Thunderbird is a heavy thing to keep in the background, especially if you're under KDE with Clementine, Pidgin and Skype in the background and browsing the web with Firefox. I like Thunderbird as a mail client, but my laptop (Core 2 Duo @ 2.1Hz, 2 Gb RAM, Slackware64 14.1 MLED) exhausts most of its resources just with the background apps. I replaced Clementine with Qmmp, now to get rid of constantly running Thunderbird.

What mail checker would be good for using in trimmed down KDE? I looked into possible options. kde-plasma-mail-checker requires Akonadi, which is disabled. PyQT Mail Checker also requires Akonadi (I'm not sure about that, though, but I couldn't get it working). cGmail requires Python bindings for GNOME, which require GNOME libraries. Mail Notification also requires GNOME libraries. gnubiff segfaults after compilation, which was a bit tricky, but I don't think it would allow me to configure IMAP folders anyway (don't want notifications about spam). Xfce4 Mailwatch Plugin seems to be perfect, but it's Xfce-only.

What other mail checker can you recommend, if any? I'd like it to just sit in tray, to have support for IMAP and configurable IMAP folders, not to have many dependencies and preferably to be desktop-agnostic.

Why not give legacy Opera a try? Version 12.16 is available for Linux. It can be installed in a user account or system-wide. The mail client is nice and light.

I really like and use claws-mail on Slackware and OpenBSD. Claws-mail is light, easily configurable, and it supports IMAP. Claws-mail requires libetpan which is available at slackbuilds.org.

http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14...rch=claws-mail

Trojita has served me well as a mailchecker, but only for imap capable mailservers.

Opera legacy is an Internet suite, not just a mail client. Its standalone mail client is only available in Windows. Great browser, love it. Too bad Opera 15+ is a crappy Chromium clone.

Claws-mail is a good client, I use it on my more lightweight installations where WM is Fluxbox or JWM. But it is a client.

I've never heard of Trojita, but it looks like it's also a full-featured (well, maybe not so "full") client. Although I'll keep this option in mind.

Those are all clients... I don't want to install yet another client to just check if I have new mail.

Use chrome or chromium and make an application shortcut to the webmail application.

about gnubiff, maybe you built the latest version, that works only with gtk+3?
I've tried to put down a SlackBuild for the latest one working with gtk+2, version 2.2.13 (2010), and seems to work fine.

http://ponce.cc/slackware/testing/gnubiff/

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Alpine should already be installed.

That's not an option: I don't keep my browser open all the time and it won't show me when new mail arrives.

You're right, I did try the latest version. I just tried to compile gnubiff-2.2.13 and, although I still had to specify the LIBS variable, it works. But I was right, I can't configure IMAP folders to watch, which means "Hellooo, notifications from Junk folder!" But that's the best I got at the moment...

That's, again, a client, and CLI no less. I just need notifications. A regular biff would be a more appropriate suggestion in this context.

here I got this option available: https://imgur.com/sB0p2RU

That's not it. It only tells gnubiff where to look for the mail, which is extremely useful, for example, when the server is running UW-IMAP. If I have a spam folder alongside several ham folders, there's no way to unsubscribe from it to only check valid mail.

Although I found filtering options. I just specified "-^X-Spam-Flag:\ YES" there. Since I stopped collecting spam from my various mailboxes and only use SpamAssassin on my mail server, that should do the trick.

Sorry, lazy post on my part, I was meaning this:

https://github.com/Bruce-Connor/alpine-osd-notify

and the config option NewMail FIFO Path.

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Hey, that's a good solution too! Although I guess it would only work with desktop environments, as simple window managers have no way to display notifications.

EDIT: I'm marking the thread as solved, because:
1) gnubiff is working and I am able to filter spam;
2) alpine-osd-notify is a good alternative that can't be any more lightweight.

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I know this is a really old thread but I always meant to add that you could actually think about stalonetray:

http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14...ch=stalonetray

as a notification area.

I just never got round to it....but now I have.

First, I was talking about a notification as in a balloon popup, the one you would get with `notify-send` command. You are talking about a tray area, which KDE, Xfce and Fluxbox (my desktops of choice) support just fine. By the way, I found a way to display notifications in the absence of a desktop environment.

Second, I actually tried stalonetray. I could never get it to work nicely with different taskbars, be it tint2 or Fluxbox's own taskbar. There's no way for a taskbar to "swallow" stalonetray and display it seamlessly.

Third, in November, 2014, I bought a new laptop, so now I can afford to not think about resources and run Thunderbird in background.

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