I've been a Thunderbird user for many years and it has served me very well. But lately, I've found myself a bit disillusioned by the Thunderbird interface. Although the developers and designers made some changes to the UI over the past year (and I was all in on those changes at first), I've had a change of heart recently.

I'm not talking about the functionality of Thunderbird, as that hasn't changed much over the years. This is all about the interface and I've started seeing the open-source email client UI as a bit long in the tooth.

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Because of that, I set out to find a different client to serve my needs. For this, I'm currently considering two different email clients: Geary and Bluemail. I've used both in the past but not as serious contenders to take the place of Thunderbird. This time around, I want to find out which of the two can serve me as Thunderbird has for so many years.

Here, we're going to look at the first candidate, Geary.  

Geary is a Linux-only, open-source email client that has been around since 2012. I first met Geary when I was using Elementary OS as my primary operating system. At the time, I found Geary to have a pleasant-enough interface but it lacked a lot of the features I depended on. These days, I don't require so many features for my email client (such as GPG support). What I require now is just the means to manage my email. I want something simple with an interface that doesn't look like I'm still back in the early 2000s.

Gear has all of that in spades. I can add all the email accounts I need to keep track of and view them in a very well-designed interface that is as modern as it is simple.

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Although the Geary feature list is fairly basic, it offers what I need and nothing more. That list looks like this:

• Easy email account setup
• Full text and keyword search
• HTML and plain text message composer
• Desktop notification of new mail
• Compatible with Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Outlook.com, and other IMAP servers

There is one big caveat to Geary (I'll explain in a minute) that could lead me to not selecting this email client as my new default. But first...let's get this app installed.

How to install the Geary email client on Linux 

What you'll need: The only thing you'll need for this is a running instance of a Linux operating system. Because Geary can be installed by your default package manager or Flatpak, you should be able to install it, regardless of the distribution you use. I'll demonstrate this on Ubuntu Budgie.

That darned caveat

Although I've found Geary to be a very pleasant email client, it does one thing that I don't believe I can abide by. You see, when you click to open an email, instead of that email opening in a reading pane (or a new window altogether), the email takes up the entire window. That means not only can you not delete multiple emails, it means you have to commit to reading the email before you can go back and preview any other emails.

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For me, that's just inefficient and it also means that I'll probably not stick with Geary. That's a shame because I really enjoy the simplicity and modernity of the Geary email client. And although this might not be a deal-breaker for you, it probably is for me.

Even so, I would suggest you give Geary a try and see if it's not the best email client for your needs.

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• How to install Linux on your Raspberry Pi