Balsa
In the last year or so, we’ve looked at a lot of email tools in this column, including SpamAssassin, Squirrelmail, grepmail, and Mailman. But so far, we haven’t looked at any desktop mail programs. To remedy that, let’s look at the GNOME project’s Balsa.
http://balsa.gnome.org
In the last year or so, we’ve looked at a lot of email tools in this column, including SpamAssassin, Squirrelmail, grepmail, and Mailman. But so far, we haven’t looked at any desktop mail programs. To remedy that, let’s look at the GNOME project’s Balsa.
Balsa isn’t the most well-known mail program around. It lacks the flash and publicity of Evolution (http://www.ximian.com/products/evolution) and the raw geek appeal of Mutt (http://www.mutt.org), but it’s also not trying to be a Microsoft Outlook replacement or the Swiss army knife of email.
Simple Design
Balsa’s greatest strength is its simplicity: it’s very lightweight and sports an uncomplicated interface. After a few minutes using Balsa, it’s clear that “normal” users — the people who may have been using Eudora on Windows 98 for the last five years and are now wading into the Linux pool — are the target. We’re talking about users who want a nice GUI for their email but don’t need integrated calendaring, fancy address books (Balsa leaves that to GnomeCard), Microsoft Exchange plug-ins, and PDA synchronization.
The Eudora comparison is a good one. Balsa’s user interface (see Figure One) is uncluttered and straightforward. It uses the standard 3-pane view with mailboxes on the left and the message list and preview pane on the right.
