[rant] Giving up on Kmail 2 [update: slowly coming back]

sam_i_am · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Sep 2003 Posts: 120

I tried. I really did. Installed 4.7.0 at home and kmail migration was a nightmare. After few tries, managed get it to at least not crash at the beginning. On startup, it would ask for kwallet password at least three times (by seemingly different programs). It managed to read my main imap folder acceptably. However, it fails to login to my second imap folder.

Since I host this by myself (Dovecot), I enabled verbose logging options to try to track it down. from all I can see, the password is accepted, but disconnects immediately. This imap folder works fine at work using kmail 1.13.7 (KDE 4.6.5). The deal-breaker is my outgoing connection doesn't work at all (used to work fine in kmail 1.13.7 at home before upgrade). So, I can read email, but can't reply or access old email in my own server. I even tried creating a new UNIX account to see if that was due to some migration mess-up. But it still has all those problems.

I don't know what they did to Kmail, but this thing is now slower than a turtle with its hind legs cut off. I click on an email and it takes 5-10 sec. for the email to appear.

I tried sylpheed and evolution. After having used kmail over the years, I just could not force myself to like them. There were too many missing usability features. Last night I emerged Thunderbird. While interface looks butt-ugly on Linux, at least it is usable and can send and read email from all my accounts. Also, I use TB on the few Windows XP machines that I use. So, it is familiar.

So, I'm sticking with KDE 4.6.5 at work and will not dare update that to 4.7.x until I can verify at home that kmail2 is at least as usable as kmail 1.13.7

I don't really have any detailed steps to file a usable bug report. But, if anyone wants, I can do some debugging. Will keep an eye for updates and see if I can find some time to file a useful bug report or two. But after having read Aaron Siego's opinion of users, I'm rather rpissed off. I do know what I want. Kmail2+akonadi+nepomuk+strigi aint it. I do admit that it is easy to complain. But much harder to contribute. So, I'll lick my wounds and find something that lets me read my $!#@ email.
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Sam

baaann · Guru Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 418 Location: uk

It seems like the Dev's are aware and working hard to improve it although we are not likely to see the results until 4.8.

Personally I like it, but I only have a single POP3 account and didn't try a migration. It certainly seems to run far better than Evolution. You may not feel you have enough info to file a bug, but maybe it is worth adding the description of your problem as a comment on the linked blog?

For the Thunderbird appearance, it may be worth installing x11-themes/oxygen-gtk, I feel it certainly makes the difference for Firefox and Libreoffice

albright · Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 6:05 pm Post subject:

kmail2 works just barely OK for me

migration is very poor (a real nightmare with mixed maildir
and mbox formats)

but what really bothers me is there is no way (that I can find
that works) to keep local mail synced between two computers

used to be you could just copy ~/kde4/.../kmail/mail across computers

that does not work with the addition of akonadi database;

Also very bad, now some of my mail is in ~/.../mail but other messages
end up in some akonadi database somewhere so I don't really even know
how to back up my local mail anymore

_________________
.... there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth
doing as simply messing about with Linux ...
(apologies to Kenneth Graeme)

krinn · Advocate Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 3204

http://dilfridge.blogspot.com/2011/09/who-cares-about-users-and-distributions.html

They not only not listen to users, but also with other devs.
KDE guys rules (in their closed doors)

khumba · n00b Joined: 16 Jun 2011 Posts: 29

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, having started with a fresh Akonadi setup and using KMail 4.7.1 for my IMAP account, it rocks. I think it actually feels faster than Thunderbird and seems more customizable, and isn't a screen-hog on my netbook. Syncing is the only thing that I wish were more responsive.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for frameworks, but the integration between the entire kdepim suite, the ability to attach notes to emails and emails to calendar events and have them show up on the system calendar, is fantastic. Now if only there were a decent GUI for searching all the gunk in Nepomuk... (Not krunner of all things.)

So in KMail's defense, if you're switching because the migration sucks... Is that more work than just starting with a fresh KMail 4.7 setup?

Another +1 for oxygen-gtk as well.

