Mutt - email from the command line

Since I started using linux on my work machine I have been looking for good CLi alternatives to things I need on a daily basis. I was given a work laptop and I run my Xubuntu install off of a VM on my Windows 7 machine. What that translates to is that I'm constantly running low on RAM and CPU, therefore anything I can do from the CLi makes my computer happier. For this reason I decided to try to add my email to something I can check off of the command line. It would save me a solid 200-250 Mb of memory that I don't need to be spending on an email client that mostly just pops up incoming msgs all day. So after looking around, it seems like Mutt is the popular choice for people checking their email on the CLi.

To be perfectly honest, I really only need my client to check my mail on occasion, and if I need to respond to an email, I don't even mind opening Thunderbird then, but I just don't like keeping it open all day. But here is what you do to get Mutt running on your debian based distro:

$ sudo apt-get install mutt

this will install mutt on your distro... from there I got a Postfix Configuration screen. There you should find some details about the different types of configurations available (Internet site, Internet with SMTP, etc). For my purposes I just skipped this part and left with no changes to configuration, I will deal with that post install.

To access the configuration file for mutt use your favorite text editor (such as vim, nano, etc) and open ~/.muttrc so for me I will run

$ sudo nano ~/.muttrc

there you can add the following information for your particular email

set imap_user = “usernam@gmail.com”
set imap_pass = “passwrd”

set smtp_url = “smtp://usernam@smtp.gmail.com:587/”
set smtp_pass = “passwrd”
set from = “usernam@gmail.com”
set realname = “My name”

set folder = “imaps://imap.gmail.com:993”
set spoolfile = “+INBOX”
set postponed=”+[Gmail]/Drafts”

set header_cache=~/.mutt/cache/headers
set message_cachedir=~/.mutt/cache/bodies
set certificate_file=~/.mutt/certificates

set move = no

I probably don't need to tsay it, but change it to the information relevant to your email account of course. Leave the password fields blank if you prefer, and that will cause mutt to prompt you for it which may be a bit of a safer option.

From here you will need to run the program by typing

$ mutt

From your inbox use your

up/down arrow keys - move through your inbox
PgUp/PgDwn - move quickly through your inbox
Enter - opens the msg

Once you open a msg use

space - scroll down the msg
'-' (minus) - scroll up the msg (unfortunately you don't use up/down for this)
i - returns to inbox (seems like q works as well, which seems more natural to me)

For more information on how to use Mutt, this post was very useful to me:

http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/tutorials/get-started-with-mutt/1

Linux distro sampling pt3 - Debian Xfce + Xubuntu 14.04

Debian 7 Xfce edition (VM)

Next I decided to give Debian Xfce a try since I saw that I had already downloaded the torrent for it a few weeks ago. I have had quite a bit of experience with xfce from my previous Xubuntu installs. Once again, using a non-Ubuntu distro makes it so I have to learn quite a few new things, however using Xfce does seem to make it a bit more familiar to me. I think just changing from GNOME to Xfce has the potential to make this experience much better. It appears just as stable and consistent as the other DE, while being much more lightweight and looking much much more pleasing in my opinion. Judge it yourself.

Xubuntu 14.04 (VM)

Next I decided it might be a good idea to see if Ubuntu 14.04 would work well on my ASUS P550C laptop as a VM since I'm too chicken to try dual booting it on this machine. After trying it I realized it wasn't going to happen. Not only unity is extremely sluggish and buggy in this machine as a VM. Besides that the mini toolbar for Virtual box keeps leaving this dark bar where it comes out to, which makes it look pretty sloppy. Removing this black bar seems to require removing the mini Toolbar which I don't want to do either.

Due to these reason I tried Xubuntu 14.04 the Trusty Tahr next. I'm used to Xubuntu from all my other VMs and once again I must say Xubuntu makes for the best VM experience I've had so far. It can look beautiful, it works, it's fast and good on resources. Just perfect really. Plus have I mentioned how pretty your OS can look?

At some point I might put together a nice looking Xubuntu setup and maybe post something about all my setting for folks interested in what I did.

Linux distro sampling pt2 - Debian 7 on ASUS P550CA

Recently I got a new ASUS P550C laptop from work. As with most my machines nowadays I try to run some form of Linux on them to accomplish some of the tasks in which Windows is handicapped at performing. Well I will begin this post first talking about my experience with the actual computer first.

Laptop Review: ASUS P550C (also called ASUS P550CA on the website)

First of all, this laptop is fairly impressive at first glance. It has a nice 15" screen, it has a relatively nice keyboard that features a keypad which I'm very thankful for (no backlight though... I'm spoiled, I know!). It has a nice finish and it is very light in my opinion, which may be a bad opinion since I'm used to my alienware (performance and weight are often mutually exclusive). Right from the get-go I notice some issues with my wi-fi adapter. It would disconnect under windows every 5-10 minutes. I started using a cable because of it. The wifi is also completely not supported by ubuntu so I also had to use a cable under my dual boot Ubuntu 14.04 install I started with. Eventually the wifi completely gave up which I alerted to the it people. After they contacted the Tiger Direct they mentioned that this particular adapter has been giving users some headache. For those curious I'm speaking about Mediatek MT7630E 802.11bgn. Long story short, I just received a new machine.

The other major complaint I have regard the UEFI/booting rubbish that made it extremely difficult to dual boot Ubuntu on my first machine. My new machine so far has been even worst. Every time I try to install Ubuntu 14.04 it basically tells me I can only overwrite Windows. It does not display the "install alongside" option which is a bit scary. For this reason I don't want to do the partitions on my own since I don't want to have to fix the windows booting garbage that is now standard in so many machines.

In summary, I had a great first impression of my ASUS P550C laptop which soon turned into frustration. This ASUS laptop is very Linux unfriendly as far as I'm concerned, so I must give some thumbs down to ASUS for manufacturing a laptop in the year 2014 that simply can't play nice with other operational systems.

Debian 7 (VM)

Anyway, done with my rant on ASUS. Now that I've been scared enough I decided to just install VirtualBox and use linux through a VM on my work machine which is what I was doing before anyway. I decided that before I settle on one distro I wanted to sample a few to see what is the most practical and useful to me for the types of needs I will have at work.

Well the first thing I have to say is that trying to use Debian was the first time I realized how Ubuntu centric my Linux experience has been up to this point. There are so many choices and small differences working with Debian coming from Ubuntu based distros. The most striking for me was the fact that I didn't know how to work under root. As a lot of you know, in Ubuntu you can simply use sudo on everything, apparently Debian requires you to log in as root in order to perform a lot of different admin tasks. Anyway, there it is, I'm a linux noobie outside of ubuntu.


Unfortunately for me there is a pretty good learning curve to migrate to this version of Debian. I can definitely see the appeal of this distro as it seems very stable and full of great admin tools right from the clean install. Unfortunately, it is a tad too new for me at this point. I will certainly consider it when I have a bit more free time to learn how to get the most out of it. The other reason I am hesitant of using this distro on my laptop is the desktop environment, I do not like Gnome very much. For this reason I decided to see if Debian Xfce is a bit more friendly to someone like me... (continued on pt.3)