[Oneiric-Topic] Default e-mail client

[Chris Coulson]

Priority: errrr?

At UDS for Natty we had a session to discuss the default e-mail client
in Ubuntu. Whilst we agreed that we would continue to ship Evolution for
11.04 (with developer effort mostly focused on Unity), we did discuss
alternatives. In particular, we looked at Thunderbird as a possible
replacement for Evolution in the future, and we discussed some pro's and
con's between the 2 clients as they are today. Also, David Ascher, Bryan
Clark and Andreas Nilsson attended UDS and gave an interesting
demonstration of the work that is happening on Thunderbird (I think this
session got recorded, so there might still be a video of this somewhere
if people are interested).

I will summarize briefly the outcome of that session.

Evolution pro's:
- Good integration with the desktop already (eg, messaging menu and
appmenu)
- Integrated with existing translation infrastructure
- Calendaring functionality by default, and integrated with the desktop
- Support for syncing contacts with U1
- Contacts sync with GMail
- GNOME release process is better aligned with our 6 month cycle
- Exchange support (no idea how well this works, but it exists)

Evolution con's:
- Outdated and confusing UI
- Historically has been fairly slow and unstable (although it is better
now)
- UI is pretty bad on netbooks and other small form-factor devices
- I'm not convinced that Evolutions additional features are that
important to our target users

Thunderbird pro's:
- Responsive and more active upstream
- Familiar brand for users moving from other operating systems, which
has the same benefits as shipping Firefox
- Lots and lots of extensions, and a very rich extension framework
- Initial account setup is so much more intuitive
- I like the tabbed interface ;)

Thunderbird con's:
- Translations not integrated with Launchpad (we have the same issue
with Firefox though)
- Integration with the desktop lacking (no messaging menu or appmenu)
- No exchange support
- Calendaring support is only available via an addon (Lightning), and is
not integrated with the panel clock
- No GMail or U1 contact sync (although GMail contact support is
available via an addon)

That is a brief summary of where we were at the last UDS. Since then,
the following work has happened:

- I have written an extension to add appmenu support to Thunderbird (and
Firefox), which will be merged upstream at some point.
- Mike Conley has been working on integrating Thunderbird with the
messaging menu and the launcher in Unity. There's pretty good progress
on this already, with extensions already available to test.
- Mike has also started working on U1 contact sync.

However, there have also been changes to the release schedule for
Firefox. It's currently unclear how these affect Thunderbird.

So, as of today, these are the things that I think we would miss if we
switched the default client to Thunderbird:

- GMail contact support - I think this one is fairly important, and I'll
offer to help get this fixed if I can.
- Calendaring support - Whilst I agree that the existing calendar
integration in Evolution is nice, I'm not convinced that it's a
deal-breaker for our target audience. I use the calendaring in Evolution
for work, but I don't miss it at all on my home desktop (where I use
Thunderbird).
- Exchange support - again, whilst Exchange support may be important in
a corporate environment, I don't think this is particularly important to
most users we are targetting. This seemed to be the consensus amongst
the people who attended the session at the last UDS too.
- Translation support in Launchpad - I'm already planning to work on
this anyway (see [1]).

So, we should discuss the default mail client again at UDS in Budapest.
Also, note that this is the last cycle before the next LTS, which means
that if we are going to change our default e-mail client, we need to do
it this cycle (else we probably won't have another opportunity until
12.10).

Hopefully I didn't miss anything off there.

Regards
Chris

[1] -
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-desktop/2011-April/002856.html
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