GNOME Evolution
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 5 of 16 email clients by recommenders
Free email client for GNOME and Linux that works with Exchange and Microsoft 365 and has fast search. Some report past bugs and uncertainty about whether they are fixed.
Free email client for GNOME and Linux that works with Exchange and Microsoft 365 and has fast search. Some report past bugs and uncertainty about whether they are fixed.
16 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 13
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 81%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 13 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works with Exchange and Microsoft 365
“Evolution is great; it's also had outlook EWS (including Oauth2) support for several years now.”
Comment from 20 Nov 2025 in “Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support” “Evolution has worked with every corporate environment I’ve been in since 2003.”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Danish Gov agency to ditch Microsoft software in push for digital independence” “evolution has been keeping me sane whenever i needed to use ews”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support” - Comment from 20 Nov 2025 in “Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support”
Fast search
“evolution has always had much faster searches”
Comment from 7 Oct 2026 in “Penguin Mail – open-source Rust email client for Linux with AI” “Searcv in Gnome evolution is super fast”
Comment from 16 Feb 2026 in “Amazon, Google Unwittingly Reveal the Severity of the U.S. Surveillance State” Preferred over Thunderbird for user experience
“I'm preferring Evolution over it right now for Linux.”
Comment from 15 Aug 2026 in “Thunderbird's Desktop Calendar Visual Redesign” “I'm enjoying Evolution a lot more than Thunderbird”
Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly” “I find that to be a step up in user experience.”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything”
Other email clients people recommend
The four most recommended other email clients, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mozilla Thunderbird | 210 | 155 | 58% | 13 | 20 yrs12 owners | — |
| Microsoft Outlook | 117 | 403 | 23% | 12 | 20 yrs8 owners | — |
| Apple Mail | 57 | 88 | 39% | 12 | 10 yrs9 owners | — |
| Penguin Mail | 14 | 13 | 52% | 1 | — | — |
| GNOME EvolutionThis page | 13 | 3 | 81% | 7 | — | Approved |
What people said
18 of the 20 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“evolution has always had much faster searches”
“All of them slowed them to a very painful crawl.”
“I'm preferring Evolution over it right now for Linux.”
“Both fun movies, in completely different ways!”
“I'm enjoying Evolution a lot more than Thunderbird”
“I find that to be a step up in user experience.”
“lately it's started choking on gmail OAuth support”
“I’ve had very good luck with it so far.”
“Maybe Evolution if they have managed to fix all the bugs it used to have”
“Both are ok last time I tried (last year?)”
“the nice integration with the general Gnome desktop made the switch less painful”
“Evolution has worked with every corporate environment I’ve been in since 2003.”
“Searcv in Gnome evolution is super fast”
“tries to clone old style Outlook (Evolution)”
“Evolution is great; it's also had outlook EWS (including Oauth2) support for several years now.”
“I liked Evolution a lot, though admittedly I haven't used it in awhile”
“I use Evolution on my Kubuntu based gear to access M365 email.”
“evolution has been keeping me sane whenever i needed to use ews”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.