correct! Not having Outlook prevents me from Mainlining Linux, especially since I use Inbox Rules (which aren't fully compatible with the Web Version), so when I use Linux and the Web Outlook, half my inbox rules don't work which then screws up my inbox anyway! It's a serious problem, the only solution I can think of is to just run a VM with Windows.
Isnt the New Outlook -app literally just the web version?
I am not familiar with current Outlook, but I'm assuming "Inbox Rules" would be a feature that allows filtering incoming email to specific folders and possibly do other automatic things based on incoming mails.
Funnily enough, that was precisely the feature that made me switch to using Linux exclusively for a period of several years back from around 2000. At the time, I was already using Linux part time, and I was subscribed to a bunch of different mailing lists, so I would receive typically a few hundred emails per day, and sorting them into folders were basically a requirement to keep my sanity partially intact.
I tried using a good handful of different mail clients on Windows, including Outlook (not just the Express, but the actual full Outlook), and not one of them would sort really as I wanted. The last email client I used was Eudora, and I was almost happy with it, but it still had some issues. One thing that would cause sorting to fail was different language character encodings. Another was failing to distinguish between replies to mails I had sent. If someone responded directly to me, it should go in my inbox. If they responded to my mail on the mailing list, it should go in the mailing list folder.
Then I found out about fetchmail. It was reasonably easy to set up, and right from the start it just worked. When it came to migrating my old email I was lucky. The last client I had used on Windows was Eudora, and it just so happens that it stored its mail in exactly the same format as a standard unix mailbox, so I just had to copy the files over, and that was it.
About half a year later, I realized that since I no longer needed to boot into Windows to read mail, I hadn't used it for several months, so I deleted the partition.
It's funny how people can have entirely different experiences based on their different requirements.
A slight memory lapse. It was procmail that did the actual filtering, not fetchmail.
For me the things I have to run windows for (in a vm) are:
Altium Designer
Affinity products (photo, designer, etc.)
Altium is a big one for me. Sucks. Affinity supposedly runs in wine but building wine to get it to work makes me rage lol.
Thunderbird is fine for me. May not look like a rock star but does the job. As long as I get my mails I'm happy.
People resist change. Those of us who went to Linux did so because some outside stimulus triggered the fight or flight instinct and we went. For me, Linux was an escape from corporatism. Well it seems as though Linux is becoming Linux, Inc. that's probably not the opinion of most Linux users so they'll stay but my brain is wandering over in the direction of FreeBSD now. A mass migration away from the corporate infestation depends on a triggering of that instinct.
your are right! who have need a tool like outlook is in trouble. ... so linux developer have a new task
I'm fine using Vivaldi mail client.
I went back to Mac from having enjoyed Linux purely because of email support. I need boring stuff like this to not get in the way of my work.
Pretty much the majority of pro work environments per se, like it or not, involves conferencing and emailing. By far, despite how much I love the penguin world, both have been a nightmare on Linux, because mostly enterprise uses MS Teams and Outlook, which are horrible, even on Windows.
This point. Thunderbird really isn't very good.
That said, i love Outlook (hate g-mail) and a bookmark in my browser works good enough.
Proton mail etc is the only thing you need
Ranting that Thunderbird doesn't have MS Exchange is like ranting idk Libre Calc for no compatibility with Excel VB scripts. It's some proprietary MS product so no one is forced to comply with that. It doesn't have any functionality I know of which is only available in MS Exchange. If it's a company environment than You follow company recommendations. If a company as a whole wants to switch to Linux than They could abandon Microsoft products. You can't eat a cake and have a cake.
Of course if they manage to implement compatibility with Exchange than it's great but it's not a reason to rant IMO. And even if they manage to bring Exchange to FOSS world than MS can entirely change the protocol in next update so..