Dorsai! · Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 2:31 pm Post subject:

My main concern about kmail2 is that it suckes up RAM and CPU time like crazy. When my 10 IMAP accounts got checkt CPU usage hang on 70% for about 20 seconds. For every account there is are two akonadi threads each one taking up about 20 MB of RAM.

I couldn't believe how fast and responsive my desktop behaved after I removed the whole akonadi/nepumuk/strigi bundle. claws-mail (sylpheed fork more optimized on features than on stability, although its rock stable for me) is much better, more configurable than even kmail and not as butt ugly and slow as thunderbird.

Of course I see that there are some cases where the user has a benefit from kmail2 and akonadi, but that theoretical usecase surely is not your 0815 default user.

khumba · n00b Joined: 16 Jun 2011 Posts: 29

I'm not sure having 10 IMAP accounts is average user-ish either, but fair enough

. 20MiB is a little ridiculous.

I don't even mind that KMail can't inline quote HTML messages quite yet, but I need sanely flowing content before I'll switch to text emails. If I were to write a Claws plugin that just wraps the body of outgoing messages in <html>, etc... heh. Does an email client as light as Claws that can send HTML messages (preferrably packaged in Gentoo) exist?

Pretty amazing that we even have the option of USE=-semantic-desktop, eh? I've been wondering if that's an officially supported configuration, or if it's something that Gentoo found works, like gnome-light.

Dorsai! · Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:44 pm Post subject:

KDE is supposed to work on a big variety of platforms, not all of which make use of the semantic desktop features, so it is a wanted, supported and tested feature I can imagine. Of course its only useful for people experimenting with embedded systems, administrators who tailor their own enterprise desktop or us Gentoo users.

The weight it takes of the desktop is amazing. I am on the edge of choosing a lighter window manager anyway but like this I can enjoy the awesome advantages of kwin and plasma without having a popup crazy Windows 7 clone with ubuntu-like performance.

The Gentoo KDE team and their ebuilds are really great. IMHO Gentoo still provides the best KDE experience across all Distros.

ppurka · Advocate Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 2782

sam_i_am · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Sep 2003 Posts: 120

Two days ago, I went with the testing release for Thunderbird 6.0 and I'm pleasantly surprised how the looks have improved (I'm a sucker for good looks). So, using Thunderbird is now a pleasure after having suffered through slowness of Kmail2. Working gpg/mime/smime is an added bonus.

So, as I mentioned, I will use KDE 4.7.1 at home without Kmail for now. I will miss the nice integration of kmail and korganizer, but that is a minor inconvenience.

As someone else mentioned in this thread, KDE support in Gentoo has been amazing. Kudos to the Gentoo-KDE team for putting up with upstream tantrums. If any devs happen to be in my corner of the world (London, Ontario, Canada), I would be honored to buy them a beverage of their choice

_________________
Sam

khumba · n00b Joined: 16 Jun 2011 Posts: 29

Huh, format=flowed, maybe now that Akonadi's finally(?) (almost, kind of?) sorted out, we can get that feature soon. Or get another GSoC student for next summer

.

I checked my IMAP account via my webhost's Roundcube setup, and I was surprised to see a folder that wasn't showing up in KMail. That caused a decent amount of annoyance at KMail, until I realized that in fact the folder doesn't actually exist, doh.

ppurka · Advocate Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 2782

ronino · n00b Joined: 29 Mar 2005 Posts: 15

albright · Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2011 5:14 pm Post subject:

khumba · n00b Joined: 16 Jun 2011 Posts: 29

For importing a maildir, or moving mail between clients, why not set up a quick courier-imap instance to talk to a local maildir? It's dead easy; just emerge courier-imap, ensure the following are set,

jasn · Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 2:24 am Post subject:

Can't speak for others posting their frustrations, but for me, claws-mail was the answer..

BTW, I was able to convert my KMail hierarchy to Thunderbird using the python script referenced here.

Good Luck..

danand · n00b Joined: 28 Oct 2011 Posts: 1

I've been using kmail since it came out. But now, I have to seriously reconsider. What are the developers thinking!

