Charlotte Aten

Are there any good #FOSS alternatives to #Mozilla #Thunderbird with #NoAI ? When I was at the University of Denver I installed Thunderbird once so I could have a local copy of my work emails (through Microsoft), then I deleted it. I've now tried the same trick at CU Boulder (also Microsoft) and been told I need to request access to use Thunderbird. This still might work to back up my emails, but lately I've been thinking it would be nice to have an application instead of using a web client so I get local backups automatically and have a clearner interface. Is there anything good in this space that hasn't been subject to #enshittification ?

#academia #email #Microsoft #Denver #Boulder #CUBoulder #UniversityOfDenver

Feb 4 at 6:03pmWeb
Show threadMarkus Redeker 🐘Feb 4

Just adding a few hashtags that might be useful.

#DID #DIDay #DigitalIndependenceDay

Show threadAmine ChadlyFeb 4
@mrdk I was thinking of claw-mail that I used eons ago… but I am not sure that the project is still active… the website seem broken 😅
Show thread🧊 freezr 🥶Feb 4

@caten

Gnome Evolution is fine; Claws Email is fine.
However I had to stop using Gnome evolution for reasons I do not remember anymore, I guess some issue with my sad gmail account, therefore I switched to Claws Email on my little laptop.

Show threadCharlotte AtenFeb 4
@freezr I'm always happy to find good software written in C and released under the GPL which has been maintained for decades. Thanks!
Show threadyoasifFeb 4

@freezr @caten Does Claws actually work with Oauth2, or do you need to use the less secure password option?

(Harder to recommend).

I hadn't realized that Linux apps were in scope, so I'll mention Geary. I'm not recommending it exactly - I have it setup and it works, and that is pretty much all I know about it.

It runs faster than Thunderbird and follows the GNOME HIG better, too.

Show threadCharlotte AtenFeb 4
@freezr @yoasif I didn't even give the operating system a thought lol. I'm running Linux Mint Debian Edition. I usually assume people are discussing Linux when talking about software here.
Show thread🧊 freezr 🥶Feb 4

@yoasif @caten

Claws does support Oauth2.

Now I realized that I ditched Gmail on all my low-powered devices, if I need to read email on Gmail I use my phone.

Show threadyoasifFeb 4

@freezr @caten Great - it didn't the last time I was evaluating email clients, so I wasn't actually able to try it (I'm very boringly a "normal" user).

Something to play with sometime soon!

Show thread🧊 freezr 🥶Feb 4

@yoasif @caten

claws-mail.org/faq/index.php/O…

Oauth2 - Claws Mail FAQ

Show threadDima Pasechnik 🇺🇦 🇳🇱Feb 4

@freezr @yoasif @caten
interesting - I'll give Claws a try.

There is also davmail - a Java application which connects to OAuth2 email providers and forwards these connections to local imap/smtp (so you can keep using something like mutt)

https://davmail.sourceforge.net/linuxsetup.html

DavMail POP/IMAP/SMTP/Caldav/Carddav/LDAP Exchange Gateway - Linux setup

Show thread🧊 freezr 🥶Feb 4

@dimpase @yoasif @caten

Be advised that Claws can only send plain-text emails, but it can receive html ones.

Show threadArchieFeb 4

My go-tos are Betterbird and Waterfox. As you can guess by the names, they're both forks from Mozilla, but specifically strip out all of the bloat and garbage that was in there, even before the recent AI bullshittery.

Both are available on FlatPak:

https://flathub.org/en/apps/eu.betterbird.Betterbird
https://flathub.org/en/apps/net.waterfox.waterfox

Librewolf is another good Firefox alternative, though it has very strict default settings and so you need to tinker a bit to stop it from breaking a lot of websites:

https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.gitlab.librewolf-community

@caten

Install Betterbird on Linux | Flathub

A better version of Thunderbird