Re: [tlug] email programs

[Jonathan Q <jq@example.com>]

On Sunday 25 May 2003 23:20, Matt Doughty wrote:

> I really can't understand what exactly a graphical mail client has to
> offer.  I have to occationally use them, and I get all itchy. I would
> love to here what causes those who jump ship to do so.

I still use mutt at home, largely out of laziness :-) but also b/c I do like
a lot about it.  I use Kmail at work, and some of the neat things I get
from it are:

- Does not garble text in gpg-signed messages, including mixing it with
  lines from the previous mail, something I've experienced with several
  mutt versions and in any terminal emulator I've tried (kterm, xterm, konsole,
  gnome-terminal, rxvt);

- When receiving signed and/or encrypted mail, it not only color-codes this,
   it also gives you color coding for the degree of trust you have in the key
   that was used to sign/encrypt the mail.

- It's nice to be able to just click a URL and have Konqueror pop up with it.
  This is minor, I know, but it's convenient nevertheless;

- It's easy to use it to send from multiple identities, something I do on
  a daily basis at work.  I just select which idendity I want to use and
  which mail transport I want to use, and go;

- Mutt's address book is, well, rather basic.

- With a little more work, I can probably make all of its keybindings work
   exactly like they do in mutt.  I've already done the most important ones :-)

As a person who would like to promote Linux as a solution for the corporate
desktop environment (this differs from "Linux for the (Unwashed) Masses,"
which I no longer strongly support, a result of seeing how some of those
"masses" firmly hold to the idea that they can barge into a LUG list, demand
answers to the questions, and are utterly convinced that the members of that
list *owe* them help, and that when politely if firmly set straight, how they
resort to on-list and off-list threats and name-calling.   There are most
certainly people who I do not want using Linux, and over-promoting it 
for personal use tends, I think, to draw those sorts of people.

Corporate desktop use, in a supervised environment (that is, they have
a helpdesk and professional admins) is different.  There, you do have 
people who job it is to answer your questions and fix your problems, and
the end user doesn't have to know any more about Linux than s/he does 
about Windows or MacOS (and most end users neither know nor want to
know much about their OS).  Those few who actually want to learn Linux
can explore further and learn things, and then start bothering the help desk
for root access on their workstation :-)  They will eventually discover LUGs
and learn the Unix Way.

If Linux someday really does takeover the desktop market, I'll probably
have to convert all my systems to *bsd :-)

Jonathan
-- 
Jonathan Q
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