Kmail2 is probably useful for hobbyists and students now. As a professional with 20k odd emails in my system
( Sarbanes Oxley, CE and product responsibilities ), the new kmail2 has passed the term useful or usable.

Is there a way to downgrade to the old kmail? Is it compilable?
I managed to go through the migration blues but the system is so slow that's it's almost impossible to move or delete
files between and in folders. And why on earth can't I remove/rename the basic folders?!

Linux has been a good idea as it allowed me to tweak what I didn't like/want. But kmail2, where are the files and folders? In a database?
I hope there are recovery tools when ( not if ) anyone of these databases crashes on us.

As a professional Project manager, I have to do a regularly sit down and make risk assessments on the tools I use.
Currently, Kmail2 doesn't pass even the first questions.

If there is a fix/workaround in the pipeline, that pipeline needs to be shortened as it risks Kmail2 to be put on the big scrapyard of deserted projects.
If it had been a private company doing this, the responsible managers and staff had all be fired by now and the shareholders shouting bloody murder!

I'll give it some time before I dump Kmail2 all together. I managed to downmigrate the kmaildirs to Unix MailBox formatted files.
Even Elm was more useful than this Kmail2 today.

But again, it looks and feels like a conspiracy by Microsoft... Make the Kmall2 so unusable that the users even starts reconsidering Windows and Outlook

Really? This is how bad the situation is right now.

//Danand

Tatsh · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 22 Jul 2007 Posts: 76

I also gave up on KMail a while ago.

I complained to KDE plenty (correctly, by reporting bugs) and gave up. So many bugs (including the random spacing taskbar bug) are pretty much being ignored in SC's and if you want the bug fixes you have to go 9999.

If you only use Gmail:
Use Chrome and Offline Google Mail: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejidjjhkpiempkbhmpbfngldlkglhimk

It sucks to have to switch accounts instead of seeing everything in one Inbox (as was ONCE possible with KMail a LONG time ago without it being impossible to use). That's a tiny price to pay to keep on using your email. The very fact that they put the multiple account switching feature in is amazing anyway because it always seemed like (not too long ago) that Google HATED people having multiple account and worked under the assumption that you only had one.

I have several: potential spam and private stuff, personal/business, and companies I work for who use Google Apps

R_W · n00b Joined: 05 Jan 2005 Posts: 32

genstorm · Veteran Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 1957 Location: Austria

Well, about a week ago the akonadi imap client stopped fetching mails...
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backend.cpp:92:2: warning: #warning TODO - this error message is about as useful as a cooling unit in the arctic

affirmedatheist · Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2011 9:08 pm Post subject:

Kmail is a mess, but I have to give credit to the Gentoo KDE team - KDE on Gentoo really does run smoothly. Thankfully I've been using Thunderbird in my other distribution (LMDE) and have gotten used to it.
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Unix programs expand to add mail, but the default mail app for a Linux DE will almost certainly be broken.

sam_i_am · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 19 Sep 2003 Posts: 120

ppurka · Advocate Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 2782

genstorm · Veteran Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 1957 Location: Austria

kdepim packages 4.7.49.9999 recently rebuilt and kontact/kmail works quite ok now...
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backend.cpp:92:2: warning: #warning TODO - this error message is about as useful as a cooling unit in the arctic

gcasillo · Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 6:37 pm Post subject:

I gave up on KMail about two years ago. I'm a straight GMail user now, and that includes using their mail hosting services for a couple of my domains. I ran an install of Dovecot, et al on a server, and while I got it working, it was ridiculous how much time and effort was necessary to set it up and maintain it.

I ditched KMail for the same reasons everyone else has mentioned. Very heavy handed development. They compel one to bottom post, because that's their chosen way, and they give no options to cleanly do it any other way. It's their way or the highway. Easy choice really, and I've not looked back.

That said, I'll echo the sentiment that the Gentoo KDE devs are some of the best around. Timely releases, good communication, and they make KDE usage a pleasurable experience for end users and themselves alike. Thumbs up!