Kubuntu 24.04.1
Seeing the need to transition away from Claws Mail. It locks up a bit, can’t handle HTML’s and other issues. I used KMail years ago, but it was heavy on resources because it included Akonadi.
Is it possible to install KMail without Akonadi and also without the extra “K” programs like Kontact, etc ? The Claws emails are in Maildir format, so I assume these can be imported into KMail
Without Akonadi, no. It’s how KMail stores your data.
Without the rest of the PIM suite, yes, but it really depends on how your distro packages things. In certain distros the full suite doesn’t come by default, in others it does.
If installing KMail pulls other parts of the suite on Kubuntu, apt has the flags --no-install-recommends and --no-install-suggests for this. You might have to manually install some packages afterwards, in case you actually needed some recommended or suggested packages.
Technically you can install only the necessary Akonadi packages this way, skipping the other optional ones, but as mentioned, making sure the installation isn’t missing packages becomes your responsibility.
To me, that seems an additional load on resources. The emails are already in files , I can’t see the sense in storing them again. ??
It seems I can selectively install only the packages I need. Thanks for your help.
I have to confess that one of my most frequently used phrases is ‘too much Akonadi’.
Want to use KMail? “No, too much Akonadi”
It is one of the biggest issues with KDE, very complex - more so as protocols change so often (looking at GMail with Event Calendar here) - and difficult to keep running smoothly.
This is why Thunderbird stays high on the list of mail clients… though personally I still tend to see mail in my phone and use mailspring on desktop to read there.
Yes, the desktop is quite a few years old now, ‘getting by’ by running Kubuntu on an external SSD as the internal is small and windows 10. So whilst the SSD is very fast, the CPU isn’t really, so I have to try and be wise with resources.
Thanks for mentioning MailSpring, I had never heard of it and will give it a try. Have Thunderbird installed but not really comfortable about sending my info to third parties, see Thunderbird Privacy Notice — Mozilla
This is why Thunderbird stays high on the list of mail clients… though personally I still tend to see mail in my phone and use mailspring on desktop to read there.
Oh, it doesn’t look like MailSpring supports POP3. 
I think it makes sense for me to elaborate on what “KMail can’t run without Akonadi” means. So, Akonadi actually refers to multiple things.
It is a collection of libraries that developers simply plug into their application and they get an API to do common information management things easily without needing to reinvent the wheel. These should have negligible resource usage.
This set of libraries is actually extremely modular, not monolithic at all. For example, if you want to manage contacts, you (the developer) pull in akonadi-contacts. If you want to manage email messages, you pull in akonadi-messagelib. If you want to manage calendars, you pull in akonadi-calendar. If you want to search through PIM data, you pull in akonadi-search. If you want to provide import/export functionality, you pull in akonadi-import-wizard. If you want to support Google services, you pull in libkgapi, and so on. Some of the dialogs you might see in KMail and other software are actually done with these libraries.
Typically you want multiple apps for personal information (like KMail, Merkuro, KOrganizer etc) to access the same information in one place, right? So there’s the Akonadi server for that. It talks to the client libraries and stores whatever data you want centralized. This does use some resources, GNOME Evolution uses a similar model with evolution-data-server for example. I don’t know the exact details as to what akonadi-server actually stores, but it’s most certainly not just the emails themselves (especially since you use POP3).
Akonadi also comes with a few additional utilities, like akonadi-client to manage Akonadi stuff from the terminal, akonadiconsole to debug Akonadi, and a few others. These are actual programs so they don’t use resources unless you actually run them.
So KMail can’t run without the relevant email Akonadi libraries, but maybe you could leave aside some non-relevant libraries (for probably negligible results).
I’m pretty sure it can’t run without akonadi-server.
It can most certainly run without the extra Akonadi tools.
It ultimately depends on how your distro packages things for you to accomplish what you want, though.
Thank you very much @Herzenschein for explaining all that level of detail for me. The CPU is meant to have 4 processors, it’s quite old and a Intel(R) Core™ i5-7300U CPU @ 2.60GHz
All I can do is install KMail and monitor the resources it uses , and the associated software like Akonadi.
I tried both methods, and it is a huge list for both. I’m not fussed about installing that many packages, just considering how many will be running all the time and the resources being consumed ?
