Best Mail Client for Linux (Ubuntu)

There are so many mail clients available for Linux. But nearly all tend to lack at some or the other thing. It is a good thing to stick with products from big giants when stability and features are concerned. Moreover, they stick to technology standards.

I cannot discuss all the features these clients provide. I would simply point out certain major things that I noticed for myself.

Thunderbird

I used Thunderbird for quite some time. It works well. Mail accounts can easily be set, the GUI is neat and clean, there are numerous add-ons available for Thunderbird too. Also there is a cool feature of archiving messages to different folders based on the year they were received in. But well, I never liked the way it presented emails. The consolidation of all the accounts is not so good and it looks cluttered.

To install Thunderbird, go to Terminal and type in the following command:

For Ubuntu like distros:
sudo apt-get install thunderbird

For RPM based distros (CentOS, Fedora etc.)
yum install thunderbird

Opera Mail

Opera is an amazing web browser (I don't use it for browsing though). But most of the people are not aware of how amazing Opera's Mail client is. It is superbly fast and easy to use. Dealing with multiple email accounts has never been easier! Even the consolidation of all your email accounts is superb! Under a single head, you can have all your emails which are grouped by receiving days.

Opera Mail also has in built RSS feed client! Isn't that amazing as well? :)

To install Opera Mail,
Go to http://www.opera.com/ and download the deb package if you are on Ubuntu like distro or RPM if you are on Centos, Fedora etc. or other package according to your distro.

Setting Opera to minimize on close

In Opera, enter following in address bar:

opera:config

Hit Enter

Search for 'exit'.

Set 'Show Exit Dialog' to 1

Once you do it, Opera would ask if you wish to hide or close itself on closing.

Auto-starting Opera on Session login
This varies accordingly to DEs.

For Unity, in your Dash search for 'Startup Applications'. After that, add an entry with command 'opera'. That is it.

For XFCE (I am using it), in applications menu, go to Settings Manager. Then go to Sessions and Startup. Click on Autostart applications tab. Add an entry with 'opera' as command with other fields of your choice.

Conclusion

Choosing a best mail client is not something conclusive. Everyone's choices are different. Best way to choose your own mail client is to try some popular names. :) Personally, I love Opera Mail.