This will be Kubuntu’s first release with the new Kmail2 that uses Akonadi to store all your mail related data (and more) in a database. It is slow, unreliable, and extremely resource hungry. It can be made to work, but the situation is not good. My advice is to be careful about upgrading and test things in a VM/on a spare computer before upgrading to 11.10 if Kmail is important to you.
I put a lot of effort into making sure we had every upstream bugfix available for Akonadi and the KDEPIM related packages, so I think this is as good as it gets for now. Hopefully it’ll be better in KDE SC 4.7.3 and 4.8. In the meantime, please make sure to give feedback to bugs.kde.org.
Personally, I’m caught because hardware support for my laptop is much better on 11.10. I’m thinking I’ll probably go with a 10.04 vm just for kmail and do my best to ignore kmail2 for now. Good luck.
Update: Improved the title.
ScottK might have something to say ... 
Will there be a chance of using kmail 1 in Kubuntu 11.10?
Will there be a chance of sticking with KMail 1 in Kubuntu 11.10?
I just tried in my netbook and it’s just inusable. I’m still wondering why we accepted it into Oneiric if we already know that it simply doesn’t works. Btw, let’s try to be optimistic rather than pessimistic. There’s a way to backport Natty’s kdepim to Oneiric? I tried just compiling the natty source package in Oneiric and I got many errors.
I have tested Kubuntu Oneric and I agree there are many problems with Kmail2. Therefor I do not understand why it was not possible to keep the old kmail and have the new one as choice like it is possible with the 4.7 packages for Natty. I hope 4.7 updates and possible KDE 4.8 will be still available for Natty.
We didn’t have much of a choice. This is what upstream supports with KDE 4.7.
But even though they do not support it, the Kubuntu packages of 4.7 together with Kmail1 work without a flawlessly with Natty. Would it have been so difficult without offical support to maintain them?
Even though I see many bugs fixed, I still fear, that it will take a while, until Kmail2 is stable.
I certainly expected it to be better than this. It’s actually much better than it was two weeks ago. Personally, I need to decide if I’m going to switch mail clients before I invest more time in this. I’m trying claws mail right now.
The kdepim/kdepim-runtime 4.4 packages we used in 11.04 won’t build on 11.10 without some changes. I did manage to get them building yesterday and the seem to work OK. From here on out, I’ll leave the experimenting with Kmail2 for someone else. I’ve got actual work to do.
Actually these turned out to be unusable since the current Akonadi isn’t stable on my system with pim 4.4. I’m stuck on Thunderbird for now (and really not enjoying it, but it is at least fast and stable).
Be warned, kmail2 basically will give you endless stress and simply has so many problems it’s unfortunately no where close to stable, no matter what workarounds you try.
Hopefully things improve soon, it has potential. With kubuntu 11.10 going official soon, its’ good because a lot more people are going to be complaining/helping etc so hopefully it will help kmail mature.
It honestly took me a weekend to correctly import my emails and accounts (3 enterprise accounts, 1 gmail, 1 using freepops) and set filters to work with mailing lists I am a subscriber of. After a lot of initial pain (mainly related to duplicated emails reappearing every time I downloaded mails) I just learned that is very important not to touch incoming messages as long as kmail2 is filtering and that nepomuk MUST BE RUNNING or everything becomes unpredictable.
Now I am a quite happy user of Kmail2 (and akonadiconsole :-)) and every update since Beta1 increased performances and stability.
I really appreciate the work that has gone into this effort and I have to say I’m quite onboard with the design idea behind akonadi.
That said I’ve had nothing but grief with it and in the end had to delete all my previous data and download everything again. Even then I’ve found it crashed 4 times already (all in one day).
I’m afraid for the time being I will have to use thunderbird instead. I look forward to a more stable kontact/akonadi next time round.
I just installed kubuntu 11.10 64bit !
I have big problems too: I pull my mails in kmail2, but if I click on
my mail it says “opening folder” and nothig happens.
Sometime it helps to restart akonadi and kontakt.
Sometimes I kill kontakt because I see it still running after I closed it,
because I I try to reopen it it hangs.
I like the akonadi idea but I dislike the fact that it simply does not work.
I am also not sure what I need to backup, it is still enough to make a tarball from $home/.kde to save all mails??
Why do they use mysql in akonadi as default? Wouldn’t it be
less complex to use sqlite (as default)???
I will try one day to get it running, and if I have no success I will
try to migrate to thunderbird.
I only need a mail program who works, even if it does not share its contacts with others 😦
ANton
Akonadi stores data in ~/.local, so no, .kde is not enough.
I agree it’s not ready. I’m (unfortunately) using Thunderbird. There’s a lot not to like about it, but it can reliably send and receive mail.
When the heck is kubuntu releasing 4.7.3???
No idea. I’m currently taking a break from Kubuntu work.
I just read the 4.7.3.. announcement on Kubuntu.org. No mentioning of Natty. Does this mean, that natty users will be cut of from bugfixes of the 4.7-series and that they have to upgrade to Oneric with still buggy kmail2?
No idea. I’m currently taking a break from Kubuntu work. Usually that’s what’s done though.