Here are those 2 options …
$ sudo apt install kmail --no-install-recommends
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
akonadi-backend-mysql akonadi-server kdepim-runtime kf5-messagelib-data kio-ldap kio-sieve kmailtransport-akonadi libkf5akonadicalendar-bin libkf5akonadisearch-bin libkf5akonadisearch-plugins libkf5calendarcore5abi2
libkf5calendarutils-bin libkf5dav-data libkf5dav5 libkf5grantleetheme-plugins libkf5mailcommon-plugins libkf5messageviewer-plugins libkf5textaddons-data libkf5textaddonswidgets1 libkf5textautocorrectioncore1
libkf5textautocorrectionwidgets1 libkf5textedittexttospeech1 libkf5textemoticonscore1 libkf5textemoticonswidgets1 libkolabxml1v5 libkpim5akonadiagentbase5 libkpim5akonadicalendar-data libkpim5akonadicalendar5
libkpim5akonadicontact-data libkpim5akonadicontact-plugins libkpim5akonadicontact5 libkpim5akonadimime-bin libkpim5akonadimime-data libkpim5akonadimime5 libkpim5akonadinotes-data libkpim5akonadinotes5 libkpim5akonadisearch-data
libkpim5akonadisearchcore5 libkpim5akonadisearchdebug5 libkpim5akonadisearchpim5 libkpim5akonadisearchxapian5 libkpim5calendarutils-data libkpim5calendarutils5 libkpim5contacteditor5 libkpim5gapicalendar5 libkpim5gapipeople5
libkpim5gapitasks5 libkpim5grantleetheme-data libkpim5grantleetheme5 libkpim5gravatar-data libkpim5gravatar5 libkpim5identitymanagementwidgets5 libkpim5imap-data libkpim5imap5 libkpim5kmanagesieve5 libkpim5kontactinterface-data
libkpim5kontactinterface5 libkpim5ksieve-data libkpim5ksieve5 libkpim5ksieveui5 libkpim5ldap-data libkpim5ldap5 libkpim5libkdepim-data libkpim5libkdepim5 libkpim5libkleo-data libkpim5libkleo5 libkpim5mailcommon5
libkpim5mailimporter-data libkpim5mailimporter5 libkpim5mailtransport-data libkpim5mailtransport5 libkpim5mbox-data libkpim5mbox5 libkpim5messagecomposer5t64 libkpim5messagecore5t64 libkpim5messagelist5t64 libkpim5messageviewer5t64
libkpim5mime-data libkpim5mime5 libkpim5mimetreeparser5t64 libkpim5pimcommon5 libkpim5pimcommonakonadi5 libkpim5smtp-data libkpim5smtp5 libkpim5templateparser5t64 libkpim5textedit-data libkpim5textedit5 libkpim5webengineviewer5t64
libmariadb3 libmysqlclient21 libqgpgme15t64 libqt5networkauth5 libqt5sql5-mysql libsasl2-modules-kdexoauth2 libxerces-c3.2t64 mariadb-client-core mariadb-common mariadb-server-core mysql-common
Suggested packages:
akonadi-backend-postgresql akonadi-backend-sqlite clamav kaddressbook kleopatra procmail spamassassin | bogofilter | spambayes | bsfilter | crm114
Recommended packages:
accountwizard gnupg2 kdepim-addons kdepim-themeeditors ktnef mbox-importer pim-data-exporter pim-sieve-editor akonadi-import-wizard kde-config-mailtransport
The following NEW packages will be installed:
akonadi-backend-mysql akonadi-server kdepim-runtime kf5-messagelib-data kio-ldap kio-sieve kmail kmailtransport-akonadi libkf5akonadicalendar-bin libkf5akonadisearch-bin libkf5akonadisearch-plugins libkf5calendarcore5abi2
libkf5calendarutils-bin libkf5dav-data libkf5dav5 libkf5grantleetheme-plugins libkf5mailcommon-plugins libkf5messageviewer-plugins libkf5textaddons-data libkf5textaddonswidgets1 libkf5textautocorrectioncore1
libkf5textautocorrectionwidgets1 libkf5textedittexttospeech1 libkf5textemoticonscore1 libkf5textemoticonswidgets1 libkolabxml1v5 libkpim5akonadiagentbase5 libkpim5akonadicalendar-data libkpim5akonadicalendar5
libkpim5akonadicontact-data libkpim5akonadicontact-plugins libkpim5akonadicontact5 libkpim5akonadimime-bin libkpim5akonadimime-data libkpim5akonadimime5 libkpim5akonadinotes-data libkpim5akonadinotes5 libkpim5akonadisearch-data
libkpim5akonadisearchcore5 libkpim5akonadisearchdebug5 libkpim5akonadisearchpim5 libkpim5akonadisearchxapian5 libkpim5calendarutils-data libkpim5calendarutils5 libkpim5contacteditor5 libkpim5gapicalendar5 libkpim5gapipeople5
