I had been an avid user of Pine for almost five years. Recently, I decided to move to a greener posture. I dumped my good old Pine and settled with a graphical client. Although, sometime I miss the simple, fast, text based interface, the new relationship is shaping up to be an exciting one. We have our bad times, but overall I am happy with the switch.Email has been an integral part of my daily life. I will admit my addiction for checking emails. From the latest spam to enlarge my certain organ to the email from an old friend — I just love getting emails. On a serious note, a big chunk of my work depends on reading and responding to emails. I receive about 200 emails(not counting spam) on average a day. A good, trusty email client in these days of information overload is necessary. You need a client that is easy to use, can handle spam, easily tunes with your favorite operating system / desktop environment. And yes, if you are a Usenet junkie, you need an email client that works as a news reader as well.
Pine can provide all of the above and it was fulfilling my needs just fine. I started using Pine heavily around ’98. It was beginning of my undergraduate career. Like most other big schools, our email cluster was in a Sun OS box. I didn’t bother installing a POP/IMAP client at home or work. Just ssh to the server, type ‘p’ (my alias for pine) in the prompt and Walla — you’ve got mail. I remember checking my email from the Heathrow airport, I remember checking it from Brazil(Indiana). There are fond memories attached with Pine. I never thought that I would use something else for my email.
Then, why the dumping? My school decided to get rid of the Unix cluster / shell access and provide everyone with a web interface. The option of login to the server and using Pine was gone. I could have still use Pine in my GNU/Linux workstation as a IMAP client or even when I would be using a PC, there was PC-Pine. However, standing at the crossroads, I decided to seek something new, something different.
I tried Mozilla mail for couple days, didn’t like it. I can’t remember the details but I could tell there was a lack of spark between us. Then I installed Thunderbird at my work machine(was secretly login to the cluster and using Pine at home). It seemed less bloated than Mozilla and I liked the interface. Now, clicking mouse for reading emails was new to me(I know there are key shortcuts, but when you are in a graphical environment you tend to lean towards the mouse). It took me a while to get
used to this foreign notion. Days went by and I finally lost my Unix account. I started to spend more time with my new email client. To my surprise I started to like the new features.
You can’t really compare a text based email client to a graphical one. So I won’t be doing that here. But I can complain about few things. First of all, the shell integration. As I was login to a server where all my files resided, I was able to go between a shell and Pine in the same window. I could easily, with one or two commands, copy/paste/read files, run a Perl script as needed. I can do the same while I am using Thunderbird, but there is this extra step of opening a shell window. And if I want to insert a file, I have to do a copy/paste or add it as an attachment. In other words, I can’t use Thunderbird from the shell. (Duh, that is why they call it graphical.)
Another thing that bothered me is I have to install the client in each machine I use. Although IMAP allows me to retrieve all the folders from the mail server but the filters and spam controls do not get imported. For instance, if I create a filter at work, I will have to do the same at home if I want to move those messages in a certain folder. I can install my own mail server and have my own filtering setup, but I am too lazy and would like to rely on the school’s server. I also have to train the junk mail controller every time I install a new client. I had procmail and SPAMAssasain in my old setup. The filters that I have now in Thunderbird is as good as those old recipes.
One thing I certainly didn’t had with Pine is the ability to view the folders in the left pane of Thunderbird and see how may unread messages I have in each folder. I like the option of using different themes for customizing the skins of the interface. Secure IMAP, digital signing, message encryption, certificate supports make Thunderbird a very safe client. The ad-ons and extensions are neat as well.
It will be almost three months since I last used Pine. I now use Thunderbird both at home and work. Sometime spams get in the way but I can get my work done with all the hoopla. I knew I had to give up few things when I moved to a graphical client. I was ok with the sacrifice in order to embrace some new features. I also wanted a client that didn’t need much tweaking.
You can’t replace Pine with Thunderbird or vice versa. What matters end of the day is I can read and respond to the all the emails with a program that I like to get back to every day. Wait, I think I just got a new mail, someone wants my “URGENT ASSISTANCE”. I have to go.
About the Author:
Sharif Islam is currently working as a Research Programmer for University of Illinois Library Sytems Office. He hosts a morning radio show every Monday at a local community radio station.
When you really want shell integration in Thunderbird, you can always write a plugin for it.
Just have a look at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/specs/extensions.html for ideas.
“Walla”
Interesting spelling of voilá (which I’ve probably spelt wrong as well ^^;;)
i think the author, Sharif Islam, actaully meant “Wallah”.
the only reason i use a gui mail clients is to easily read HTML and other rich formats. sometimes very rarely HTML mail is useful. (such as monthly wghats-on mails from the National Portrait Gallery, UK), for example.
i use Evolution but it keeps crashing on me. i use it in the hope that one day it will be able to do task and calander sharing easily.
Evolution is rock stable here and I prefer it to Thunderbird.
I’m not a big fan of thunderbird. It’s a bit clunky and it goes wrong sometimes.
