Test Driving Linux

Using Email

Dozens of email programs are available for Linux. This chapter focuses on KMail, which is the email component of Kontact, but Chapter 12 briefly covers two other popular email programs—Evolution, another Outlook work-alike, and Thunderbird, a good replacement for Outlook Express that runs on Windows and Mac OS X in addition to Linux.

To start KMail, click the Kontact icon on your kicker panel, and then click the Mail shortcut from inside Kontact. Alternatively, you can go to K Menu→ Surf the Internet→ Read and send e-mail.

KMail vs. Kontact

When I refer to KMail, I'm talking about the email component of Kontact as well as the standalone KMail email program. The programs are identical in the way they operate and in their appearance, with the exception that standalone KMail does not have the shortcut bar along the left side.

KMail uses the typical three-pane view often found in email programs (Figure 6-4). Along the left-hand side is a listing of all your email folders, including several default folders such as inbox, outbox, sent-mail, trash, drafts, and Searches. The outbox is where messages are stored until they are sent; once you actually send them, they appear in the sent-mail folder. The drafts folder is a place to store messages you're still in the process of writing. And the Searches folder is a very powerful feature of KMail that is described in the later section "Saved Searches."

Figure 6-4. The KMail component of Kontact

The right-hand side of KMail's window ...