libkpim5gapitasks5 libkpim5grantleetheme-data libkpim5grantleetheme5 libkpim5gravatar-data libkpim5gravatar5 libkpim5identitymanagementwidgets5 libkpim5imap-data libkpim5imap5 libkpim5kmanagesieve5 libkpim5kontactinterface-data
libkpim5kontactinterface5 libkpim5ksieve-data libkpim5ksieve5 libkpim5ksieveui5 libkpim5ldap-data libkpim5ldap5 libkpim5libkdepim-data libkpim5libkdepim5 libkpim5libkleo-data libkpim5libkleo5 libkpim5mailcommon5
libkpim5mailimporter-data libkpim5mailimporter5 libkpim5mailtransport-data libkpim5mailtransport5 libkpim5mbox-data libkpim5mbox5 libkpim5messagecomposer5t64 libkpim5messagecore5t64 libkpim5messagelist5t64 libkpim5messageviewer5t64
libkpim5mime-data libkpim5mime5 libkpim5mimetreeparser5t64 libkpim5pimcommon5 libkpim5pimcommonakonadi5 libkpim5smtp-data libkpim5smtp5 libkpim5templateparser5t64 libkpim5textedit-data libkpim5textedit5 libkpim5webengineviewer5t64
libmariadb3 libmysqlclient21 libqgpgme15t64 libqt5networkauth5 libqt5sql5-mysql libsasl2-modules-kdexoauth2 libxerces-c3.2t64 mariadb-client-core mariadb-common mariadb-server-core mysql-common
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$ sudo apt install kmail --no-install-suggests
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
accountwizard akonadi-backend-mysql akonadi-import-wizard akonadi-server gnupg2 kaddressbook kdepim-addons kdepim-runtime kdepim-themeeditors kf5-messagelib-data kio-ldap kio-sieve kmailtransport-akonadi kross ktnef
libkf5akonadicalendar-bin libkf5akonadisearch-bin libkf5akonadisearch-plugins libkf5calendarcore5abi2 libkf5calendarutils-bin libkf5dav-data libkf5dav5 libkf5grantleetheme-plugins libkf5incidenceeditor-bin libkf5krosscore5
libkf5krossui5 libkf5mailcommon-plugins libkf5messageviewer-plugins libkf5textaddons-data libkf5textaddonswidgets1 libkf5textautocorrectioncore1 libkf5textautocorrectionwidgets1 libkf5textedittexttospeech1 libkf5textemoticonscore1
libkf5textemoticonswidgets1 libkf5textgrammarcheck1 libkf5texttranslator-plugins libkf5texttranslator1 libkgantt2 libkgantt2-l10n libkolabxml1v5 libkpim5akonadiagentbase5 libkpim5akonadicalendar-data libkpim5akonadicalendar5
libkpim5akonadicontact-data libkpim5akonadicontact-plugins libkpim5akonadicontact5 libkpim5akonadimime-bin libkpim5akonadimime-data libkpim5akonadimime5 libkpim5akonadinotes-data libkpim5akonadinotes5 libkpim5akonadisearch-data
libkpim5akonadisearchcore5 libkpim5akonadisearchdebug5 libkpim5akonadisearchpim5 libkpim5akonadisearchxapian5 libkpim5calendarsupport-data libkpim5calendarsupport5 libkpim5calendarutils-data libkpim5calendarutils5
libkpim5contacteditor5 libkpim5eventviews-data libkpim5eventviews5 libkpim5gapicalendar5 libkpim5gapipeople5 libkpim5gapitasks5 libkpim5grantleetheme-data libkpim5grantleetheme5 libkpim5gravatar-data libkpim5gravatar5
libkpim5identitymanagementwidgets5 libkpim5imap-data libkpim5imap5 libkpim5importwizard5 libkpim5incidenceeditor-data libkpim5incidenceeditor5 libkpim5itinerary5 libkpim5kmanagesieve5 libkpim5kontactinterface-data
libkpim5kontactinterface5 libkpim5ksieve-data libkpim5ksieve5 libkpim5ksieveui5 libkpim5ldap-data libkpim5ldap5 libkpim5libkdepim-data libkpim5libkdepim5 libkpim5libkleo-data libkpim5libkleo5 libkpim5mailcommon5
libkpim5mailimporter-data libkpim5mailimporter5 libkpim5mailimporterakonadi5 libkpim5mailtransport-data libkpim5mailtransport5 libkpim5mbox-data libkpim5mbox5 libkpim5messagecomposer5t64 libkpim5messagecore5t64
libkpim5messagelist5t64 libkpim5messageviewer5t64 libkpim5mime-data libkpim5mime5 libkpim5mimetreeparser5t64 libkpim5pimcommon5 libkpim5pimcommonakonadi5 libkpim5pkpass-data libkpim5pkpass5 libkpim5smtp-data libkpim5smtp5
