I used Thunderbird for a year but I don’t recommend it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a competent email client, but I’ve found that the lack of tray notifications is unbelievably annoying. That means you can’t really have it running headless in the background checking for emails. Birdtray is kind of a janky solution that I don’t recommend either.
Mailspring I’ve found has most of the features I’d need from a mail client. It also does have a real background process that can check for mail and notify you when you receive some.
The application with the best integration to your (GNOME) desktop is going to be GNOME Geary. It looks like a native GNOME app (because it is) and it fits in perfectly with your system. But it’s very light on features. If you only need a client to read and write simple messages, Geary will work wonderfully.
I used Thunderbird for a year but I don’t recommend it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a competent email client, but I’ve found that the lack of tray notifications is unbelievably annoying. That means you can’t really have it running headless in the background checking for emails. Birdtray is kind of a janky solution that I don’t recommend either.
Mailspring I’ve found has most of the features I’d need from a mail client. It also does have a real background process that can check for mail and notify you when you receive some.
The application with the best integration to your (GNOME) desktop is going to be GNOME Geary. It looks like a native GNOME app (because it is) and it fits in perfectly with your system. But it’s very light on features. If you only need a client to read and write simple messages, Geary will work wonderfully.