Looking for input from Kontact users

[Alvin]

On Thursday 08 December 2011 15:58:37 ITSEF Admin wrote:
> [...]
> - What version of Kontact are you using (e35, "the one that came with the
> distribution", ...)?

Kontact 4.7.4 (The one that comes with Kubuntu 11.10 + PPA)

> - On which platform and with how many users?

Only myself. For testing. Other users in the company are using our older mail 
server with Kontact, Thunderbird or Outlook. Only for mail. Kontact users have 
the version that came with Kubuntu 10.04, but are requesting a change to 
Thunderbird due to stability issues.

> - How are your home directories organised (NFS mounted, local, .....)?

Mine is local. Other users use NFSv4.

> - Do you use DIMAP only or the split IMAP/DIMAP set-up?

Both.

> - What are your experiences with Kontact with regard to
>   * stability (crashes...)
>   * reliability (lost mail, lost appointments, ....)
>   * overall "good behaviour"

- When sending mail, plasma often crashes.
- Some mails can't be marked as read.
- Loading a message can take several minutes. I just clicked a plain text 
message that is already downloaded. The preview pane says "Retrieving Folder 
Contents" Please wait... In a few minutes, I'll be able to read the mail.
- Checking an DIMAP folder for the first time after startup of Kontact often 
takes a long time.
- Nepomuk/virtuoso eats my memory. It's better now, but the first time I 
received mail from the server the machine needed 2 days and nights to calm 
down.
- I no longer use the "Find Messages". The load on the system is just too 
high.
- The Inbox of the Kolab account can't be read. It's empty, but not to other 
mail clients. Thunderbird can see the contents of that folder just fine.
- Only mail works for the Kolab account. No calendar and address book. Akonadi 
can't connect to the Kolab server because the port is non-standard. I filed 
this here:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=280193
- The Kolab resource can't be modified either:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=280194
- As an alternative, I use a Google calendar. Every time I log in, I have to 
put my credentials back in the Akonadi resource.
- Kontact doesn't recognise VCS/ICS calendar parts in email anymore.
- I don't know if filtering works again. I switched to imapfilter because 
Kontact crashed on filtering. Maybe that one is fixed now.
- Akregator has been unstable for years. 
(https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116482)
- Kjots has just become weird. I no longer use it. Loading notes used to take 
1 second. Now it just keeps on loading and I can only see the table of 
contents. No notes survived the 'upgrade'.

So, not very 'production ready'. It's a shame. KMail has every function I have 
come to expect from a mail client. I loved KMail in KDE3 and I find Akonadi a 
fantastic idea. If only it weren's so buggy. Increase the performance, take 
out the bugs and you have a gem.

We're in the process of evaluating a new mail server for the company. I use 
Kolab personally, but for the company, Kolab was ruled out due to difficulty 
of installation/upgrade and missing documentation. Also, most people are using 
a recent version of Thunderbird now.