I think every Linux desktop user which uses KDE agrees that when we update to a new KDE4 release – either because it comes as part of system update or by installing the new distro – the first question we ask is what exciting features were introduced in this new release and which basic functionality got broken because of that?
Recently released OpenSUSE 12. 1 introduced the new KDE 4.7.2 and KMail version 2. I have been a SUSE Linux user for quite a while, and to be honest this was not the first release packing a version of KMail which didn’t quite work straight out the box. Some previous versions need tweaking as well. However this version was just a disaster. First, it didn’t see the mail folder at all, instead asking me to import it; this never happened during the last ten years I’ve been using KMail. Now, the importer crashed while importing the email. And while this would probably be fixed eventually, it was the turning stone as I didn’t feel right about the overall direction the KDE PIM suite was moving. It always reminds me about Architect Astronauts so amazingly described in Joel’s blog post.
So the decision was made to finally dump KMail. And after considering the alternatives I decided to try Thunderbird. The pros are obvious: the product is quite stable, there is a large community built around it, and it doesn’t require MySQL running in the background. And it is easily extendable the same way Firefox is – with the community-written plugins. The cons were also obvious: Thunderbird uses the outdated MBOX format to store mail instead of more modern (and, in my opinion, simply better) Maildir supported by KMail. It has an unfamiliar user interface, and lacks some KMail features I was used to. Most of those issues, however, have been working out. At this moment I’ve been using Thunderbird successfully for a month and feel happy about it.
With the help of this series of posts you hopefully will get a working Thunderbird installation which will preserve the old emails as well as the mailbox structure, and give you the e-mail client with the same – or even better – capabilities than KMail ever was. This article doesn’t cover contact migration since my contacts were kept in LDAP – they got migrated when I installed OpenSUSE 11.4 which had broken PIM – but this shouldn’t be too difficult. Thunderbird supports import from LDIF, VCF and CSV so just export your contacts in KMail and import it into Thunderbird – or, even better, LDAP.
Continue reading »