The developers behind the Shotwell photo manager for Linux-based operating systems are setting their sights on a weak spot of the Linux desktop: e-mail.
Yorba, the creator of Shotwell, has turned to crowdfunding site Indiegogo in an attempt to raise $100,000 toward the e-mail client, named "Geary." After two days, Yorba has raised about $8,000.
Geary has been under development since 2011, but Yorba is hoping to take it up a few notches. An extremely early version of Geary is available now. It is designed to integrate with GNOME desktops, running on Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, and other Linux distributions.
"Yorba was founded to bring great software to the free desktop," the company wrote. "That's why we created Geary, a modern email client for the Linux desktop. We realized it was time for a fresh approach to email."
Linux desktops generically have decent support for e-mail protocols like IMAP and POP, but business e-mail has been a sore spot for any company relying on Microsoft Exchange. Linux support for Exchange mail and calendaring ranges from weak to nonexistent for users who prefer desktop applications over accessing e-mail in Web browsers.
Yorba does intend to support Exchange, but not in the near future. "Yorba does have future plans for Exchange support, but it's not something they're planning in their next release, nor are they crowdfunding for it today," a company spokesperson told Ars. As for calendaring, Yorba doesn't intend to bake that functionality directly into Geary, but does "want to integrate with current (or future) calendar applications," the company said.
A wiki page devoted to Geary development mentions only "Full IMAP support," and "Tight integration with popular Web mail services, including Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Mobile Me." That list is clearly outdated, as Apple's MobileMe was discontinued last year.
The overall goal for Geary is to create an easy-to-use client with a "clear, concise user interface." Specific features Yorba is looking to implement include "as-fast-as-you-can-type searching; always-on notification of new emails; and save and auto-save drafts."
Major Linux distributions often ship with Mozilla's Thunderbird as the default mail application. Mozilla recently dropped Thunderbird to a lower development priority, leaving an opening for a better alternative Yorba hopes to fill.
Yorba today has three full-time engineers working on Geary, and says the crowdfunding "will allow for those engineers to continue to devote themselves to developing the application."
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