After I switched from KDE to XFCE as my desktop environ­ment, I had to abandon KMail as my email client (since I would rather not run KDE-based appli­ca­tions in a non-KDE environ­ment). The replace­ment I settled on was mutt, something I had already tried and liked a lot.

So what’s the big deal about console appli­ca­tions, you ask? I don’t know, but they’re just much nicer than GUI clients. It must be genetic or something.

So here’s how I’ve set up mutt:

• I can read my Gmail messages (actually, Google Mail for my domain).
• I can send email using Postfix, which routes messages through Gmail’s server
• The recipient’s address is automat­i­cally added to my address­book when I send email
• I can look up or autocom­plete addresses while composing email
• Messages are signed using GnuPG before they are actually sent

I don’t like to manually check my email. Instead, I’ve set up a mail-notification applet (a ‘biff’) to check my email every couple of minutes and play a sound when there are new messages. Reading, deleting and composing mail are all just a few keystrokes away. Addition­ally, there is no need to open any heavy appli­ca­tion — the terminal window pops up within seconds.