yup. I use more than 3 email providers but didn’t setup any with Thunderbird. Online webmail is enough in many case though. When setting up Ubuntu I purge Thunderbird always.
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Or you can do minimal install that won’t install Thunderbird at all.
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i need some extra packages though like the media codec, in minimal they don’t install automatically.
Oh you can add on the media package afterwards either through Ubuntu Software Center (I just shows my Ubuntu age lol) I mean Ubuntu Software by search for GStreamer Media codec or installing via the terminal ubuntu-restricted-extras.
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Thanks for posting this TB bug reports! I am happy this thread has triggered some action! Hopefully the bug reports will get the attention needed.
Sorry for the late reply, it has been an intense time (incl. COVID-19-infection).
I agree Evolution is not perfect and I am sorry that experience some issues. If you can, it would be great if you file some bug/issue reports on the [Evolution GitLab page](Issues · GNOME / evolution · GitLab — https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/issues).
You can also mention and discuss it on the Evolution mailing list.
I recently had two issues and got helpful answers on the mailing list and the bugs I reported were quickly attended and could even be fixed.
For me it is the other way around. I can see advantages and issues for Evolution and Thunderbird. But Evolution gives me a better overall package with less issues and more features I need than TB.
Just MY subjective feelings. 
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I would add 
that Evolution is not offered as a snap (just flatpak, but I don’t want to have many ‘containers’ managers) so is not really updated. Bugfix version 3.36.5 from august is not even updated in Ubuntu repository, which offers 3.36.4.
Positive fact: I use Evolution to manage calendars displayed in GNOME notification area. GNOME Calendar 3.36 did not satisfy my needs in terms of calendars management features and stability (I don’t know if the 3.38 series improved these parts).
PS: Do you know if there is a way to display all starred (or flagged in any other way) emails from different mailboxes in Evolution? It’s not trolling at all, just a real question!
Create a search folder for “Status” “is” “important” and apply the search in “All local and active remote folders”. This folder will then appear under “Search Folders” in the left hand pane. Make sure that “Search Folders” are enabled in Preferences.
There’s lots of conditions that can be applied in search folders and conditions can be combined.
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@p8mty Thanks a lot for you help!
I would add
That is one reason I promote to have Evolution as default email app again. I hope updates are pushed (earlier) to Ubuntu releases. And a snap may be contributed by Ubuntu.
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Well, you see that I’m Evolution-positive: I seriously try again (aaaaagain) Evolution as my main client.
I made a virtual search folder for unread and starred emails, it can fit my needs roughly as well as TB tabs.
BUT:
Here I go again with Google. It was already reported 4 months ago:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/issues/1055
The workaround is to manually configure a Google calendar entry, but then what is the point to use Evolution if GNOME integration is not fully working?
I did not experience such annoying bugs running TB calendar + Gdata provider (that still have a bug which force you to unactivate/activate each calendar at startup, but that’s not very annoying).
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@fthx François, I am delighted that you gave Evolution another chance, thanks a lot!
Great the virtual search folder is a (rough) solution.
It is a pity that there is a bug just in the feature you depend on. Thanks for searching for and commenting on the bug (maybe you can thumb up the initial question to give a bit more weight to the issue)! Hopefully there will be a solution for this. I wonder what the label “not actionable” means, it looks like an issue that needs action. If there is no feedback after a while, you can try to get more input on the Evolution mailing list.
Another thought is whether there is a better solution than Google calendar, e.g. more private and secure? This might solve this problem, too 
.
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Since this has become largely a discussion of Thunderbird vs Evolution, I hope you will forgive my putting a question (and opinion) here. It could be a question about Thunderbird and maildir status
Thunderbird uses mbox (single file per folder) storage by default. This is
not a good arrangement when some folders grow to 2GB over the year; each
backup requires the entire file, and that becomes 1GB and more per day for
each of those folders for much of the year, ending at 2GB per day each.
I find some mention and discussion of maildir (one file per message) with
Thunderbird (as a plug-in). But most of what I see is ancient history, and
a lot of it warned of significant problems and dangers.
It was ‘experimental’ for Thunderbird 60, and nothing said subsequently.
