Claws Mail

Claws Mail is a mail client forked from Sylpheed. In Claws Mail FAQ, it is said: Claws Mail has many extra features compared to Sylpheed and is more powerful, yet is just as fast, lightweight and stable.

It is actively developped, can be extended by many plugins, and imports natively mbox mailboxes coming from Thunderbird for example. It's mailbox format is MH, mbox format can be used with a plugin. Claws Mail can't write HTML emails (Keep it Simple…) but can read them with several plugins.

For Gentoo Linux it is provided by the package for all architectures except.

Plugins

 * Beginning with version 3.9.1, all plugins are compiled with Claws Mail when their USE flag are set, ex.  or.


 * Some plugins must be manually emerged when using a version below 3.9.0, These include to read RSS feeds,  to archive mails directories, and  to display HTML emails. It is advised to set their respective USE flags (,   and  ) if the plugins will be used.

Get the list of Claws Mail plugins by issuing:

Spam Filtering

 * Simple way: Bogofilter is a powerful bayesian filter which don't need to be configured. It quickly learns from user's spam or ham mails classification in Claws Mail. It is the prefered spam filter for a desktop computer. Set  USE flag to compile the plugin with Claws Mail.


 * Hard way: Spamassassin is a huge mail filtering system, using bayesian filter and external spam definitions ressources. It must be extensively configured and a daemon (spamd) must be running for Claws Mail to use it. It is the prefered spam filter for a mail server. Set  USE flag to compile the plugin with Claws Mail. Some information can be found in Complete Virtual Mail Server and Mailfiltering Gateway Gentoo Wiki pages.

Emerge
Make a file to activate desired USE flags. Setting,   and   for example:

Then emerge Claws Mail:

With version <= 3.9.0, emerge desired plugins, example for archive, HTML rendering and RSS feeds:

Configuration and Usage

 * Accounts, mail filtering, models, actions, labels etc. are set in Configuration menu,
 * main configuration is done in Configuration > Preferences…,
 * plugins are (de)activated in Configuration > Plugins… then parametred in Configuration > Preferences…,
 * archive plugin is run from Tools > Create Archive…,
 * the user interface can be modified: lists headers in global or message views, icons, fonts,
 * address book can import and export in several formats.

Clawsker
can be installed to edit many preferences which are not in the GUI:

Then launch it when Claws Mail is not running:

Claws Mail preferences file is.

External resources

 * Claws Mail Features
 * FAQ
 * Plugins
 * Versions News