Re: which MTA to choose for a simple client?
Le 09.10.2013 11:08, Jochen Spieker a écrit :
berenger.morel@neutralite.org:
I finally decided myself to install a software to manage my mails.
Good luck! My impression is that this is one of the few things that
have
not become considerably easier on Linux in the last ten years.
Mutt is still a good choice today if you can live with the limits of
a
terminal. I use it myself, but not completely exclusively.
I can live enough with terminal's limits to no longer using IDE for
programming, no longer using graphical file-manager to manage my files,
and even to start user installed applications.
In fact, I simply can not support the limits of graphical GUIs: they
force me to grab my mouse for minor tasks that I should be able to do
with keyboard.
I still have the web browser to adapt on my todo-list, opera is nice
but still have failures in this regard.
Plus, GUIs are rarely efficient when you use dark background, and white
background hurts less my eyes at night when switching from the dark ones
that I like to use for terminals.
You need to address at least these questions:
- How do I plan to access mails using mutt (IMAP or local storage?)
IMAP. Local storage is probably nice for some uses, but I'll be honest:
I can not see the interest of reading all my mails without Internet
access. I do not say there are no uses for that, simply, they are not my
uses.
that part completely if you mail is already on an IMAP-capable
server.
Mutt can access that as well. Works fine for me. Some people complain
about speed, but that doesn't apply to me. As long as you have header
caching enabled in mutt and your mailboxes are smaller than, say,
10,000
mails, it should be fast enough.
So it seems that it is perfect for me. I often clean my mails so have
less than 200, and the server is IMAP-capable.
This is handy if you use several different mail
providers
Few months ago, I had something like 4 or 5 addresses. It was a ugly
and boring mess, so I deleted most of them and only kept this one. No
ads, associative work, no headaches because standard features of server
are configured in ways to only work by some software of the same
company's defaults, etc.
I no longer have need for multiple addresses, now when I need a garbage
mail, I ask jetable.org to give me a temporary one.
or if several people use the mail server.
It is for a personal use. I want an advanced end-user desktop, not a
universal computer able to make tea and coffee.
For the fetcher, I am surprised that debian does not seems to
recommend or suggest using one, so I will not spend time on that
-for now at least- and will do as the article says, unless I
discover something interesting in the process.
Setups like yours have come out of fashion in the last few years.
People
either use GUI clients or web interfaces these days. :-/
I use web interfaces for now. You can not be surprised of that when you
see the difference of time needed between a web-client or a heavy GUI
client ( thunderbird, MS outlook... I do not mind ) versus client which
only does one thing but does it correctly, after X hours of
configuration and choice. Having tools which does their stuff correctly
imply that you have to find and understand them. That's what I want to
end-up for my mail client.
_ is not a daemon running constantly: why should I have a daemon
running to send mail when I am not connected to Internet or not
taking care of my mails?
Don't be bothered about that. My central Postfix server in my LAN
uses
less than 5MB of RAM. It really doesn't matter. Total CPU usage in
100
days of uptime is about 36 seconds.
5MiB are nothing, true. It is only 0.5% of the capacity of my netbook
and you can divide that by 4 for my desktop: 1GB and 4GB or ram. But I
also have a very old computer with less than 200MB which is surprisingly
not so slow with a Debian on it. Here, it is not so negligible.
Plus, if for every single task I want to do frequently, I think '5MB
are nothing', then I'll quickly come to have, say, 30*5 = 150MB, which
is not nothing. Of course, on my system I guess that it won't take 5MB,
since I have less mails to process, and my systems are often restarted.
My average uptime is probably close to 8H for all my computers.
Something which is started by the client (
MUA it seem? ) is good enough for me and does not consume time when
starting or shutting down my computers.
_ is lightweight, because I always aim to have a system which let
all possible resources to my compilers, and which respect my
batteries. I bet that if I can still survive 4H with wifi after 3
years of intensive use, it is partly because I do not use heavy
softwares.
Ok, I see where you are coming from. But believe my when I say that a
simple full-fledged MTA does not use any considerable amount of
resources (unless you constantly bombard it with more than ten mails
per
second).
Startup time is also negligible.
_ is configured by raw text in the good old UNIX way because I have
learn so many from Debian's configuration files and their comments,
which are very useful when you messed everything and can not even
access Internet :)
Don't worry about that. Both Postfix and Exim use plain text config
files and come with tons of useful documentation.
I was not really worried about that, but it is a nice way to say 'no'
to graphical clients and other stuff which depends on dbus, fookit and
that kind of tools for which I can not find any use but which are needed
through obscure dependencies. They nicely hide what the system does, so
are nice for some users, but not for me who likes to be able to read my
configuration without dedicated tools.
Just as an example on what is possible:
<snip>
I don't want to give the impression that such a setup is easy to
build,
but maintenance effort is very low.
J.
This setup sounds awesome, and, maybe, someday I'll come to it for a
reason or another.
But for now, I am only searching a simple way to read and send mails
through a local client adapted to my needs, and it happens that usually
terminal applications are more usable than graphical ones for keyboard
and TWM users.
Configuring is ok for me, as long as I do not spend more than 1H
reading endless docs to have the "hello world" working. By hello world,
I mean a setup which only does one thing, nothing "useless" (for my
needs, I mean). Then spending some time to make it do more complex
things, adding some sugar to the cake, is not a problem, I can deal with
that.
Debian's configurations are great, because they works out-of-the-box,
but they include stuff you do not necessarily need to do. They are...
universal. But I am not. Of course, I like the way Debian sees it: it
gives me the possibility to heavily customize my system.
Reply to: