Re: [PLUG] Configuring Mutt or another email program

[Bill Jonas <bill@billjonas.com>]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 08:31:36PM -0400, John Beck wrote:
> My question is, what mail program is recommended for me to use (mutt and
> pine are installed, though I have never used them.  I am open for other
> options though).  Also, once I figure the mail program, how do I
> configure it using the info I have (incoming mail server, outgoing
> server, news, and all my id's and passwords)?

If you like Netscape Mail, that's available under Linux, too.  That
might be your best bet, at first.  Mozilla's mail client is similar to
Netscape's.  (Three-pane view, etc.)  You can configure Netscape Mail
for Linux in the same way that you do for MS Windows.

I'm fond of mutt, myself.  In order to use something like mutt, you'll
need to either have a shell account on the machine that receives your
mail or run fetchmail (or similar) and a mail transport program (like
sendmail, or similar).  Pine is more newbie-friendly (I think it does
POP3 and SMTP, but I could be mistaken), but it has license issues (I
can provide a URL if you're interested).  OTOH, mutt is much more
powerful, and if you like GnuPG/PGP, it has integrated support.  The big
win for using fetchmail or one of its kin (or reading your mail from
your shell account) is that you can set up mail filtering with a program
like procmail.

Of course, these aren't the only three mail clients out there.  KDE and
GNOME each have their own mail clients, and there are a host of others.
(Search http://freshmeat.net/ with search terms like "mail client" if
you're interested.)  There are many mutt configuration files available
at http://www.dotfiles.com/, too.

-- 
Bill Jonas    *    bill@billjonas.com    *    http://www.billjonas.com/
"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others,  we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and
this we should do freely and generously."          -- Benjamin Franklin


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