Proton Mail Finally Releases Desktop Apps With a Linux Beta Version

Aaaand it's electron garbage.

Yeah, Proton is awesome, that's for sure. Now, being a "security and privacy" company, it blows my mind that they put so much effort on making apps for Windows and Mac first, leaving Linux behind, and when they finally get to it, they just dump in a glorified PWA. This world is really weird 🤣🤣

“Finally” really is the key word, waiting for Proton to add features or apps is painful at times.

Glad they’ve finally made progress with this.

Its just a webview app..

Speaking of mail apps, has anyone used Thunderbird recently? I had used it for a year or two up until . . . a year or two ago (probably two or three, actually) and then switched to kmail to satisfy my masochism. Thunderbird just hadn't been doing it for me with meh functionality and slightly more meh looks.

Fast forward to yesterday when I'm updating my steamdeck desktop to use nix stuff instead of rwfus+pacman and I couldn't get kmail from nix to behave right so I thought I'd give thunderbird another look. I'm several hours into tinkering with it and holy hell has it changed pretty much completely from a few years ago. Looks fantastic and works pretty much exactly how I want/expect it to. Good job mozilla!

Proton Drive though 😭. The Windows app is so nice, wish we could get that for Linux.

I've set up an Rclone for the time being, not great but it works well enough for basic bisynchronisation.

"Anyone can download the app, but free users will be given a 14-day trial to test drive it.'

So it's only for premium users ?

"After years of pushing their proprietary and closed solutions to privacy minded people Proton decided that it was in their best interest to further bury said users into their service as a form of vendor lock-in. To achieve this they made more non-standard desktop clients for their groupware features (contacts and calendars) and the bridge will be discontinued soon."

Only if there wasn't CardDAV, CalDAV, IMAP, SMTP and dozens of other highly standardized protocols to handle e-mailing and groupware.

I never really understood the need for such apps when mail clients such as Thunderbird exist.

Idk, got thunderbird set up and feeling pretty happy with it.

(Webmail provider releases a bespoke desktop app)
(me, old fart, bumbles out from behind the cables and servers and muck)

You fools! Have any of you whippersnappers ever heard of IMAP? No? Thought so.

[I'm not that familiar with ProtonMail. Chances are they already support IMAP. In which case: ... ....why? Why this? Why in this day and age?]

Give us IMAP/SMTP support instead of this garbage

Cool. Now please do Proton Drive and Calendar. Please and thank you Proton.

Is this where the source code is supposed to be ? https://github.com/ProtonMail/inbox-desktop

I sure hope they make a Flatpak like they did for VPN (although it's not working properly at all rn). I don't get why they are still troubling themselves to support two other formats already during beta, when this is probably just an Electron app.

no AppImage, no Flatpak, no PPA, and no COPR

Protonmail still does not have an official app in F-Droid. Just because of this reason I ended my paid subscription and moved to Tutanota.

On a related note? When my friend on proton send me (regular imap, openpgp) and several others (gmail, outlook) an email with all of us as recipients, it seems that proton cheats? I get to decrypt the message, where's the others just read plain ø, unincrypted text.

At first i thought this smart. But now i kind of realize how much of a nightmare this seems to be.

On the other hand, i am not really sure how they do it? Is it to different mails, with fake headers? Or is it more like: if no encryption is available, show thisb (dentical) text instead?

So whats more privacy friendly, using a browser to check email, og using the official Proton app?

So, what is general concesus about Proton, is it safe or not? I dont use it because you need to pay for Bridge to use it in Thunderbird. Maybe I would use if it has a dedicated app.

no proton drive??

Finally? Why does it need an app all of a sudden...

What's wrong with IMAP and SMTP?

https://encryp.ch/blog/disturbing-facts-about-protonmail/

i'm begging you, don't buy snake oil.

What is the point of email clients? Why not just use the web browser?

Proton seems on the wrong side of the usability - privacy spectrum. Every last feature I'd want from an online provider is impossible or massively neutered by the overly strict security.

I wish there was a similar service in a trustworthy country with a more sane level of safety, like opt-in encryption for example.

Is the search functionality improved in the desktop app?

What are people’s thoughts on https://forwardemail.net/en/blog/docs/best-quantum-safe-encrypted-email-service

Closed source honeypot. There's no safe email protocol. Just use Gmail and call it a day, it has better free features anyway.