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.

Reduce Firefox memory/RAM usage

We all love Firefox but hate its memory footprint, especially if you keep numerous tabs open simultaneously. I always love to find new ways on how to achieve better performance in my every day computing experience as well as faster speeds. Reducing memory footprints of applications or switching to lightweight applications is something I am passionate about.

Let me discuss few tips that I use to keep my Firefox slimmest on memory

Unload Tab extension

Modern web pages gorge heavily on memory and keeping too many tabs open is not a good idea. Often we forget to close the tabs that we do not need. Or we sometimes feel as if we would 'lose' our tabs. It is most probable that we do not use all the tabs open side by side. Eg. I would keep around 20 tabs open but would be frequently switching only between 4-5 tabs. Rest of the open tabs would consume system memory for no good. With a Firefox extension called Unload Tab, the unused Firefox Tabs would automatically be suspended and their memory would be released. You can also choose not to suspend particular sites/urls from being suspended automatically. I personally love this extension! Make sure  you choose not to automatically suspend dynamic sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. Otherwise you would not be able to receive any updates when your tab is inactive.

Cleanup Firefox's cache and History

Firefox uses in-memory indexes for history and bookmarks to keep them loaded for instant 'awesome-bar' results. Having big amount of history always available is good. But then you have to 'pay some costs'. It is better to remove stale history of a previous month or previous week to be on safer side.

Flash players (especially Youtube)

Many a time, we open a video on Youtube or Metacafe somewhere in some tab and then we switch to other tabs, not aware that it may hog a crazy amount of your system memory by even simply being open. It is just the way Flash player and plugin stuff works. Do not forget to close down the video playing (or Flash player) pages after you are done watching.

Avoid memory munching web pages

Here, you would have to use your own experience to find out which sites/pages have memory leaks and when they are open your memory usage gets higher and higher over time. One such site has been Wunderlist. For me, Firefox's memory consumption would cross beyond 1.5GB even when only a single tab with Wunderlist.com was opened in it. I hope Wunderlist should already have solved this memory leak issue. There may be many sites like this. Avoid them.

Too many add-ons/extensions

Well, having too many add-ons/extensions itself is not bad. But when you have some add-ons installed which implement themselves on each page and do some fancy stuff, their memory consumption would add up. Buggy extensions are worse! Best way is to avoid the add-ons you can live without. Or you can disable the unused extensions temporarily from add-ons menu.

Upgrade Firefox and its extensions

Over time, developers of Firefox and extensions tend to get better with their products in terms of stability, efficiency and memory consumption.

Firefox Health Report

You can go to Help menu and click on Firefox Health Report to learn more about your Firefox's health, startup times, troubling add-ons etc. 


Please feel free to add your own tips in comments.

Happy surfing! :) Thank you Firefox!

Private Window in Firefox PC and Android

Ever want to surf without leaving any tracks - history, cookies, cache, temporary files etc., just for some time or for some sites?

Conventional way to do so in Firefox 

(in PC version)

* Go to History menu > Clear Recent history

* Time range to clear: Everything

* Select all the checkboxes

* Click "Clear Now"

^^ Surf all the pages you wish to surf privately and repeat the above process

(in mobile version)

* Tap Menu Key

* Go to Settings > Privacy > Clear private data

* Check all the checkboxes

* Tap "Clear Data"

^^ Surf all the pages you wish to surf privately and repeat the above process

This is cumbersome! And also would log you out from everywhere in Firefox and remove even the required history! :(

The better way: Enter Private Browsing 

(in PC version)

* Go to File menu

* Choose New Private Window

^^ In that private window, surf all the pages you wish to surf privately and simply close the private window and everything you did in that window would be fully vanished!

(in mobile version)

* Tap Menu Key

* Tap "New Private tab"

^^ In that private tab, surf all the pages you wish to surf privately and simply close the private tab and everything you did in that tab would be fully vanished!

Using this method only the data from the private window would be erased, keeping your main browser's data (history, logged in sessions, cookies etc.) remain intact.

In other browsers:

* In Google Chrome, similar feature is called "Incognito Window"

* In Opera, "Private Window"

Happy surfing!

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS mouse pointer problem

The latest Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is awesome! I chose to run an upgrade on the Ubuntu 13.10 to get to the latest one.

Except for one thing. Right after the upgrade, I am randomly facing a weird issue with mouse pointer. After I keep working on an app's window (Firefox, for example), the mouse pointer would start misbehaving and it would start to actually point somewhat 20 pixels below what it appears to me. This issue occurs only with maximized windows. And it occurs randomly. It may not happen at all or it may happen quite frequently.

The issue can temporarily be dodged by restoring the window by double clicking on the title and then re-maximizing it again.

Update: 13-09-2014

Unfortunately, I could not find any solution to this myself for a long time. Also Unity was very heavy on resources of my laptop. Hence, I decided to switch to xubuntu-desktop instead. It is very fast and light... Also it does not have this issue. :)

Use this command in terminal to install xubuntu-desktop on your already working ubuntu.

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop gksu leafpad synaptic

After you install it, you can switch to it by logging out of your system and then on the login screen, you would have the option to switch to Xubuntu session.

Feel free to contact me incase you have any issues.

How to use SetCPU to save battery (After rooting)

SetCPU is a powerful app for controlling CPU frequencies to gain maximum performance when you use your Android device and low energy consumption when you do not use the device.

* Let us assume that you have installed the SetCPU app on your Android already.

Setting it up...

I would keep this simple and to the point

* Open SetCPU

* Go to Profiles Tab and create a new profile by clicking on the '+' Sign.

* Click on the '+' Sign in front of "Turn this profile on when..."

* From the events, choose "Screen On/Off" and finally choose "Screen Off".

 

Hit Next>  and 
* Check "Set the CPU speed".
* Set Max frequency around 800 and Min frequency to (or close to) the lowest.
* Do rest of the settings shown in the screenshot below.

 Hit Next>

* Name the profile "Powersave"
* Priority can be left as it is.

 * Hit Next>



Lets create another profile for the time when screen would be on using the same method as above.

* In "Turn this profile on when...", choose "Screen On/Off" and finally "Screen Off"

Hit Next>

* Set Max frequency to the max of your phone. In my case I am setting this to 1200
* And the lowest should be set as close to the lowest...
* Note that here we would be setting the CPU governor "ondemand" so that the CPU scales up quickly as required within the range specified.
* Do the other things as specified in the screenshot.

* Hit Next>
* Name the profile: "Screen on: H"
* Leave the profile as default.

Hit Next> to save the profile and make sure you enable both of the profiles.

"Powersave" would be activated when your screen is off and when on, the "Screen on: H" would be activated.

NOTE

We are not setting the CPU too low in both the profiles. Setting CPU frequencies too low while processing intensive apps run would simply elongate the processing and keep the CPU more occupied. This would result in more battery consumption only.