KMail is a feature-rich desktop email client for KDE that is part of the Kontact suite of PIM (Personal Information Management) applications. Last week, we covered email template creation in KMail, and this week, we will continue the series with a look at KMail’s sophisticated filtering system.

Today we’ll be looking at a top KDE choice that has plenty to offer for those of you who crave some power and control over their applications. KMail is the default email client of the KDE desktop environment, which is available on a number of platforms, although primarily known for being on Linux.

Recently, Gmail added IMAP support, giving the powerhouse email host the ability to interact better with third-party clients. And Google, being the friendly neighborhood do-gooder that it is, provided instructions on how to use IMAP with a variety of third-party clients. However, it forgot one popular client: KMail, the email portion of the KDE Kontact personal information management suite. Google also neglected to mention that several of its other services, such as Google Calendar and Google Reader, can work well with Kontact. Here's how you can integrate them.

According to Wikipedia, IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol), together with POP is one of the most popular protocols for email retrieval. In this short tutorial I will show you how to set up KMail (the default email client in KDE4 and also most - if not all - distributions which ship it, like Kubuntu) with a GMail account, using IMAP as a protocol.

Kevin blogged about the porting of KMail to Akonadi. He, Andras and a couple of other KDABians are splitting KMail into smaller components that combined make up an email client. Those components are then ported to using Akonadi.

Aside from perhaps the web browser, an email reader is likely to be the first application configured on a new computer installation. And, if you are using a desktop, the default choice is likely to be KMail if you are using KDE, or Evolution if you are using GNOME.

When the need arises to send email from the command line, many folks first think of the mail(1) command.

While an email client like Thunderbird doesn't offer any advanced tools for managing files, email's sheer convenience and ease of use are rather compelling reasons for sticking with the proven tool. In fact, an email client makes an excellent context management system, which can help you to keep tabs on who said what and when about a particular document.

A Personal Information Management (PIM) suite is supposedly a single application that gives you your email, contacts, calendar and other important information. Bringing Mail, Contacts, Calendar and more into one application is something that many find useful.