Slackware Linux Essentials
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13.7 email

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Electronic mail is one of the most popular things one can do on the Internet. In 1998, -it was reported that more electronic mail was sent than regular mail. It is indeed common -and useful.

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Under Slackware, we provide a standard mail server, and several mail clients. All of -the clients discussed below are text-based. A lot of Windows users may be against this, -but you will find that a text based client is very convenient, especially when checking -mail remotely. Fear not, there are many graphical e-mail clients such as KDE's Kmail. If -you wish to use one of those check its help menu.

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13.7.1 `pine`

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pine(1) is not elm. Or so the saying -goes. The University of Washington created their program for Internet news and email out -of a need for an easy mail reader for their students. pine is -one of the most popular email clients in use today and is available for nearly every -flavor of Unix and even Windows.

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Figure 13-2. The Pine main menu

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You will see a menu of commands and a row of command keys at the bottom. pine is indeed a complex program, so we will not discuss every -feature about it here.

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To see what's in your inbox, type i. Your messages are -listed with their date, author, and subject. Highlight the message you want and press -enter to view it. Pressing r -will start a reply to the message. Once you have written the response, type Ctrl+X to send it. You can press i to get back to the message listing.

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If you want to delete a message, press d. It will mark -the highlighted message for deletion. pine deletes the mail when -you exit the program. pine also lets you store your mail in -folders. You can get a listing of folders by pressing l. At -the message listing, press s to save it to another folder. -It will ask for the folder name to write the message to.

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pine offers many, many features; you should definitely have a -look at the man page for more information. It will contain the latest information about -the program.

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13.7.2 `elm`

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elm(1) is another popular text-based email client. Though not -quite as user friendly as pine, it's definitely been around a -lot longer.

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Figure 13-3. Elm main screen

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By default, you are placed in your inbox. The messages are listed with the message -number, date, sender, and subject. Use the arrow keys to highlight the message you want. -Press Enter to read the message.

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To compose a new message, type m at the main screen. The -d key will flag a message for deletion. And the r key will reply to the current message you are reading. All of -these keys are displayed at the bottom of the screen with a prompt.

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The man page discusses elm in more detail, so you will -probably want to consult that before using elm.

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13.7.3 `mutt`

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“All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less.” mutt's original interface was based on elm -with added features found in other popular mailclients, resulting in a hybrid mutt.

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Some of mutt's features include:

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color support
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message threading
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MIME and PGP/MIME support
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pop3 and imap support
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support for multiple mailbox formats (mbox, MMDF, MH, maildir)
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highly customizable
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Figure 13-4. Mutt main screen

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if you're looking for a mail client that will let you be in total control over -everything, then you will like mutt. all the default settings -can be customized, keybindings can be changed. if you like to add a macro, you can.

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you probably want to take a look at the muttrc manpage, -which will tell you how to configure everything. or take a look at the included example -muttrc file.

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13.7.4 `nail`

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nail(1) is a command line driven mail client. It is very -primitive and offers pretty much nothing in the way of user interfaces. However, mailx is -handy for times when you need to quickly mail something, scripting a bulk mailer, testing -your MTA installation or something similar. Note that Slackware creates symbolic links to -nail at /usr/bin/mail and /usr/bin/mailx. Any of these three commands executes the same -program. In fact, you will most likely see nail referred to as -mail.

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The basic command line is:

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-% mailx <subject> <to-addr>
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mailx reads the message body from standard input. So you can -cat a file into this command to mail it, or you can just type text and hit Ctrl+D when finished with the message.

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Here is an example of mailing a program source file to another person.

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-% cat randomfunc.c | mail -s "Here's that function" asdf@example.net
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The man page explains more of what nail can do, so you will -probably want to have a look at that before using it.

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13.7 email

13.7.1 pine

13.7.2 elm

13.7.3 mutt

13.7.4 nail

13.7.1 `pine`

13.7.2 `elm`

13.7.3 `mutt`

13.7.4 `nail`