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List:       kmail-devel
Subject:    Re: kmail wishlist/bugs
From:       Jason Stephenson <panda () mis ! net>
Date:       2001-03-25 2:55:25
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On Saturday 24 March 2001 16:45, Michael Häckel wrote:
> At least I don't know even one person personally who uses IMAP. I only here
> about it via the internet. For many people POP3 with all its options
> (Delete mails from the server, leave mails on the server, don't delete
> mails from the server) is already too complicated :-)

We use it at my day job with our web mail service. The web mail uses IMAP and 
all the user's mail is stored on our servers. People who use Eudora, KMail, 
pine and the like generally use POP3 to download the mail to their 
workstation. I don't believe anyone at our site uses IMAP, except those using 
our web mail and they use it indirectly without knowing.

> Also people complain about KMail being slow with huge folders, switching
> between huge IMAP folders is surely _much_ slower independant of the
> client.

IMAP itself can be very slow with large folders. Our entire mail server can 
be brought to its knees when someone with a couple (yes a couple) of 40+ MB 
mail folders logs in. Since we do something you should never do with IMAP, 
mount some user directories over NFS, the server often times out on these 
large folders and the user is unable to read their mail. The answer to that 
is delete your mail and the problem goes away. Once in a while, we have to 
restart the web server, 'cause the web mail program goes schizophrenic after 
a runaway IMAP process loses its mind.

I don't know why everyone keeps screaming for IMAP support in KMail. In my 
professional opinion, as someone who maintains a mail server with SMTP, POP, 
and IMAP for over 6,000 users, IMAP doesn't hold a candle to POP3. We never 
have any problems with POP and it sucks down hundreds of messages in seconds 
while IMAP takes an eternity to read the same mailbox. Our mail server isn't 
huge, despite the 6,000+ users. It handles just over 3 GB of mail in an 
average week, about 50/50 incoming and outgoing. It runs on a 550 MHz PII 
with 256 MB of RAM with the FreeBSD OS. Apart from the occasional slowdowns 
with IMAP, it performs brilliantly.

In sum, it is wrong to blame KMail for poor performance with IMAP when IMAP 
performs poorly in general.
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