Ubuntu® Linux® Bible: Featuring Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Third Edition

Chapter 7. Managing E-Mail and Personal Information with Evolution

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Setting up your e-mail client

• Sending and receiving mail

• Organizing your e-mail

• Filing e-mail

• Dealing with spam

• Accessing webmail

• Managing contacts

• Managing your calendar

After Web browsers, e-mail is the Internet's killer application. Like Web browsers, there are many different client applications for sending and receiving e-mail, especially in the open source community. In addition (and unfortunately unlike Web browsing, which basically uses HTML everywhere), there are many different protocols used to receive e-mail. Your choice of an e-mail client can therefore depend to some extent on whether it supports the protocols that your Internet service provider (ISP), business, or academic institution uses to send, store, and deliver e-mail.

The easiest solution to the "which protocol, which client" problem is to use a single e-mail client that speaks every modern e-mail protocol known to humanity. Ubuntu includes an e-mail client known as Evolution, which lives up to this promise. Evolution is a GNOME-based mailer that was originally developed by a company called Ximian. Oddly enough, Ximian was eventually acquired by Novell, whose SUSE Linux product is largely KDE-centric, but it's at least clear that Novell knows good software when they see it.

Evolution can receive mail from mail servers that speak all of the popular e-mail protocols including POP, IMAP, IMAP4rev1, Microsoft Exchange, Novell GroupWise, and a ...