Managing E-mail with Evolution in Ubuntu

The default e-mail reader for Dapper Drake is called Evolution. This program is an open source clone of Microsoft Outlook. Besides viewing and composing e- mail, it also manages your calendar, task list, and contacts. Evolution also enables you to manage multiple e-mail accounts. While it natively supports many different mail server configurations, it does have a couple of quirks.


Configuring an Account
The most powerful part of Evolution is its list of supported mail protocols. It natively supports the Post Office Protocol (POP, also called POP3) and Instant Message Access Protocol (IMAP), as well as Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise. This means that you should be able to use Evolution at home and in most corporate and small office environments.

When you first run Evolution (by clicking the mail icon in the default top panel or by selecting Applications -- > Internet -- > Evolution Mail), it asks you to set up an account. You can later add or edit accounts by running Evolution and selecting Edit -- > Preferences -- > Mail Accounts. You will be asked to provide three main types of information.

• Identity-This specifies the e-mail address and the name of the person on the address.

• Receiving options-This identifies how you retrieve your e-mail. For example, if you use a POP mail server, then you will specify the server's address and your account name.

• Sending options-The way you receive mail is not necessarily the same as the way you send mail. For example, you may receive mail using POP, but send using SMTP.

Your specific configuration will depend on your mail server. Most ISPs provide some type of mail server and instructions for configuring mail readers. Although they are unlikely to specify the configuration for Evolution, they should list the server's host name, protocol (for example, POP3 or IMAP), and any required security steps such as using SSL (or TLS) for encryption.

There are other options you can configure after creating a new account (select the Edit option under Mail Accounts). For example, you can specify how often to check for new mail and whether to save a copy of every out-going e-mail message.

Besides using e-mail from your local ISP, you will probably want to manage your free e-mail accounts. Some of the most common free e-mail accounts are Google Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Microsoft MSN Hotmail. Knowing how to configure e-mail for these free mail services will help you configure mail for most other mail services.

Source of Information : Hacking Ubuntu byNeal Krawetz