• Calendar and Tasks
  Install Lightning. In Ubuntu as easy as:
  apt-get install lightning-extension
• The addressbook
  Evolution exports to vcf. Thunderbird import from ldif and csv and such.
  Solution: Conversion tool (online and downloadable for offline use).
• GPG support.
  apt-get install enigmail
• General settings
  Different from Evolution, for Thunderbird you need to save your signatures in text files. Also different, for e-mail “aliases” you don’t make new accounts but you can add them to a mail account behind the “manage identities” button.

After adding all my IMAP boxes and tweaking some other settings I only use Thunderbird since one hour ago.

Already found my first annoyance: Adding attachments. With Evolution you can simply drag and drop files from nautilus, with thunderbird you have to use a file chooser. Not friendly with multiple files and takes more effort, you have navigate to the right directory and its harder to identify the file(s) in question. To drag and drop an attachment you have to drop them in the top bar of the compose window, it doesn’t work if you drop them in the message area.

Shared calendar: Next on my list is playing around with a shared calendar (caldav), but I guess that has nothing to do with going from Evolution to Thunderbird. Although I heard that with Evolution it quite sucks, since the clock applet needs access to your keyring all the time. The downside of Desktop integration I guess.

I also wonder if Thunderbird searches for new messages in subfolders of my IMAP account. I’ll find out soon enough.

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What sucks about Evolution:

• It crashes a lot (frustration)
• No or little improvement with new releases (disappointment)
• Terribly slow, at least with multiple large IMAP accounts (anger)

Whats nice? Gnome integration, your tasks in the clock.

The endless frustration, disappointment en frequent anger convinced me to switch back to Thunderbird, together with the Lightning plugin which facilitates my agenda needs, I am ready to switch.

Before someone starts rambling about filing bug reports. I find evolution bugs terribly hard to trace and the few times I did check, the bug were already filed in threefold.

Now I realise that Thunderbird probably didn’t get perfect in the last two years, I am just too fed up to keep using evolution. I don’t have much time to tinker much so it will probably take a few weeks to switch. I intend to blog about the hurdles and hopefully success.

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