KMail has long been my Linux email client of choice for a number of reasons: nice clean interface, easily customizable and configurable, stable, and more features than you can shake a stick at. Today we'll dig into migrating from other email clients, encrypting messages and key signing, and configuring multiple accounts and identities.

A quick review on message storage is in order. Most Linux mail clients store messages in one of two file formats: mbox or maildir. mbox is a flat file; all of the messages for a particular mail folder, such as your Inbox, are all stuffed into a single file. Maildir stores each message in a separate file. In these here modern times maildir is the format of choice, because it is faster and more fault-tolerant. And it is required for IMAP.

You should also know that KMail requires kdelibs, kdebase, and kdepim. It runs on Linux or most any Unix. The latest stable version is 1.7; this article covers versions 1.5 and up.

Review time is over; on to migration.

Next: Migrating From Other Mail Clients »