I see some success claimed from 2016 (Wilders Security). That’s old.
The Mozilla Wiki warns of dangers and data loss, last updated 2017.
Support Mozilla (undated) says you risk your data http://mzl.la/1GDeRsp
Is there any up-to-date information?
Does it work, reliably? Can I bet my data on it?
Or is maildir in Thunderbird a no-show?
Then Evolution becomes the appropriate tool for large active folders.
And I have to decide which way to go, myself.
You should probably ask this on a Thunderbird forum where the developers of that app are. Here they package it, not add features or know the internal plumbing.
From Mozilla.org (2017) I found this: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1175341
Sorry, no. There has been no significant change in recent years to resolving remaining maildir issues.
BTW If you want MailDir format I’d recommend mutt — It can handle voluminous email, is very powerful but is text based (console app). I’ve used it for years.
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Well, I try Mailbox.org at the moment. Not so easy to find a reliable and cheap email provider with a calendar and native IMAP (means not like proton bridge…). But an email is sooo important that I will use it as a secondary account. Forwarding from Gmail would seem privacy-odd, isn’t it ?
Some news about Thunderbird and its Google calendar issue:
https://github.com/kewisch/gdata-provider/issues/140#issuecomment-753301708
Completely solves the initial display issue and is fully functional. No more addon needed, additionally…
stephen-d-allen:
Thank you; that’s what I am seeing from searching, notes from three and more years ago and little current. I’ve posted it over at Tbird, and found one person (in the forum) who may be using it. It’s precisely this vagueness that makes this relevant to the Evo vs Tbird discussion, IMHO. Without MailDir, big folders ‘break’ Tbird.
As for Mutt, I used text based (CLI) mail in the old days (and remember the difference between ‘r’ and ‘R’). Thank you, but this is one really good application for GUI.
So I vote for Evolution.
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Do you know for both Thunderbird and Evolution, if their CardDAV (not asked CalDAV) support is reliable ? TB one is marked as still experimental (and needs to be manually enabled in advanced config editor). I tried it, seems to work, though.
I guess it it will be fine to start a search on mail infrastructures which is acceptable by Canonical roadmap and by the Open Source Communities. What I mean is not to delete an application please do not do that, I mean there should be options until we really can lead a new solution like Chrome vs Edge Chromium.
Packaging is easy maintaining is hard and needs time to solve community relationship issues not only technical issues. But writing code is what we need and this is what i point to.
Thanks.
As many of you guys, I’m a heavy email user and I happen to manage multiple accounts some of which happen to come from an Enterprise environment (aka: Exchange Server). I feel that ubuntu still lacks an optimal solution:
Geary is often described as the new “cool guy”, but in fact is buggy as hell and absolutely basic in functionality. Yes it looks polished and modern, but it’s not ready for heavy email users and professional environments.
Evolution is in theory the best better Outlook replacement. It supports EWS, it behaves like Outlook and it’s well integrated into GNOME. It’s true however, that it looks ancient, it still doesn’t support proper HTML composing and it still has plenty of unresolved bugs. Development is very slow and the fact that it is developed by just one guy explains why.
Thunderbird survived in “maintenance mode” for a long time, but now it’s back on track.
It is multi platform, it has plenty of features and it is way more stable than Evolution.
However it’s absolutely not perfect: it still lacks EWS support (I managed to use it with my company Exchange server using DavMail and it works flawlessy… but it’s not ready out of the box) and its UI definitely needs some love and lacks GNOME integration. Overall, however, I think it’s a better product and a better supported one.
In my opinion all these clients are not optimal solutions and need some development work. IMHO Ubuntu and Canonical should invest some resources to help one of the projects and fill the gaps where they are found.
This could be done by developing Thunderbird extensions for a better integration with GNOME, including GNOME Online Accounts, calendar and notification system) or by supporting the Evolution project by fixing the bugs and developing the much needed missing functionalities.
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I like Evolution, it’s well integrated with Google Online Accounts and I would prefer it as a default PIM over Thunderbird, but with upstream apparently moving out of Evolution in favor of smaller standalone apps like Calendar, Contacts, Geary, it would be an unwise move to change the default now just to change it again in two years. It’s like the worst moment to do that.
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