is mutt a good email client?

Tyir · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2004 7:38 pm Post subject: is mutt a good email client?

I am thinking of ditching my long-used sylpheed, there are a couple things about it that bug me...

i am considering 2, thunderbird and mutt, the 2 sides of the spectrum, it seems to me

I have been moving more-and-more towards text-based programs...so am thinking of giving mutt a whirl.

my question is, do you think that mutt sitll stacks up well against modern clients (such as thunderbird)?

papal_authority · Veteran Joined: 31 Mar 2004 Posts: 1823 Location: Canada

Hell yes. I find the key to Mutt is having small fast MIME handlers like Dillo (HTML) and QIV (images) for MIME handling.

gnuageux · Veteran Joined: 17 Apr 2004 Posts: 1201

Mutts great!
_________________
The realOTW: http://forums.realotw.org/index.php

Registered Linux user#364538

Lunchy · Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2004 1:10 pm Post subject:

I've fallin in love with mutt. It's customizable in the extreme, so much so that I've given up graphical email clients. However, the downside to something being very customizable is the learning curve, which for me was kinda steep. But now that I took the time to understand it better and get it set up the way I like, it was totally worth the effort and now I can do everything I wished the graphical clients would do. Long story short, I highly recommend it.

_________________
-Lunchy

steel300 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Posts: 1155

I'm going to put just a little more emphasis on the steep learning curve. But with that learning curve, it can do anything you want it to do. I even got it working with kerberos authentication.
_________________
Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.

Dr Evil · n00b Joined: 25 Jan 2004 Posts: 41

I absolutely love Mutt. Won't go back to a graphical client if I can help it.

I'm only using the basic setup in the Mutt guide I saw floating in the Gentoo docs somewhere, but for me that's more than sufficient.

tristure · Apprentice Joined: 30 Oct 2003 Posts: 270 Location: France

I don't know about Mutt but I tried Thunderbird and I'm not very enthusiastic about it.
Firefox rocks big time but Thunderbird really isn't there yet. It's terribly slow imho, and doesn't look that good.

Don't flame me, but I would personaly advise you to try Kmail if you're in KDE. It's very fast on my my box, very good looking and much more usable than thunderbird.

I'll try mutt one of these days, though.

tristure · Apprentice Joined: 30 Oct 2003 Posts: 270 Location: France

[Double post, sorry]

tristure · Apprentice Joined: 30 Oct 2003 Posts: 270 Location: France

[Oh, triple post!! Sorry again]

aethyr · Veteran Joined: 06 Apr 2003 Posts: 1085 Location: NYC

I love mutt. I have a shortcut to start it up in an xterm window, and it starts up and displays my inbox in about 2 seconds.

I think the key to really enjoying mutt is learning the shortcut keys, and learning to set up a muttrc that suits your needs. Mutt allows for a great amount of customization.

As far as shortcut keys, some of my more common are:
'/' - search
'TAB' - next unread message
'D' - delete pattern
'l' - limit displayed messages
'o' - organize

Lots more too that I'm not remembering, but mutt is very convenient once you get used to it.

Tyir · Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 6:30 pm Post subject:

hey, thanks for recommending it to me guys! (too late, actually, since I had switched full-time to mutt a couple days after the post!)

It really is an amazing client, I love pulling it up through the putty ssh client for windows..

another useful tip I learned, press t to 'tag' a message, then tag as many as you want, and then ; to finish tagging. then you can move/delete them all at one.
_________________
There are two things I have learnt in life:
1. Don't reveal everything you know.

BlinkEye · Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 1:04 pm Post subject:

does someone know how to display unread (not new) messages in the folder preview?

the BIG PROBLEM is that mutt displays only the new message in the mailboxes (i.e. once mutt is closed a still unread new message loses its status "new" even though it is still new and is treated as unread). i understand that this might be of use but then i NEED a flag for unread messages.

this is my folder format:

aethyr · Veteran Joined: 06 Apr 2003 Posts: 1085 Location: NYC

Tyir · Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 7:18 pm Post subject:

Yep, if there is a new message, but you close mutt, it should be marked with an O
_________________
There are two things I have learnt in life:
1. Don't reveal everything you know.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20090

Moved from Other Things Gentoo.
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo?

Stormy Eyes · Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 7:43 pm Post subject:

Mutt rules. Read this HOWTO.

slarti` · Retired Dev Joined: 20 Sep 2003 Posts: 376 Location: UK

Mutt is excellent. The documentation is both thorough and clear, so check http://www.mutt.org out.

My system looks something like this:

Getmail from dev.gentoo.org and mail.edgeoftheinterweb.org.uk using SSL and IMAP in the first instance, POP3 in the second.
Procmail for sorting and filtering. First of all, all mail is filtered through clamassassin (a spamassassin-like interface to clamav which I maintain). Then I use it to catch duplicates, filter HTML mail, correct Lines: headers so that Mutt can correctly display the number of lines in the message even when it's stored in a maildir, reformat old-style PGP messages to MIME, mailing list filtering, then spamassassin and razor for spam filtering on the remaining likely-spam mail.
Mutt
Vim
Msmtp, another package I maintain. A full featured SMTP client, designed for use with mutt.

So much stuff here just cannot be done in other mail clients, whether it's procmail or mutt that's doing the work. For instance, I have two mail accounts, and I use send-hooks to change my account and various other settings depending on who I'm sending to. I use folder-hooks to colour mail based on regular expressions in the subject, or sender. Seriously useful for filtering rubbish.

Never forget `?'. If you're stuck, it's always there for you.
_________________
Gentoo/AMD64, shell-tools, net-mail, vim, recruiters
IRC: slarti @ irc.freenode.net
Devspace

Ari Rahikkala · Guru Joined: 02 Oct 2002 Posts: 370 Location: Finland

Mutt sucks.

It sucks less than the other clients, though :p.
_________________
<laurentius> gentoo linux?
<ari> Yesh.
<laurentius> they look horny

WhyteWolf · Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 7:33 am Post subject:

honestly I love mutt

heres a sample of my muttrc on a debian server I'm always sshing into

yakapiece · Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2004 3:01 pm Post subject:

definitely mutt

Tyir · Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 6:19 am Post subject:

For some reason Blinkeye used my post to ask a mutt question, but there is no point of convincing me, I've been a full-time mutt user Since June (check the dates!)

Yes, mutt is awsome
_________________
There are two things I have learnt in life:
1. Don't reveal everything you know.