As a Thunderbird user and Rust fan, I approve this integration. However I want to mention that Thunderbird is good as it is and actually don't think new features are needed. Only compatibility with other software or protocols could be better (which the Rust integration aims to improve). And to be honest, a way to disable some of the feature bloat would be preferable too, as I don't use lot of the additional stuff (but I make use of the RSS Feed reader).
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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JMAP support would make a huge difference to expand the only open/free (as in speech) competition Exchange has.
Agreed. Self hosting email with JMAP support has become easier with Stalwart. More email clients with JMAP support would be nice.
What's JMAP?
I was reading that page and was just getting more and more confused and then eventually I realised it's an alternative to IMAP. Pretty cool.
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I'm getting fed up about all those articles "rust x something: the future?", "I rewrote in rust it's now memory safe". I get the rust safeties and all, but that doesn't automatically make everything great, right ? You can still write shit code in any language that can RM -rf all your disk, or let security gaps here and there without intending to.
It does make stuff great. Even Microsoft is trying out Rust in their shit operating system because apparently 30% of all CVEs are related to, you guessed it, memory issues. And Rust will most likely solve them all. Even the Linux kernel has Rust code in it now. If Rust was not of importance, why would the Linux kernel get rusty? Especially Linus Torvalds is very strict about these things. Sure, bad code rewritten in Rust does not make it any better than it originally was. Plus you get C-like speed with good syntax and memory safety, what more could you ask for?
Yes security issues will remain a problem no matter what language was used. You are talking about the possibility of a logic flaw being there, whereas rust 'just' prevents memory corruption.
Which is the more common security issue? Memory corruption by a mile. That's why many are excited by the rust rewrite
So you're right it isn't literally everything, but I'm not sure what would be. What would make you not fed up about it?
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I honestly don't understand the love for Thunderbird... Tried it for a few months, loved it entirely until I discovered it was fucking losing days worth of emails
Lost, as in, nowhere to be found, no search or manual browse would find them, no way of restoring them. Had to go into OWA to see the missing emails
Then apparently I found out it's a known bug
I'm sorry but I would trade every bell and whistle for an email client that does not fucking lose your email
Maybe the issue was that you were using it to access some kind of Microsoft service and their improper IMAP implementation.
It was... I was accessing my work email which unfortunately runs on Exchange... having said that, sorry, either support whatever crap MS puts or out don't... "losing" emails cannot be part of a ready-for-public email client
Now, from what I read at the time, it was not "Owl for exchange"'s bug, it was Thunderbird. It apparently happens with other email sources as well, however you can "repair" your mailbox to get them back when you notice
It apparently happens with other email sources as well
I deal with a lot of mailboxes and a ton of people using Thunderbird with ridiculous amounts of emails like 50-100GB accounts and even on the few times I saw Thunderbird failing it wasn't loosing anything.
I don't trust Owl very much, the good news is that we will soon get an official and decent support for Exchange. :)
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Thunderbird is my kind of bird
The Evolution email client is pretty great, and FairEmail for Android.
K-9 mail is better
K-9 mail is eventually going to become Thunderbird for Android, just for anyone who didn't know.
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Different people, different taste.
I love FairEmail because of its "millions" of settings and the privacy features, for an example if you press a link, you'll get a popup with options (for an example, what app you want to open the link with). And if the link contains trackers, FairEmail will remove these by default and saying "tracking parameters removed" with yellow text in bold.
K-9 Mail feels incomplete in comparison. Have you tried FairEmail?
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In the meantime, Evolution has had EWS support for years... no Rust involved.
Evolution is a good client that I used for a long time. But I switched to Thunderbird after their recent UI overhaul and I have to say it feels way more thought out and robust than evolution.
Thunderbird had it as a plugin to support EWS.
Who cares ? What matters is the features and how fast the app is. Not what language was used to achieve that.
Rust is wildly fast. Learning that it is being used for a program is good to know if you care about speed. If you read the article, it even addresses your exact critiques:
Moreover, Rust has demonstrated superior performance compared to JavaScript add-ons, resulting in a quicker and more responsive Thunderbird. Furthermore, the integration of Rust into Thunderbird will be facilitated by the fact that it is already utilized in Firefox, enabling Thunderbird to leverage existing infrastructure for testing and continuous integration.
So not only with thunderbird be faster because Rust is faster than JavaScript, but it eliminates 3rd party addons by being native which also further increases speed. Lastly, development time for new features and improvements is faster because they can now use using the mature tooling that Mozilla has for Rust.
So yeah, good to know its using Rust now.
Not the person you wrote to, but TB has native code in C++, so I don't really think the speed will change. The official website also doesn't advertise speed improvements. It argued that Rust is (almost) as fast as the current native C++ part in TB, and that's about it.
I wrote a simple commandline program in Rust to read mailbox file from Thunderbird and to output count of unread mails. The speed is insanity! Measuring the execution time with command time CMD outputs execution time of total 0m0,001s! While also providing all the features and checks from Rust (plus Clippy with pedantic options enabled), so I am confident it is not a buggy mess. I would need at least 10 years of professional experience in C to have this feeling of confidence.
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Why does every mention of Rust have to spawn these comments?
The story right after this one for me is how KeepassXC is porting to Qt6. I bet nobody has knee-jerk responded to that story bitching about the fact that they mentioned Qt. It is just the anti-Rust zealots that do this.
This article talks about the problems they were trying to solve, the tools they chose, and how those tools solve those problems. What is wrong with that?
Are you offering up informed commentary countering why you would have made different choices and why?
You do not need to attack every mention of a technology just because it threatens your historical preferences.
To be fair, Rust Evangelists are fucking annoying and it's fun to hate them.
How do I know? Would you like to talk about lord and savior, Ferris?
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