Penguin Mail – open-source Rust email client for Linux with AI

tlhunter

Does anyone remember Sparrow? I like the idea of a native Linux email client. The UI looks pretty good too. It's really not hard to beat thunderbird. Calling it version 1.0 is bullshit though. It's only about a month old: https://github.com/c9dev/penguin-mail/graphs/contributors?al... A project with the complexity of an email client cannot be considered stable in a month. There are bugs that will only show up after a year. It has a calendar after all.

hedgehog

This is interesting, I am doing an experimental effort with similar goals. What is your approach to testing? The bug surface of something like this is quite large. Also, do you have a plan for sandboxing?

ranger_danger

Surprised to see a new (large) GTK app, especially in Rust. Can this be compiled for other operating systems than Linux?

h4kunamata

I was 100% interested until crossing "...with AI".

dvno42

Maybe I'm not the target here but an embedded chat ai window is a huge turn off to me. Having a CLI I can give my own agent to access/query the data, if I choose to do that, would have been preferred but if the target was my mother, then a chat window is probably a better option.

slipheen

That's a very nice looking app - I like the look of it it gives me Mail.app vibes. A mail client is always a tough thing to get right so I'm glad you're working on one I love then idea that as the total cost (time/money/attention) of personalizing software continues to come down, more people will be able to encourage a diaspora of options, tailored to each niche.

mal10c

Got this building on FreeBSD for those interested: 1. Install the GTK stack: pkg install gtk4 libadwaita webkit2-gtk_60 pkgconf 2. FreeBSD ships WebKitGTK 2.46.6 and the project turns on the v2_50 feature of the webkit6 crate, so switch that to v2_46: sed -i '' 's/v2_50/v2_46/' $(git grep -l v2_50 -- '*Cargo.toml') After that, cargo build completes against 2.46.

tamimio

Tested on fastmail, here’s few notes from 10min impression: - can’t choose a sender email?! This is major dealbreaker, if you have many aliases or domains. - no favico for emails, this is also a deal breaker for me, as I used it to quickly skim and find or check new emails. - folders orders is messed up, trying to arrange them made it worse - trying to color a folder and it says “server doesn’t support that” Also the UI needs more polishing overall.

lasiotus

Is there anything like this but in TUI?

wewewedxfgdf

The industry standard wording is to suffix the headline with "written in Rust". Example: "Penguin Mail – open-source email client for Linux with AI, written in Rust". Its important, or people might miss the most interesting/important thing about your software.

mburns

Interesting that they call out Fastmail as a supported provider, but don't support JMAP. Seems like that would have been an easy stretch goal for Claude, and a good way to stand out amongst the competition.

nha1

I was wondering what “with AI” means and the page doesn’t really answer that thought the README does. It drafts replies. Also it is made by pivotd ? What is it ? What is the end game ? Genuinely curious as I am in the mail space with klar.im

williamhm

Is it perhaps because of the application speed in Rust?

rjzzleep

I think this looks good, but I'm not on a Mac anymore. For people that want a terminal client with tabs, integrated html viewer(including images), markdown compose, MCP, with unified inbox, I built notmutt. https://fishman.github.io/notmutt/

d3Xt3r

Yet another GTK4/libadwaita, no thank you. I mean, if you're going to use Rust and vibe code thing, why not use a more sensible, Rust-native UI like egui?

nsagent

Went to watch the Youtube intro [1] for Penguin Mail and was greeted by the most egregious scam video. Didn't click the ad, but simply went to the domain (usbest1.com) and it's just chock full of AI generated content hoping to scam you out of your money. Going through the checkout flow, it even asks you if you want to tip your driver (presumably for delivery). Sorry for the off-topic, but Google (and all ad networks) should be legally required to vet their advertisers. That's gotta be the worst I've seen. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PyJCsw1FSE

aboardRat4

All other email clients are crap, but instead of helping them, more half-baked attempts to reinvent the bicycle.