I just installed Gentoo on my girlfriends old laptop, and I’ve started using Thunderbird as my mail client. I do miss some of the features of Nautilus, like correct as you go spellcheck (not sure what the name for the feature is, where there’s a colored underline under misspelled words as you type). But there is also some coolness that I didn’t expect. For instance, Enigmail, a plugin that adds easy encrypt/decrypt/sign/verify using GPG. I’ve only just started playing with it, but so far I’m very impressed.