Remove Evolution

Personally, I prefer Thunderbird for mailing than the preinstalled Evolution.
If you share the same preference, surely you tried to remove Evolution from your system, just to run into a dead-end, because several packages depend on it, especially one meta package.
Evolution seems to be embedded into Ubuntu like IExplorer in Windows.

But yesterday I found some Spanish article explaining how to remove it from the system, leaving about 56 MB of free space on your system.
I just added two more packages to the de-installation instruction that where missing for my Ubuntu 9.10 system.

Deinstall instructions

sudo aptitude purge evolution-indicator evolution evolution-documentation-en evolution-common evolution-data-server evolution-webcal evolution-plugins evolution-couchdb evolution-exchange mail-notification-evolution

Extract email attachments from winmail.dat files

tnef is a program for unpacking MIME attachments of type "application/ms-tnef". This is typically a Microsoft only attachment, named winmail.dat.
This program allows one to unpack the attachments which were encapsulated into the TNEF attachment, thus alleviating the need to use Microsoft Outlook to view the attachment.

Install instructions

sudo aptitude install tnef

or click here.

Usage

Save the winmail.dat file from the email and execute

tnef --list winmail.dat  # list containing files
tnef winmail.dat         # unpack containing attachments

Notifications integrated with Thunderbird 3

With Thunderbird 2.0.x it was possible to integrate with Ubuntus notification system.

The Libnotify plugin intents to improve the integration with libnotify. With this plugin, Firefox and Thunderbird will display notification message like "new mail received", "download complete" using the libnotify library. For now, only Thunderbird displays notifications, but it stopped working with release 3.x

The latest beta release solves the problems and works with TB 3 like a charm.

Install instructions

Download the extension from here and install it from inside Thunderbird.
You can also have a look at the list of beta releases, in case a newer one is available after having written this post.

Thunderbird 3.0 and Lightning

Similar to my previous post about Firefox 3.5, you can also go and use Thunderbird 3.0 already.

Even if its codename is Shredder and some of your extensions will stop working, I highly recommend this beta version,

• especially if you access IMAP mail accounts, because the access is so much faster now.
• the automated account creator which guesses the servers ports and settings is also a great invention I haven't seen in any mail client so far.
  

But not everything is gold, as mentioned before, most of your extensions will not work yet (see below how to get Lightning work, the most important one). I also don't like so much the cosmetic change in the layout which puts information like tags, and command buttons above the message content. This eats up to much space, especially for small screens like laptops.

Install instructions

sudo -v

echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main" > /tmp/MozillaDaily.list
sudo mv /tmp/MozillaDaily.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 247510BE
sudo apt-get update
sudo aptitude install thunderbird-3.0 thunderbird-3.0-gnome-support

# Create a new entry in gnomes alternatives system and set Thunderbird 3.0 to be the preferred choice.
sudo update-alternatives --verbose --install /usr/bin/thunderbird thunderbird /usr/bin/$(readlink /usr/bin/thunderbird) 60
sudo update-alternatives --verbose --install /usr/bin//usr/bin/thunderbird thunderbird /usr/bin/thunderbird-3.0 70
sudo update-alternatives --verbose --auto thunderbird
# See current configuration, should result in:
## thunderbird - status is auto.
##  link currently points to /usr/bin/thunderbird-3.0
## /usr/bin/../lib/thunderbird/thunderbird - priority 60
## /usr/bin/thunderbird-3.0 - priority 70
## Current `best' version is /usr/bin/thunderbird-3.0.
sudo update-alternatives --verbose --display thunderbird
# If you get into any trouble and want to use your previous Thunderbird again, just change the selection with
## sudo update-alternatives --config thunderbird

Get Lightning working again

The latest oficial release of Lightning will not work with the Thunderbird 3.0 pre release, so you'll have to install the latest nightly build.

wget http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/nightly/latest-comm-1.9.1/linux-xpi/lightning.xpi
# If you want to connect to Google Calendar:
wget http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/nightly/latest-comm-1.9.1/linux-xpi/gdata-provider.xpi

As Thunderbird 3.0 pre gets updated, from time to time, Lightning could stop working again.
Just download again the latest nightly build and install it again.
To make things easier, someone created an extensions for updating to nightly builds.

Problems with Lightning on Ubuntu Jaunty

After putting on my fresh Ubuntu Jaunty installation, my favourite Email client Thunderbird, the Lightning extension (version 0.9), didn't worked at all.
I tried everything, reinstalling Thunderbird several times, disabling all other extensions, nothing.
Lightning painted some icons, but that was everything.
Some incompatibility. I installed SunBird 0.9, and it works fine. Earlier Lightning versions seemed to work also, so what is the matter?

