Friday, 24 September 2010

Finally - an Email Notifier That Integrates With Gnome: Popper

One of the most amazing things about Open Source Software in general and Linux in particular, is the amount of customisation that can be done to the graphical user interface (GUI). One of the things that's been missing for a long time is a generic email notification system that integrates into the Gnome System Tray and will also give you bubble notifications of incoming mail.

Ubuntu users who use the default Evolution PIM and mail client have already seen the benefits of a fully integrated notification system. However, in my humble opinion, Evolution is broken, clunky and hard to configure. I've been using Thunderbird as my preferred email client, and together with Google Calendar and shared Google Contacts, it's unbeatable.

I've been relying on Firetray, an extension for Thunderbird which minimises the mail client to the system tray and notifies you of incoming mail, but you have to struggle a bit to get it working with the newest version of Thunderbird, and some of the publicised features do not work 'out of the box'.

I read about Popper on OMG Ubuntu, a fabulous site full of ideas and inspiration geared towards making Ubuntu the best operating system on the planet (and getting there, too!).

Popper works with all POP3 or IMAP mail accounts, and can be configured in a multitude of ways. It is not resource hungry, works straight out of the box and I heartily recommend it. You can download the latest .deb file here. I think this application should be included by default in new versions of Ubuntu.

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