libkpim5templateparser5t64 libkpim5textedit-data libkpim5textedit5 libkpim5tnef-data libkpim5tnef5 libkpim5webengineviewer5t64 libkpimitinerary-data libmariadb3 libmysqlclient21 libphonenumber8 libprotobuf32t64 libqgpgme15t64
libqt5networkauth5 libqt5script5 libqt5sql5-mysql libsasl2-modules-kdexoauth2 libxerces-c3.2t64 mariadb-client-core mariadb-common mariadb-server-core mbox-importer mysql-common pim-data-exporter pim-sieve-editor
Suggested packages:
akonadi-backend-postgresql akonadi-backend-sqlite clamav kleopatra procmail spamassassin | bogofilter | spambayes | bsfilter | crm114 osmctools
Recommended packages:
kde-config-mailtransport
The following NEW packages will be installed:
accountwizard akonadi-backend-mysql akonadi-import-wizard akonadi-server gnupg2 kaddressbook kdepim-addons kdepim-runtime kdepim-themeeditors kf5-messagelib-data kio-ldap kio-sieve kmail kmailtransport-akonadi kross ktnef
libkf5akonadicalendar-bin libkf5akonadisearch-bin libkf5akonadisearch-plugins libkf5calendarcore5abi2 libkf5calendarutils-bin libkf5dav-data libkf5dav5 libkf5grantleetheme-plugins libkf5incidenceeditor-bin libkf5krosscore5
libkf5krossui5 libkf5mailcommon-plugins libkf5messageviewer-plugins libkf5textaddons-data libkf5textaddonswidgets1 libkf5textautocorrectioncore1 libkf5textautocorrectionwidgets1 libkf5textedittexttospeech1 libkf5textemoticonscore1
libkf5textemoticonswidgets1 libkf5textgrammarcheck1 libkf5texttranslator-plugins libkf5texttranslator1 libkgantt2 libkgantt2-l10n libkolabxml1v5 libkpim5akonadiagentbase5 libkpim5akonadicalendar-data libkpim5akonadicalendar5
libkpim5akonadicontact-data libkpim5akonadicontact-plugins libkpim5akonadicontact5 libkpim5akonadimime-bin libkpim5akonadimime-data libkpim5akonadimime5 libkpim5akonadinotes-data libkpim5akonadinotes5 libkpim5akonadisearch-data
libkpim5akonadisearchcore5 libkpim5akonadisearchdebug5 libkpim5akonadisearchpim5 libkpim5akonadisearchxapian5 libkpim5calendarsupport-data libkpim5calendarsupport5 libkpim5calendarutils-data libkpim5calendarutils5
libkpim5contacteditor5 libkpim5eventviews-data libkpim5eventviews5 libkpim5gapicalendar5 libkpim5gapipeople5 libkpim5gapitasks5 libkpim5grantleetheme-data libkpim5grantleetheme5 libkpim5gravatar-data libkpim5gravatar5
libkpim5identitymanagementwidgets5 libkpim5imap-data libkpim5imap5 libkpim5importwizard5 libkpim5incidenceeditor-data libkpim5incidenceeditor5 libkpim5itinerary5 libkpim5kmanagesieve5 libkpim5kontactinterface-data
libkpim5kontactinterface5 libkpim5ksieve-data libkpim5ksieve5 libkpim5ksieveui5 libkpim5ldap-data libkpim5ldap5 libkpim5libkdepim-data libkpim5libkdepim5 libkpim5libkleo-data libkpim5libkleo5 libkpim5mailcommon5
libkpim5mailimporter-data libkpim5mailimporter5 libkpim5mailimporterakonadi5 libkpim5mailtransport-data libkpim5mailtransport5 libkpim5mbox-data libkpim5mbox5 libkpim5messagecomposer5t64 libkpim5messagecore5t64
libkpim5messagelist5t64 libkpim5messageviewer5t64 libkpim5mime-data libkpim5mime5 libkpim5mimetreeparser5t64 libkpim5pimcommon5 libkpim5pimcommonakonadi5 libkpim5pkpass-data libkpim5pkpass5 libkpim5smtp-data libkpim5smtp5
libkpim5templateparser5t64 libkpim5textedit-data libkpim5textedit5 libkpim5tnef-data libkpim5tnef5 libkpim5webengineviewer5t64 libkpimitinerary-data libmariadb3 libmysqlclient21 libphonenumber8 libprotobuf32t64 libqgpgme15t64
libqt5networkauth5 libqt5script5 libqt5sql5-mysql libsasl2-modules-kdexoauth2 libxerces-c3.2t64 mariadb-client-core mariadb-common mariadb-server-core mbox-importer mysql-common pim-data-exporter pim-sieve-editor
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