Solution

Finally, I found the solution in some forum, you need to have libstdc++ version 5 on your system (Jaunty comes with version 6 by default). And it has to be there, when Lightning extension 0.9 is installed, so if you already have it in your Thunderbird setup, uninstall it first, then put libstc++5 on your system, and reinstall the Lightning extension.

sudo aptitude install libstdc++5
# or if you don't want to install more stuff:
ln -s /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5

Thunderbird Window Border Fix

I got crazy these days, because after having upgraded Ubuntu to Hardy Heron, Thunderbird started to act strangely after some uses.
Suddenly, it started to miss its borders of the main window, being maximized always and didn't react on any changes like shrink, move, resize, maximize.
It covers the toolbar completely and when you open for example its addons window it doesn't show up, because it is hidden beneath the main window.

BTW, I use a two monitor system, and the main window always shows up on the left screen.
Haven't tried it with a single monitor.

Finally, I found a fix of this problem:

• Close Thunderbird


• Edit by hand the file ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/xyz1234.default/localstore.rdf in your default profile directory.


• Search the entry
  

  
    <RDF:Description RDF:about="chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xul#messengerWindow"
                     width="800"
                     height="600"
                     sizemode="normal"
                     screenX="5"
                     screenY="5" />
  



• Change the width, height and screenXY entries to the ones you see here


• Restart Thunderbird and it should have its borders again.

More languages in Evolution

Evolution provides integrated mail, addressbook and calendaring functionality to users of the GNOME desktop.

Advantages

For me, there's only one reason I would use Evolution instead of Thunderbird:

• Evolution can use Outlook Exchange accounts (like the one I have to use in the office).

Disadvantages

• It is only for Linux systems.
• Insufficient edition possibilities when composing messages (no lists, no embedded images, ...)
  
• Simple filters didn't worked for me.
• Evolution can't be deinstalled from Ubuntu, because it is somehow linked to several applications, so uninstalling Evolution forces you to uninstall applications like Nautilus.
  This reminds me on IExplorer on Windows.

Tips & Tricks

More languages

By default, Evolution comes only with your systems language.
If you need more languages for spell checking, you have to install the corresponding aspell packages, for example:

sudo apt-get install aspell-de

Restart Evolution, and select the new languages for spell checking.

Thunderbird

Mozillas Thunderbird

Useful extensions:
There are lots of extensions available, but only some should be installed, 'cause a huge amount of extensions installed, will slow down the overall performance.
This is the list of extensions, I really recommend to have:

• Addressbooks Synchronizer
  Synchronizes selected addressbooks
  
  • with local files (resp. files on network shares)
  • with files via FTP or WebDAV (http or https)
  • with files stored in an IMAP folder
• Lightning
  An integrated calendar for Thunderbird.
  
• MoreColsForAddressBook
  Adds to the address book more features, like the possibility to edit some properties in multiple contacts with just one action, adds an extra tab with the birthday date, the spouse name etc.
  It can be used in conjunction with ThunderBirthDay (see below).
  
• MR Tech Local Install
  The primary goal of this extension is to provide the tools needed to install and manage extensions and themes locally.
  (Note: This extension can be used also in Firefox.)
• NotTo
  Enables you to avoid sending mail to specific recipients when you use mailing list containing a lot of recipients and you wish to avoid sending the mail to specific individuals.
• Quote Colors
  Configure text and background colours for different quote levels in mail/news messages.
• Signature Switch
  Switch the signature on/off or choose a new one from your predefined set.
  Additional features include the support of fortune-cookie-files and automatic switching based on recipients.
  
• ThunderBirthDay
  Display birthdays from the Thunderbird address books as events in Lightning.
  Needs the MoreColsForAddressBook extension as well.
  
• WebMail
  This extension integrates web site based email accounts (like Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, ...), which allows Thunderbird to download and to send emails using the web site.

Note: On Ubuntu you shouldn't install any extension directly from your applications menu, but from the .xpi, otherwise Thunderbird can't update them automatically anymore.

Related software:
You might like to use Mail Notification for receiving advises about new mail arrivals in your mail accounts.

Mail Notification

Mail Notification monitors your mailboxes for new mail.

When new mail arrives, Mail Notification alerts you by displaying an icon in the system tray. Moreover, a mail summary can be displayed in the icon tooltip, and notifications containing useful action buttons can be popped up.

Mail Notification can monitor multiple mailboxes concurrently, and supports mbox, MH, Maildir, POP3, IMAP, Gmail, Evolution, Mozilla products (Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Thunderbird, …) and Sylpheed mailboxes.

Install instructions for Ubuntu

sudo -i
apt-get install mail-notification
apt-get install mail-notification-evolution  # if you want to use it checking your evolution accounts