Evolution is better in my option, but kmail beats the pants off of both of them.
Pine users fear no more for there is Mutt! Mutt is an elegant ncurses MUA with many, many features available. Very good documentation as well. A more liberal license. And for the nostalgic there is “muttlikepine” which makes your Mutt function almost exactly the same like Pine. You don’t *have* to use a GUI or X MUA these days, there are still good alternatives available. Details and more at http://www.mutt.org (run it in screen / ssh and never look back
Because I find it stable and working-good.
“KMail ist gay as hell. <- expect nothing from a toolkit which looks like LEGO-toys.”
the best ever comment I saw about guys who don’t like QT(KDE)
I use opera’s M2 in both Windows and Linux, and love it to death. I guess it is all in what you are used to though.
Let me recommend Gnus – http://www.gnus.org – it takes some time getting used to, but once you do, you’ll never look back.
I never got the hang of Pine.
Hi hi hi “Pine Vs Mozilla ThunderBird”
Why not Lynx vs Mozilla Firefox ?
I’m trying to find a nicer e-mail client I can use here at work instead of horrible old Netscape mail. Unfortunately I’m on Redhat 7.2 and don’t have superuser permissions.
Tried Kmail and it’s nice, but unfortunately lacks the ability to filter into IMAP folders. This is a major bummer.
Tried installing Thunderbird but I can’t seem to get round not having libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 and presumably some other shared libs.
I could probably put up with mozilla mail but I can’t get it to play nice with Firefox for some reason.
Can’t install a recent verion of Balsa due to library problems, and the one I have here (V1.x something) doesn’t do filtering.
Can’t install Evolution without root permissions.
As you may have gathered, I’m no Linux expert, but I’d be grateful for any suggestions if there’s anything else around that might fit the bill.
You could install thunderbird on a USB Memory stick and make sure your profile data is there too and run it from the stick. (See http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=81759 )
Or you could try to set up some kind of network drive where you locate your profile and configure each thunderbird installation from their. (Please note it’s only a low priority for the devs to allow multiple thunderbird instances access the profile data simultaneously)
i use thunderbird for one primary reason: the baysian spam filter. i love it to death.
iv tried evolution, pine, and a gtk1 client i cannot remember the name of and liked them all, but without a similar spam filter i just cant use it.
that being said, is there any way to use a baysian filter with these apps? i dont dislike thunderbird, but evolution would be a nice change for a while
Another thing that bothered me is I have to install the client in each machine I use. Although IMAP allows me to retrieve all the folders from the mail server but the filters and spam controls do not get imported. For instance, if I create a filter at work, I will have to do the same at home if I want to move those messages in a certain folder. I can install my own mail server and have my own filtering setup, but I am too lazy and would like to rely on the school’s server. I also have to train the junk mail controller every time I install a new client. I had procmail and SPAMAssasain in my old setup. The filters that I have now in Thunderbird is as good as those old recipes.
I wonder if an IMAP client could use one of the server-side folders and/or email messages to store some or all of its settings? Then any changes in settings/filters could be reflected in all clients.
Of course there might be security implications – if the settings were stored as an email message of a particular format, it might be possible to get screwed over by receiving a carefully crafted email message from someone.
Or maybe there is already something like this done in some implementations?
You almost had it right, it’s “voilà”
(But I guess in English you just don’t have to put the accent on the a).
I wanted to try out Mutt but … call me stupid … I couldn’t figure out how to use it even after reading the documenation. (More specifically, I couldn’t figure out how to write my .muttrc so that it would check my imaps account.)
You could always use the fatal combination: fetchmail + procmail + spam assassin + the MUA of your choice.
I wonder if an IMAP client could use one of the server-side folders and/or email messages to store some or all of its settings? Then any changes in settings/filters could be reflected in all clients.
Pine has this:
http://www.washington.edu/pine/tech-notes/low-level.html#remote-con…
to the previous poster – i use evolution with spam assasin. after abourt 2 montsh of training it – i no longe rneed to train it and it works exrtremely well. saves me a lot of time.
wallah is a joyous surprised exclamation in arabic, which the author Sharif Islam is more likely to have uttered than … et voila … although he might be from a francophoen ocuntry. less of the liberal imperialism please!
So that’s why the sysadmin keeps winking at me!
I’m using the latest Thunderbird on Windows XP and I simply love it. The spamfilter is the best so far.
Anything for linux with a k in front of it is gay IMHO [except of course for the kernel
]
So that’s why everyone looks at me funny when I talk about the “k-ernel”…
As a pine user for going on 10 years now, I can’t shake the huge advantage that having my mail available in an identical setup from anywhere (that has ssh) gives me. I tried mutt, but it acted too much like elm. I tried “cone”, but never got comfortable with it.
