Re: Mail Reader

[didier gaumet <didier.gaumet@gmail.com>]

Le mercredi 07 juillet 2021 à 23:41 -0400, Polyna-Maude Racicot-
Summerside a écrit :
> Hi guys (and possibly girls),
> 
> I am currently using Thunderbird as a mail reader.
> It did a good job until now.
> I am also using the PGP plugin.


Hello,


Enigmail, the Thunderbird PGP plugin, is deprecated. So what you are
using is the new PGP stuff integrated in Thunderbird. Why do I mention
it? Because the plugin used the standard gnupg directories, the new
integrated stuff does not and if you migrate to a new email client and
have created a pgp key with Thunderbird 78, you will need to export it
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/openpgp-thunderbird-howto-and-faq

> But I am feeling the limits, it also gets somewhat pretty slow (even
> with a powerful enough computer) if I need for example delete 100
> messages on my mailing list inbox.
[...]
>  What would any of you suggest as a mail reading software ?
> I could use claws-mail
> I could use other mail client
[...]

By default Thunderbird manages an mbox file for each folder you
creates, which contains all the messages of the folder. So potentially
these mbox files can be big and their processing can be slow. 

There are others forms of messages storage which create a file per
message: Maildir, MH, etc..

Thunderbird can be set up to use a quasi-Maildir storage:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/Maildir
it does not seem yet to be 100% production ready (but it this
documentation really up-to-date?), but it might be of interest to you

Another solution would be to switch to an email client that does not
store your emails in mbox format:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_email_clients#Database,_folders_and_customization

In Debian there are GUI MUAs that store emails in MH format (Claws,
Sylpheed), Evolution by default stores in Maildir format and I think
KMail can be set up to use Maildir also.