Columba 1.0 "Holy Moly" Released

Frederik Dietz writes to tell us that after three years of hard developement Columba 1.0, codename "Holy Moly!" is ready for general consumption. Columba is an email client written in Java that boasts a 'user-friendly graphical interface with wizards and internationalization support.' Slashdot covered an interview with the Columba team earlier this year.

the question I have

[Anonymous Coward]

The question I have though, is what makes this better than the other dozen free email clients?

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Mod this up, and your penis size will increase by 10-20 percent in volume.

Looks like Thunderbird

[MSch]

I have to say, I expected something like Lotus Hannover [nyud.net], but to me it looks like a copy of Thunderbird implemented in Java with icons from Evolution.

Directlink to screenshots: 1 [nyud.net], 2 [nyud.net], 3 [nyud.net].

I don't get one thing

[Ilgaz]

Why people act like Java is dead on Slashdot? More Karma?

They coded a full featured IMAP4/POP3 client which becomes standard in India schools and works on everywhere.

Interface? Don't get me started about Yahoo and Gmail. For example, Yahoo must be the simplest pop3 server on the planet without any APOP or TLS options. I don't even hope for IMAP.

I already switched to Spamcop with 15 mb or so storage, at least they serve IMAP with decent spam tools.

I refuse to comment about gmail on slashdot.

Why It's Good

[RAMMS+EIN]

For all you people asking "Why would I want this?" or "Why the hack did they write it in Java?":

Writing it in Java does have some advantages. One is that you can use the same code on a few popular platforms. Think about what that means to maintainability.

Another one I pointed out in another comment [slashdot.org]:

Most of the other clients are written in unsafe languages. You wouldn't want people to be able to run arbitrary code on your system by sending you an email. Java does not suffer from many of the security problems C suffers from. (And yes, I am aware that you can write safe programs in C, but if you read security lists, you would know what happens to that in practice).

Yay, I said something good about Java for once.

Re:Why would I prefer this...

[grotgrot]

It's still better than Outlook Express, that's for sure. :-)

It is funny you mention that. I have been a hard core IMAP user since the mid 90s. mutt has been the best text mode client for IMAP I have found. On the GUI side Outlook Express is!

Every year or so I try all the other clients out there and keep coming back to OE. OE works perfectly for offline mode. It also doesn't suffer the belief that it is the only mail client you use. Most other mail clients treat IMAP as a source just like POP3 and do the best they can to copy mail into local folders after which it is treated just like it came from POP3. They don't fundamentally get that the mail is stored on the server and that the contents could be changed by any number of clients from any number of locations at any time. (The IMAP protocol has good support for dealing with that - the poorer clients aren't paying attention since they are just in gloried POP3 mode).

And perhaps the funniest thing is the clients with the fancy features (Outlook, Evolution, Mac Mail etc). The settings are stored on the local machine. If you lose the local machine, you lose the settings. If you use the same program on another machine, then it knows nothing about the other instance. If you want the same settings, you have to manually reenter them. And of course the client will reapply the rules/learning/whatever each time you it on the disparate machines! This all makes the features mostly useless. (A good solution would be for the programs to store the settings in an IMAP folder or to use the ACAP Protocol (rfc 2244) but none do.)

So ultimately the simplicity of Outlook Express and it treating IMAP server side storage sensibly keeps me coming back to it. I really wish someone would do a better IMAP client. It is about time for my annual check ...

Native Code Problems

[Brian Blessed]

I used the Java Webstart link, but got the following error: ...
Caused by: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /home/[...]/libjdic.so: libgnome-2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Actually, I do have a libgnome-2.so.0, but it is a 64-bit version (for x86_64) whereas the JVM that I used is 32-bit.
If I instead launch using a 64-bit JVM, then the native libraries that come with Columba can't be loaded.

- Brian.

Re: Azureus

[Chuckaluphagus]

I'm not sure how much RAM Azureus eats up on my system (never bothered to check), but I've run it for three days straight to get some larger files and never had it cause the problems you describe. And I only have a half-gigabyte of memory.