I don’t think that there are any good email clients on any platform. Apple’s mail client is the best one I have used but I don’t think it’s markedly better than thunderbird
Exchange works in thunderbird by paying something like $10/year. I did this so I could access a client's email system, and I wasn't upset in the least. Thunderbird is meh, but that's how I felt about Outlook - so I don't really care. I'm making it a point this year to make donations to OS projects and keep an eye on the smaller ones that don't get much love.
I also use that add-on, Owl for Exchange in Thunderbird. It just makes everything work for O365 Outlook on Thunderbird.
Email providers all use specialized apps now.
Google, protonmail etc.
You have to do special setup or pay for imap .
Email has changed.
My mail accounts are handled by a webapp. Never has been a problem for me. I even uninstalled my Thunderbird as it's more hassle to use. I just don't get what the big deal is. But that's just me.
Use outlook for the web. That’s what msft wants us to do so we should just do that. Msft knows best for all of us.
For me most email clients looks bad so i'm using browser for email.
Email….sending a message or reading a message - then acting on it. 😊
Last time I used an email app was 20 years ago I guess. Amazing content as usual. It is Amazing how your channel grew so fast.
In my knowledge, no email client support protonmail so...
*Emacs, FTW!!!* (Just kidding: I've barely scratched the surface of Emacs.)
Email is just a utility for me. I don't give much more thought to the client than I do to the envelopes my snail mail arrives in. I do prefer a client, though, to minimize the number of browser tabs I inevitably end up scrolling through. I resisted HTML email until I was forced to concede I was fighting a losing battle (I still think email should be plain text). These days, I read most of my email on my phone (Outlook).
I just switched my system to openSUSE Aeon (formerly MicroOS). Photography keeps me from going full Linux. The tools on Windows/Mac--and I'm not talking just about Adobe--are way ahead of FOSS and seem likely to remain that way. I can't get a print in Linux that's not a fuzzy, color-shifted mess, but the same images, printed from Mac or Linux, are framed and hanging on my wall. And there's no printing utility on Linux equivalent to Qimage on Mac and Windows. I'm not alone: Richard Brown, the creator of MicroOS (Aeon) uses a Mac for photography (as he mentions in this video: ruclips.net/video/lKYLF1tA4Ik/видео.htmlsi=BD3C50gRmuFGko3I). I'll probably make the switch to Mac, since Windows has become entirely too annoying, but for now I'll chuck a second NVMe drive into my ThinkPad so I can dual boot (Aeon requires separate drives for dual boot) and reload Windows.
I'm also a ham radio operator. The apps I use for that hobby all have Linux ports, Linux equivalents, or run on WiNE.
I've come to the realization that all email clients suck ass. For me, Thunderbird is the one that sucks the least. Your mileage may vary.
um... I love Outlook.
I don't like microsoft, so I would never use outlook. I use gmail because of my phone anyways. It is just how that goes, Android phone. I am so used to all my work-arounds on linux mint that it all works out ok on my little network.
I use Eudora.
I do agree email does hold linux back, anyone in business uses Outlook. There are no ways around it, in business certain products are the standard.
I think it's even a bit broader than that for those folks. We may as wells say that those particular people are by and large MS-Office users and they simply want Office. I was that way as well prior to moving to Linux 10 years ago.
What got me to finally cut the MSFT umbilical cord was when I received a suggestion from a long-time Linux person who suggested that I focus on accomplishing the tasks as opposed to focusing solely on the software that's used to perform those tasks.
Today, I use Evolution and my web browser for email and I use LibreOffice.
Kmail is pretty good. Not perfect. But Outlook ain't either, IMO.
Kmail also supports Exchange
@@JHSaxa I don't think anything on Linux supports Exchange natively except for Evolution with its EWS plug-in. It is possible to bridge that gap though by using DAVMail which sorta of works as a "proxy" that converts back and forth the proprietary stuff sent by Exchange via EWS onto open standards so that regular productivity clients can work with it. DAVMail is not a bad solution per se but it can be a little flakey with large mailboxes whereas Evolution works flawlessly.
webmail