Email extinction

So, this is certanly an overly dramatic statement, but: are desktop email clients still a thing, and for how much longer? And do any of them... not suck? Especially on Linux?

Let me back up: so in my ongoing effort to de-google my life as much as possible (which is something I'll probably write about in an annoying amount of detail), one of the first thing I wanted to do is get away from using Gmail, at least for my important stuff.

Even if you're not worried about Google tracking your every fart, there's good reason to do this. Say Gmail got shut down for whatever reason without warning, which I grant is unlikley, but not impossible, or if you got completely shut out of your account somehow. You would have exactly 0 recourse. The email address that you used for just about everything would basically be gone and there would be nothing you could do about it.

Having an address on your own domain at least gives you some flexibility in such a scenario. As long as you control the DNS records you can point it to whichever service you want, and if your email provider goes out of business all of a sudden, you can just go elsewhere and point your domain to them and you're back in business in a day or so.

And then there's all the tracking malarkey you get with Google.

So long story short, I now have my own domain and an email provider I trust (ProtonMail) and I'm in business? Right? Well, mostly.

I could use Proton's webmail interface in my browser, but for one it's nowhere near as nice as Gmail and even if it was, I realy want to use email as email. Not every single thing has to be browser based.

I am visual person (especially for someone who is ostensibly a developer) and like using nice interfaces. So after many years of pretty much using nothing but Gmail I was looking forward to seeing what cool new things were available now in the email client world. I mean, there must be so many advanced clients, with different features and workflows, and themes you could change and they'd probably be open source and free and...

Nope. Nothing of the kind.

Linux

On Linux, the most mature and stable client is still Thunderbird. Which looks and works almost the same as it did 10 or 15 years ago. Which is not a surprise since the development of it, as far as I can tell has slowed to a crawl, especially since it's not under the Mozilla org umbrella any more, and is instead independent, underfunded and unappreciated. It works really well in the sense that it doesn't have crashes or bugs or anything, but the interface feels like hasn't changed since the Clinton administration. My number one peeve is the lack of a conversation view, something Gmail inroduced to the masses in 2004, I think? There is a plugin that's supposed to do that, but it works for shit.

There are other options. Springmail looks nice, but doesn't work with ProtonMail, after years of their developers tinkering with it to no avail.

Geary looks ok, but has very limited features and I've found it to be a bit buggy for some very basic tasks.

Everything else I've looked at seems completely antiquated like Claws of Sylpheed.

Thunderbird is still the fucking gold standard, even though the it feels a bit like a relic. A reliable and stable relic, but a relic nonetheless.

Windows

On Windows the situation is a little better. First and foremost because there's Outlook, which all qualms about Microsoft aside is simply a very good email client, period. It may be overkill for many people, but it does what it does well, and especially in a business environment nothing can touch it.

A decent alternative I tried a couple of years ago, and mostly liked was the eM mail client. There's probably a few other good alternatives, but this time around I was looking for something on Linux.

Email as such

I didn't expect this. I thought with all the tech entusiasts on Linux there would be a greater need for desktop clients, and therefore more options. But as best as I can tell people have just gotten used to using the web interfaces of Gmail and others, or smartphone app equivalents.

But even email as such is much less important as a communication tool than it used to be. I think these days we see email as a thing we use at work (because we have to), or for paper-trail and admin sort of stuff like receipts, confirmations, password resets and the like.

For personal communication messaging apps have basically taken over completely. When have you last sat down and wrote a proper email to a friend? And it's funny because in the early days of the internet everyone was lamenting how email is soulless compared to actual letters, and how this is the slow decay of personal communication and technology was going to eat our soul. And OMG what will the postal service do? Well now it's email that feels quaint in the age of social networks and video calling apps.

This is just what technology does. New stuff comes that eiter completely or partially displaces the existing tech and we move on. Messanger apps are great for byte-sized conversations, arranging a beer or whatever. But we see it as completely disposable and lacking the space to actually get into the meat of an idea that you want to share. We rush, we squeeze, we skip everything that's not essential and then we forget about it. Email gives us the time and the space to work out an idea properly before we share it.

Email isn't going away any time soon, despite all my drama. But I don't think it'll ever be much more than what it is now (passive aggressive screeds to colleagues and amazon receipts) for the simple fact that it's not the new cool thing any more.

And that's fine too I guess, I just wish we had better desktop clients!