Good simple console email client

WarMachine · Apprentice Joined: 15 Jul 2002 Posts: 181

Wow there's a lot out there, many clients just too complex and confusing, all I need is to send and receive email from my ISP's POP3 server. I've tried mutt and pine. Simple is key here, thanks for any advice.

vargen · Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2003 11:39 am Post subject:

Isn't pine easy enough??
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MJN222 · Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2003 3:13 pm Post subject:

If you're looking for real baseline functionality you could try

WarMachine · Apprentice Joined: 15 Jul 2002 Posts: 181

well I can't get mutt to quit wanting to use sendmail, I just want to send it through my ISP's mail server, I can't even find where to set anything about receiving messages in pine

mutt and pine are both loaded with options I don't need or want, here's all the optiotns I need:
set it to receive and send to/from my ISP's server, my username+pass, and to not delete the messages from the server upon downloading, that's IT.

MJN222 · Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2003 12:39 am Post subject:

I can't really think of any other console based mail clients off the top of my head.

It sounds like telneting to your mailserver and reading the messages there might work for your purposes (it sounds like you just want to be able to check your mail from this machine from time to time and do your "heavy" mailing from another box, obviously this is just speculation)

if that doesn't work you might want to look at setting up mutt or pine to do this for you(I know you don't want to use these, but I dont' know what else there is available - you could write a simple program to go out to your webserver and fetch the messages and/or send one out...and tie it together with a script to run your favorite editor if you wanted to send mail out...not too difficult if you're a coder, a bit daunting otherwise)

For more info on configuring mutt to work with remote pop3 and/or imap servers take a look here
http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/manual-4.html#ss4.10
I would think pine has similar functionality, try digging around that site if you want to use pine.

Sorry I can't help you out more, if you find a mail client that fits your description let me know, I'm curious if there is one that "lightweight"

WarMachine · Apprentice Joined: 15 Jul 2002 Posts: 181

I can't believe just waiting and using outlook express on my windows machine is the simplest solution to this

loveshack · Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2003 4:07 am Post subject:

therandomor · Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2003 1:58 am Post subject: elm

elm is a command line mail program that i have used for years. it's kinda hard to find now...
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devon · l33t Joined: 23 Jun 2003 Posts: 943

gnac · Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2003 11:24 pm Post subject:

Has anyone tried Elmo?

http://elmo.sourceforge.net/

It looks like what you want, (direct connect to smtp/pop). I don't know about leaving messages on server, I just started looking for a client myself so I can check my personal mail from work without having *mail installed at home.

Liathus · Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2003 12:49 am Post subject:

i have to agree with some of the others. Pine is the defacto command line email client. Yes it has a lot of options... but that doesnt mean you need to use them.

patroclo7 · n00b Joined: 28 Feb 2004 Posts: 68

I use elmo every day... and it is really a nice app... easy to configure... fast... The ideal mail console client for a single-user workstation which uses remote pop3 and smtp (also with authentication) servers: probably the most common situation for desktop users. The ncurses interface is nice.
Alas, the actual version is not in portage and the version actually in portage is really old. You need to compile it on your own (however, it's really simple).
The actual version is not in portage due to a compatibility problem with gpgme. But there is a patch to solve the problem, and the next version will be patched and will be in portage. :-)

I think that elmo is a very important, not enough known app in order to show to newbies the beauty and the usability of the console :-)

The main reason why newbies prefer graphical email-clients as kmail or thunderbird or sylpheed (sylpheed is nice :-)

) is not that they prefer graphical apps, but that postfix+fetchmail+mutt+procmail is TOO MUCH for a single user desktop. They are perfectly right in refusing them.
As an all-in-one console email client, elmo has at the moment no alternative. Support it!

drathos · n00b Joined: 01 Mar 2004 Posts: 4

LokiCoki · Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 4:16 am Post subject:

Hey loveshack! Thanks a lot for the quick pine setup tip. That's excactly what I was looking for.
It worked perfectly!

Just a little detail, in .fetchmailrc, you cannot put both fetchall and keep because you would keep downloading the same emails over and over again!!

Here's my .fetchmailrc :

LokiCoki · Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 10:40 pm Post subject:

Ok, I said it worked perfectly, but I spoke a bit to fast.

There are a couple points that need to be modified.
First of all, the .procmailrc file was useless for me. I delete the one I had created. In my .fetchmailrc, I replaced the line

stahlsau · Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 7:51 am Post subject:

"email" is my favorite client. It's in portage, too

No hassle to set-up, and to write an email you just type

ashibaka · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 11 Jan 2003 Posts: 107

Spiffster · Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 2:14 pm Post subject: mutt haters?

ashibaka · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 11 Jan 2003 Posts: 107

bugg_tb · Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 1:43 pm Post subject:

At home I use thunderbird to fetch, and store my mail in its relative folders, and at work I can ssh into my compter, what I am interested to know is with any of the programs listed above is it possible to read you thunderbird mail store from the command line?
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