I've tried to move away from gmail, but it's not easy.
I've been a kde fan for years, and back in the day used kmail. Triggered by this discussion, I tried again to use kmail with gmail/imap. But after waiting some hours for mail to sync gave up.
I've never used evolution, but decided to try it. This time speed to sync was much more acceptable. But there is one barrier to using evolution over gmail web interface. Gmail sorts mail automatically into "categories", distinct from the mail folders that you can manually create. I find these categories just too useful, and they are not reflected into imap folders. Without this sorting, my inbox is too cluttered with e.g., Promotions, which I would normally not bother with when using gmail/web.