Linux is to gain a new fully featured stand-alone email program...

[HalationEffect]

... courtesy of those fine folks at Opera. After Mozilla's announcement that development work on Thunderbird would be ceasing, I see Opera's announcement as Good News™, even if it isn't open source software.

Opera has announced that the built-in email client in the Opera browser will be removed, and be packaged up as a stand-alone program. OK, so it's not only Linux that's getting a new email client; Windows and MacOSX will get it too. In fact, they're getting it a little sooner than Linux is. But the Opera devs have confirmed that it will indeed be available for Linux.

Between switching from their Presto rendering engine to Blink (Google's fork of WebKit) and spinning off their email client, it looks like big changes in the world of Opera.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/05/o...ng-it-to-linux

[notabug]

+1

[Detonate]

I'm eager to try it.

[SteveRiley]

So if Opera is refactoring into separate web browser and email programs, and then replacing their rendering engine with Blink, how, exactly, is Opera (the browser) different than Chrom(e)ium? I'm inclined to wonder, why bother with the "new" Opera at all? If it's nothing more than Chrom(e)ium with alternate, ah, chrome (haha), the point is...?

[HalationEffect]

So if Opera is refactoring into separate web browser and email programs, and then replacing their rendering engine with Blink, how, exactly, is Opera (the browser) different than Chrom(e)ium? I'm inclined to wonder, why bother with the "new" Opera at all? If it's nothing more than Chrom(e)ium with alternate, ah, chrome (haha), the point is...?

I've been wondering the same thing myself, and have come to the conclusion that switching from Presto + Carakan to Blink + V8 does make sense. Kinda. If you squint a bit when you look at it.

* Opera Software can be more focussed: Not having to work on maintaining & improving Presto frees Opera devs up to really polish that chrome.

* Better compatibility: I can easily imagine that many sites don't bother to test on a tiny minority engine like Presto, but they will surely test with WebKit / Blink, Trident and Gecko.

The Opera Developers Blog has more to say: http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/300-mi...move-to-webkit

[Goeroeboeroe]

Lots of sitebuilders indeed didn't test on Opera. I did, as one of the few, I guess. Opera was always pretty standard compliant, and the more you test the better you can work with standards (hmmm, that does NOT include testing in most versions of Internet Explorer...) And I liked Opera because it was, in the time of the browser war, one of the very few that withstood Internet Explorer.
I installed Opera for Android. It's the first one that had Blink implemented. And now I'm for the first time considering stopping testing in Opera. Opera for Android is totally, completely, absolutely unusable. It's one big bug factory, missing all things Opera made Opera. I had to go back to a previous version.
I'm not the only one, as you can read on http://my.opera.com/community/forums...dml?id=1673822 and http://my.opera.com/community/forums...dml?id=1632642
I hope it's getting better, but if this is the way Opera is moving, I'll really stop testing in that browser. If the desktop version is as bad as the Android version, there's for me no reason at all to keep using Opera.

[Equareo]

Opera has actually been a very innovative company and were the first to introduce tabbed browsing, the speed dail and browser sessions plus a whole bunch of other stuff which have later been copied by other companies. I love it for the awesome design and features and adopting the Chrome engine is probably a smart move which will give better web page compatibility hence improving the overall user experience. The android version is still a bit bugged but it has just gotten out of the beta so i expect a lot of improvements.

My opinion might be a bit biased because im from Norway

[SteveRiley]

My opinion might be a bit biased because im from Norway

You'd think the folks at Opera might be more conducive to the notion of open source, especially since the kernel dude from the country next door gives his stuff away for free.

[kubicle]

One could say they are "opening" up a bit by switching to a OS engine.
("could", not necessarily "should")

[SteveRiley]

Ah, true. That interpretation hadn't occurred to me.

[Frank616]

After Mozilla's announcement that development work on Thunderbird would be ceasing

I hope someone forks Thunderbird. It is too good a product to let die. It is one of my joys in using Linux.

Frank.

[Qqmike]

+1, Amen, to that Frank616.
All the subtle and not-so-subtle technical mumbo-jumbo aside, I really enjoy using T-Bird and am quite attached to it.

[oshunluvr]

I've never been a fan of Thunderbird. For me, it's been the lesser of the evils. Kmail works for now and I like the integration. I tried Zimbra so I would have access to my company exchange, but it was just too clunky.

It is kind of amazing that something as ubiquitous as email has so few supporting applications. You'd think there'd be at least as many choices as there are for Solitaire. I guess email isn't "sexy."

I'm going to try Inky when it comes out, but my expectations are low. The last Opera experience I had (android) will prevent me from installing anything put out by them, I'm afraid.

[kubicle]

It is kind of amazing that something as ubiquitous as email has so few supporting applications. You'd think there'd be at least as many choices as there are for Solitaire. I guess email isn't "sexy."

There are actually quite a few of them (although most of them are less known), like trojita, balsa, claws and sylpheed to name a few GUI clients alongside the "major" players in the linux land (thunderbird, evolution and kmail).

Of course there could be more of them, considering how used email is (although webmail is more popular than it used to be for some unfathomable reason ), but I'd guess there are a few reasons why we don't have hundreds of full-fledged mail apps:
1. Mail clients tend to be quite complicated...you can't create (a good) one as a "hobby" project.
2. It's hard to find a "new" approach to email...why create an application that basically does the same thing as the existing ones.

Thunderbird is OK (I'd likely use it, or at least consider it, if I was using Windows), but I prefer kmail on linux.

[oshunluvr]

I'd forgotten about Trojita. I looked at it a couple years ago when last trying to dump Tbird. It looks to be in better shape than it was. All the others you listed are GTK, which I'm also not a fan of.

Thanks for the response.