Evolution is a mature, well featured and tightly integrated E-Mail client in Gnome. It’s no suprise that it’s kept as default in Ubuntu, too.
Sadly Evolution can come across as a bit complex for first time users or those who simply want to read their webmail in a desktop app. After all, the majority of Ubuntu users are home users and don’t need/understand/want/have corporate e-mail accounts and the what not. They just want to enter their Gmail account info and get their mail.
If you want to sync your Google Calendar, contacts and notes as well then it’s an even more elaborate process for poor ol’ Grandma and Grandpa.
A month or so back i blogged about Spicebird – a Mozilla Thunderbird based E-Mail client that is, quite literally, all manner of awesome for GMail users. You enter your Gmail Username and Password, check what you want to sync and that’s it. It takes the same amount of time as to type your username in.
Evolution – not so easy.
Shady3D submitted a ‘brainstorm’ over on Ubuntu Brainstorm proposing that this be addressed.
Rationale
“ [sic] setting-up Gmail in Evolution every time is a hell for non geeks. calendar, address-book, and notes are a completely different thing.”
