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. Only one inaccuracy: Claws Mail is very fast…

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 as package for all architectures excepted.

USE flags
Those local USE flags often install plugins.

Global default USE flags may change according to system profile, see Profile (Portage).

Plugins
Some plugins are compiled when their USE flag are set, like  or. Some others must be emerged, like to read RSS feeds,  to archive mails directories, or  to display HTML emails. It is advised to set they USE flags, respectively,   and   for these examples.

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:

Then emerge desired plugins, example for archive, HTML emails 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 Artchive…,
 * the user interface can be modified: lists headers in global or message views, icons, fonts,
 * address book can import and export in several formats.

External resources

 * Claws Mail Features
 * FAQ
 * Plugins