Re: [Evolution] Why I switched from TBird to Evo

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

On Fri, 2010-05-07 at 09:34 -0700, jd wrote:
> As some of have noticed, and I stated so in my messages asking for help,
> I am new to Evo.
> I had had it with TBird after so many years of putting up with a problem
> that still plagues TBird: Single file folder, which in my case can grow
> to excess of 4 gigabytes. I like to keep all my important email for
> record keeping.
> Problem with using a single file for a folder is that 
> 1. it takes forever to purge deleted messages from it, and
>    it sucks as much as 90% of my cpu, gobbles large amount
>    of ram while it is purging (compacting) a 3.2 GB folder.
> 2. Searching for messages that contain a certain pattern in the
>    message body also takes forever.
> 4. A folder size is still limited to 4GB, which is a dumb limitation,
> given that EXT2FS, NTFS, UFS (BSD) and HFS+ (OS X) all support
> huge files - EXT2 FS supports (2^33)*512 - slightly more than 4TB).
> God forbid If I have to purge an Inbox file of 8GB, let alone 4TB,
> let alone search it.

In fact the limit is 2GB, not 4GB.

> Now I understand I could save my Inboxes and start naming them
> Inbox-ending-date and start a new empty Inbox as soon as the
> Inbox reaches some reasonable size.
> THAT would give me yet another nightmare of having to search numerous
> Inboxes every time I want to find that specific email message with
> the specific pattern in the message body.
>
> In Evo, searching numerous small files is more efficient and has a
> much lower impact on memory consumption because each file is opened
> separately for searching - and I will never have to worry about how
> large Inbox directory will get - at least not within the foreseeable
> future :)

Searching is not done by opening every mail folder and doing a grep.
Evolution indexes your mail and uses a database so it doesn't have to do
this.

I keep nearly all my mail on IMAP servers, which allow you to keep local
copies if you want but doesn't force it. Note that the IMAP protocol
includes some search functionality.

poc