I’ve been using Mailspring for both personal and business email, it seems like a decent UI so far, and it functions as you’d expect: runs at login, sits in the tray, notifies when new email comes in, etc. It’s open source and free, unless you need their “pro” features.
Possibly some people will be annoyed that it’s an Electron app, but it launches and runs more responsively than Thunderbird ever has on my machines, so I don’t find that to be a problem. I would rather a Gnome native app, but I’m not aware of any that function well, as OP laments.
I tried Mailspring but it doesn’t support folders very well, and I tried improving that myself but my dev environment never really worked properly so I gave up.
It works well if you don’t heavily use folders (e.g. via Sieve filters).
I personally only use Linux now for all my computers. I follow a philosophy for any software solutiom I need that goes like this:
Use a FOSS solution or,
Use a proprietary solution that has a native Linux build/browser version or,
Use a cracked/pirated version in Wine/Windows VM.
Personally, I am absolutely committed to no more Windows for my personal computing, I have been for years. That means that if I cannot do one of those three options in that order, I don’t use that software/solution.
Unless you are doing a lot of specialized software work, those three options should have you covered. I’m curious what software you use that doesn’t work with any of those 3 categories.
Advanced CAD/CAM stuff there isn’t much in FOSS. Same with specialized Audio production work and advanced photo-manipulation. Specialized device support can be spotty too, but that varies wildly. Those are the only software categories off the top of my head that I know don’t really have good FOSS solutions.
All the programs I use just run on linux, no really. VSCode runs on linux, I’ve used libre office for longer than I’ve used Linux (and it obviously runs on linux), all my faves run on linux through steam or lutris.
However, if there is a windows only program you wanna run on linux, you have a few options.
I’d just cross running it though wine out, it’s really annoying to setup and my original success rate with it had been… Not great.
If your program isn’t terribly graphically demanding, you might be able to run it via a windows virtual machine. It’s not perfect but for lighter programs or visual studio, it works.
If your program is graphically demanding (e.g. Adobe suite, CorelDraw, Autocad, etc…) you’re kinda out of luck and will have to dual boot… (Or loose your sanity trying to get them working through wine)
If you care about VRR or HDR, you need a distro with KDE Plasma and use a Wayland session. Plus, you’ll need the latest drivers, so… a rolling release.
Arch based like Manjaro, or OpenSUSE.
If you don’t like that, or you have an NVIDIA GPU then I suggest you try Nobara, made by Glorious Eggroll, big contributor to Proton (Valve’s fork of Wine, what makes Windows games run on Linux).
I always use https://luciole-vision.com/luciole-en.html to typeset documents like letters and such. I find it pleasant looking and it is supposedly easy to read for people with dyslexia.
Linux is vastly superior. I’ve been on Linux desktop for over 20 years now, I’ll never go back.
As a typical example: this weekend I install Linux (with download and making iso) takes 20 minutes, I install windows (first time in decades, something for my son), took fucking 6 hours, 14 attempts, loads of problem searching on internet.
Having said that, there are some things to keep in mind. Linux mostly (to users) is slightly different on a few details, and because of Microsoft, there are some things to keep in mind.
You’re a lawyer, so you might have to deal with Microsoft documents. Those you can process with LibreOffice (I don’t like it very much, like Microsoft office), google drive (works very nice, but is still closed source, google) or your own hosted linux server with nextcloud and only office (a bit harder to setup but then it’s all yours and under your control)
Look into any closed source windows applications that are required. Most windows programs run also under Linux (wine, proton, and these days various other solutions up to a virtual machine with windows for those few exceptions that won’t work on Linux for some reason)
Video formats are non-issue, Linux eats everything and mostly out of the box.
Then, Linux has distributions. See it as different car brands. They’re all cars, based on the same tech, just different brand names that do details slightly different. You gotta choose a distro (distribution). I HIGHLY recommend either fedora or (my person Lal preference) a Ubuntu variant. I personally have been using kubuntu for over a decade now. The graphical user interface works mostly like windows (just better) and most programs have Ubuntu ready Linux versions available, making installing them super easy. Install VirtualBox (free, as usual) to run windows in a virtual machine if needed, and setup multiple desktops so that you can easily switch to a windows desktop when needed (hopefully, and likely, never)
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