Mutt [Insert Dog Joke Here]

RRI — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 08:39:11 +0000

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.

XFCE Desktop

RRI — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:36:30 +0000

To cut a long story short, I’ve switched from KDE to XFCE, which is universally acknowledged as a ‘lightweight’ and easily customizable desktop environment. When I earlier switched to KDE 4.1, there were several bugs that were a constant source of irritation. Add to that the fact that applications like Amarok (which were the reason why I loved KDE) did not have the same level of features as their 3.5 version avatars, and I realized there was nothing that I really needed from KDE 4.1 anymore. I could have switched back to 3.5 of course, but I generally don’t like to rollback to an earlier version after having tasted the newer one. That’s how I ended up with XFCE.

XFCE has a nice clean look, and it is much faster too. Personally, I would happily sacrifice desktop effects for performace, so this switch worked out pretty well for me. Of course, there was ‘The Terminal UTF-8 Problem’ which I will describe in detail in another post.…

silentYak » KDE

Mutt [Insert Dog Joke Here]

XFCE Desktop