Fetchmail + procmail + spamassassin + pine works pretty well, I only 2-3 pieces of spam a week (filtering rate of 99% or so).
iv tried evolution but without a similar spam filter i just cant use it. is there any way to use a baysian filter with these apps? i dont dislike thunderbird, but evolution would be a nice change for a while
Sure. Using Spamassassin with Evolution is not difficult. Just read a good howto first like this one: http://www.atlantawebhost.com/articles/evolution_spamassassin.php
Spamassassin has Bayesian learning (read e.g: http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/BayesInSpamAssassin ), black and white lists, lots of addons etc.
You can also use SA with both Razor, DCC and Pyzor.
I use Evolution + Spamassassin + Razor and it works quite well for me. Only problem is that SA (used on your own PC) like most other spam filters, still prefers to download the spam which can take extra time. There was some program (I cannot remember the name) that deletes spam already on the sever before it reaches your box. That might suit you better if you get very much spam (putting your pals to a white list would prevent the filter from accidentally deleting those mails).
Also, if I remember right, the next version of Evolution will have an intergrated spamfilter.
oh yeah, i just set up spamassassin and it is great!
thanks to all who suggested it, believe it or not iv never heard of it until now ^_^;;
I would recommend something more effective like Popfile (http://popfile.sf.net).
Also Mozilla is lacking some important features (well I believe there are just no GUIs for the back-end features which are implemented):
Configurable folder for where Deleted Messages are moved (IMAP).
Identity support (allow choosing from multiple From’s for one mail account).
The offline support also need some work, it frequently “loses” messages I have already downloaded.
Faster loading of folders. It takes three seconds to open an IMAP folder, no matter what. Just show me the damn cached messages, and don’t ask like the interface is completely frozen. Add the new ones as they arrive, even Outlook Express can do this.
There is no reason to change the title of the application every time I change folders.
There is no reason to open a new window every time I double click on a folder. Maybe I double clicked because I’m tired of waiting for it to load so slowly! Now I have two windows, run slowly.
Unfortunately, the authors are busy adding RSS support, and other useless bloat, but maybe someday the interface will be usable.
In your .mutt/muttrc:
set folder=”imap://username@server:993″
set imap_keepalive=60
set imap_forcessl=yes
set imap_authenticators=”LOGIN”
set imap_user=username
set spoolfile=”imap://username@server:993/INBOX”
If your username includes an @ sign, change it for a % example:
set folder=”imap://dave%[email protected]:993″
Of course it goes without saying that your mutt must be compiled both with SSL and IMAP support.
And the best part? All this works under the cygwin port of mutt, too! Just because you have to use windows is no reason to deny yourself a decent mail client!
I use Yahoo! mail. It is accessable from anything with an internet connection, and it retrieves my pop mail from me as well.
I’ve been using pine since 95. Every time I try one of these GUI clients I don’t get it, why use a bit fat bloated GUI client to read TEXT messages. And for you newbie’s out there HTML does not belong in e-mail. Even on my windows workstations I’m still using PC-Pine. Combine pine with procmail and there is nothing better.
If I am logged on to the console of a machine with X running, I usually use evolution. If I’m connected over ssh or a slow connection I’ll use mutt.
I couldn’t help noticing the assertion that you need a graphical client to have a folder view. Not true. Mutt has this (not officially yet). http://vorlon.cwru.edu/~jrh29/mutt/ The screenshot is fearsome. http://vorlon.cwru.edu/~jrh29/mutt/mutt_shot_patch8.png If you configure your ~/.mailcap to run text/html through a filter to textize HTML, you’re set. With this and w3m, you can get by on terminal windows alone.
The Gui mail clients I have tried include Evolution, Thunderbird and Sylpheed (my preferred over the the other 2)- and at the end, I keep going back to Mutt.
It’s fast and has tons of configurations which are great for me to kill time. Also switching between folders in Mutt is easy, I just bind mail folders into keys such as F1-F7. I also use it to access my imap account. Basically it does everything I need.
My complete email solution includes mutt, ssmtp, fetchmail, procmail, crontab, spamassassin and bogofilter. Like you I receive lots of mails (and spams) daily. Every 30 minutes fetchmail is executed from cron. Feeds all the incomming mails to procmail. Procmail filters out the ones I want to specific folders. Then the rest go through Bogofilter then SA. All the junks go into a Junk folder. I rarely if ever gets any spam. The settings I have are rock solid for the past several years (technically I just start using bogofilter & spamassassin within the past 6 months when all the sudden my mailbox is filled with spams daily).
Obviously a GUI all-in-one like Tbird is much easer to setup, built in Bayesian spam filter etc . But I just prefer CLI over GUI.
O’Wait, wrong holy war. Now I like Slypheed and Slypheed-claws.
1) Slypheed-claws for windows
2) Either Sylpheed or Slypheed-claws for *nix.
Dunno if it’s been pointed out already, but <voilà> is often pronounced [wala].
Funny, funny. Thanks for some levity
I generally install my GUI mail client on one machine, then `ssh -X -Y` to it and run. That way I only need one local setup.