Migrating from Eudora on Windows to Linux

Tue May 18 20:38:25 UTC 2004

Hi Chris,

At 09:06 18/05/2004 -0400, Chris Gow wrote:
>Hi:
>
>CLIFFORD ILKAY wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>One of the applications that has kept me tied to Windows is Eudora. I am 
>>aware of KMail and Evolution, the two must likely suspects to replace 
>>Eudora but have a few challenges in the migration.
>
>There is also Mozilla's thunderbird. Its not all that bad. Not as feature 
>rich as Evo. But probably close to KMail in feature functionality (This is 
>what I've noticed in my minimal exposure to KMail).

KMail is integrated with Kontact in KDE 3.2 so its functionality is better 
than it used to be.

>>1. I have almost 6GB of mail spread out over about 800 mailboxes. Many of 
>>those mailboxes are nested, e.g. Linux>>TLUG>>TLUG - in. I would like to 
>>preserve the directory hierarchy and can handle that part easily enough 
>>by scripting the directory creation. I want to change how things are laid 
>>out anyway so this is not wasted effort. The bigger challenge is how to 
>>convert the .mbx files to some other MUA while still preserving the 
>>message attributes.
>
>I believe that both Evo. and KMail support importing Eudora's MBX file 
>format. In KMail (1.5.1) Look under Tools > Import. My Evo environment is 
>currently unavailable so I can't tell you where the import option is in 
>there.  I think you can also get both clients to read the MBX format directly.

Yes, one at a time. It would take a while to do 800 mailboxes using the 
silly wizard interface. Besides, it does not preserve the message status.

>>2. I receive a lot of HTML mail, especially from Microsoft's products, 
>>and in the tests that I have done, both KMail and Evolution did not 
>>display the messages properly. I just saw the raw HTML which is useless.
>Hmm...I've never seen Raw HTML in either KMail nor Evo. Looking through 
>the options in KMail, the closest I've come to for enabling HTML is under 
>the Profiles tab in Settings > COnfigure KMail > Appearance. Then again, 
>my default settings enabled me to view HTML anyway. Evolution 1.4 should 
>have something similar (I can't remember where).

Mine is set to not display HTML automatically so all HTML mail shows 
source. There is a notice that reads: "Note: This is an HTML message. For 
security reasons, only the raw HTML code is shown. If you trust the sender 
of this message then you can activate formatted HTML display for this 
message by clicking here." with the word "here" being a hyperlink at the 
top of each HTML message. I click on it only if I trust the sender. 
However, as often as not, even after clicking on the hyperlink, all I will 
see is HTML garbage and invariably, it will be a message from someone using 
a Microsoft product.

>>3. I thought that migrating to IMAP might be useful because I dislike 
>>being tied to one computer for mail. IMAP works well enough for incoming 
>>mail but what about outgoing mail? I want my Outbox on the IMAP server 
>>too but I have not seen any obvious way of migrating my existing Eudora 
>>Outbox to IMAP without losing a lot valuable metadata.
>
>In KMail: Settings > Configure KMail > Identities (select the identity you 
>want to modify) > Advanced > Sent-Mail folder.

Right, except it does not help with existing messages that are in my 
Outbox. Any attempt to move them somewhere else has resulted in the message 
headers being modified.

>Similar for Evolution. I've got all of my mailers set up this way: 
>Evolution, KMail, Thunderbird, Eudora. And haven't had a problem yet. I've 
>also got my drafts folder setup this way too.
>
>To keep your existing outbox meta-data, you might want be able to get away 
>with using that as an 'archive' of old-sent-mail and configuring a new 
>sent-mail folder.

I tried that - my headers were munged and metadata was lost.

>>I hate Eudora 6 so I am very motivated to migrate away from Eudora. The 
>>latest version of Eudora that I like is 5.2 so if I have to,
>Heh. Yeah I can relate. After using Thunderbird and Evolution, I can't 
>stand using Eudora anymore either. I miss the small things that both 
>clients (TB and Evo) offer:
>
>- The quick search bar
>- The auto-address completion feature that actually *gasp* checks 
>directory servers for you
>- VFolders in Evolution

VFolders seemed like a great idea but I found the implementation to be 
lacking. The whole point of VFolders I believe is to relieve one of the 
need to create different physical mailboxes and instead just rely on 
VFolders to display mail in different ways. I think this can be very useful 
because it would give me different "views" of my mail. However, in order 
for this to be effective, all the mail really should be in one mailbox with 
virtual folders for the various classifications. That idea falls apart very 
quickly if one tries to look at a mailbox with even 10,000 messages in it, 
which is not a very large mailbox at all.

>Just an FYI, I really, really like Evolution. However, using it to access 
>an IMAP server is slow. I'm not 100% sure why this is, especially as TB's 
>IMAP access time is fast. From some of the mails on the Evolution user 
>list it might be because Evolution always checks all of the IMAP 
>directories and TB only checks the INBOX.

IMAP can get slow if you have large mailboxes. IMAP implementations vary 
widely as well, both on the client and on the server side so a given client 
might work well with one server but not another. One of the things I like 
about Eudora is that even with large mailboxes, the performance is quite 
adequate.

Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis Corporation
3266 Yonge Street, Suite 1419
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M4N 3P6

Tel: 416-410-3326 

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