[Cialug] Open Source Webmail

[Zachary Kotlarek]

On Mar 26, 2009, at 10:12 AM, Nathan C. Smith wrote:

> Roundcube is a little better (some might say) than squirrelmail and  
> is reasonably easy to get running.


RC is much prettier than SM. But it's sometimes a bit broken. For a  
long while it did not correctly construct MIME messages, so there were  
problems sending messages with attachments (it may still not -- I  
haven't checked in the last ~3 months). And while it's moderately easy  
to hack in new bits there is still no extensions framework, so if it  
doesn't do exactly what you want you're on your own. For example, I  
had to hack in a "copy message" feature. There is also no support for  
S/MIME. And my clients tell me that the message search feature, while  
functional, leaves much to be desired.

I think eventually RC will be a great mail client. And for personal  
use if you know what's going on and are willing to occasionally fight  
with it/fetch new versions/etc. it's not a terrible choice. But I  
wouldn't deploy it for someone else to use.


> I found Horde to be a challenge to run.



It looks complicated because Horde has about 25,000 options, but it's  
really not that hard to get going. But only like 1/4 of the Horde  
options even apply to IMP, and most of them have reasonable defaults.

IMP all by itself is a pretty decent mail client. It's not quite as  
pretty as RC, but it's way better than SM. There's also DIMP which is  
all ajaxy and pretty like RC, though I haven't tested it as  
extensively. If you install them both there's (virtually) no extra  
config and you can pick which one you want at login time. MIMP is also  
handy if you're accessing from a limited device, and likewise requires  
little extra config and can be selected at runtime.

I would guess that any of the packaged versions of Horde/IMP are less  
than a dozen config items/commands away "working". If you're not a  
package-manager kind of guy I have a source-based install at:
	http://zinux.cynicbytrade.com/svn/local/horde/
that will install Horde, IMP, DIMP, MIMP, and Turba and get you to the  
point that configuration is just filling in your hostnames and setting  
up the DB and HTTP server. Even if you are a package-manager kind of  
guy you could skip the install step in my makefile and generate a  
mostly-working set of config files for reference.


	Zach

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