Pine vs mutt

Tim Chase blinux.list at thechases.com
Mon Oct 29 16:29:00 UTC 2007


I'd compare them as follows:

pine is to pico/nano as mutt is to vi/vim/emacs

Pine (and pico/nano) is/are easy to approach for the uninitiated, 
and get the basics done and a small handful of more advanced 
features.

Mutt (and vi/vim/emacs) has/have a much steeper learning curve, 
but also afford far more power to the user that's willing to 
invest the time to learn them.  They also allow for far more 
customization to your own whims, allowing you to do 
crazy-powerful things.  To further the analogy, I'd compare Mutt 
to vi/vim, and Thunderbird to XEmacs...vi/vim/mutt are svelte but 
a bit obscure while Thunderbird and XEmacs hog more resources and 
are a bit more approachable for the newbie.

I haven't yet made the jump to Mutt, but not for want to learn 
it.  I merely haven't had the time to invest in learning it (and 
Thunderbird does most of what I want with a few plugins).  I have 
a feeling that Mutt could do everything I need including a few 
aspects of Thunderbird I don't have (even with plugins).

Among mutt's advantages that I'm hoping to eventually win when I 
switch over:

  - accessibility over a SSH session

  - better mailing-list/usegroup management regarding duplicate 
posts and threading

  - message-bouncing

  - killfile/blacklist/kill-thread support

  - use of Vim as my message editor

  - next/previous unread message scanning (that works...in TB, 
the "next" works, but the "previous" is broken)

  - using less memory on my poor P800 with its meager 128 megs of 
memory (TB is a hog)

  - more keyboard friendly navigation

So that's my $0.02 on the matter.  If you have the time and 
energy to invest in learning it, Mutt should be great.  However, 
if you just want to get up and running as fast as possible, you 
may prefer Pine.

-tim







More information about the Blinux-list mailing list