(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

i know, "better" is subjective. But these two email clients, IMO, quicker and smaller than Tbird. Try them out!

I was not happy with Claws, Sylpheed, Tbird, but these are real nice. However, they are still flawed in ways. Still searching for a lightweight, full-feature email program.

I've been away from puppy for a while, so maybe these apps are being used in some puppies?

Both apps remove the clunky mountains of config preferences that Tbird dumps on you (at least it feels that way to me). Keepin it simple.

Geary has a lovely, modern-looking front-end, not that prehistoric look you get in those older apps (tbird, claws, sylpheed).


Geary, about 5 Mb (?) has full html support plus images.

Balsa, about 2 Mb (?) has html-read support, but no images, tho' it has right-click view-in-browser for convenience (ubuntu/fedora says it does support inline images).

Tbird, 32 Mb (?)


i'm not expert on dependencies or puppy includes, so i'm not sure how to calculate. But i believe their dependencies are lightweight too.

Geary requires WebKitGTK-3 1.10 or higher.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary
https://pawsa.fedorapeople.org/balsa/
https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/precise/balsa/

Note, in Balsa prefs, uncheck "prefer plain text over html", else you won't see formatting.

I've only used Balsa on Linux Mint, so YMMV.

I know this may sound old skool, but here I am running Tahr puppy, on this old Packard Bell 10" laptop and was looking for a fast email client. Seamonkey worked well, but wanted something a little different. I found Alpine fits the bill. Ok, it is text only (like Mutt) and takes a little effort to set up, but when this is done, it becomes a powerful piece of kit. I use GMX and Bitmessage as my email servers, without problems. Thing is, Alpine is very fast, secure and use it for both private and business.
Alpine runs from the keyboard, so no mouse needed and just about everything may be configured to make it run as you wish. Makes sense to use something like this on an old laptop running Puppy.

Geary also requires gtk+3 which most pups don't use.

I guess a QT alternative to geary would be Trojita.

FWIW, Geary is now discontinued and looks to be only available in Elementary OS as Pantheon Mail. Thanks, Rob