3 ms·

I am shocked — shocked — to see the guide I wrote 22 years ago on Mutt & GPG to be linked as relevant in this modern guide. I don’t use the combo anymore, but t

I am shocked — shocked — to see the guide I wrote 22 years ago on Mutt & GPG to be linked as relevant in this modern guide. I don’t use the combo anymore, but there is sometime affirming to me about Mutt still being relevant after all this time. Good tools that do a good job are still valuable.

jjav 4y ago
> I am shocked — shocked — to see the guide I wrote 22 years ago on Mutt & GPG to be linked as relevant in this modern guide. I don’t use the combo anymore, but there is sometime affirming to me about Mutt still being relevant after all this time. Good tools that do a good job are still valuable. Yes! That should be the standard to aspire to with all software. Not the constant change for the sake of change. I set up a very highly customized (simplified) mutt setup for my parents in 1996 and the exact same setup continues to work today and my now-almost-100 year old parent continues to use it. Anyone who has tried to keep older people using software knows the nightmare of UI changes. Even a small movement in the placement of icons is a big hill to climb. Consistency is key. My parent has given up on using the web because both the browser and website UIs keep changing all the time, it becomes too frustrating for them. So they gave up. But thanks to mutt they continue to use email actively, nothing has changed since 1996 when they memorized how to use it.
- incanus77 4y ago
  That's amazing, and great perspective. I see with my own parents (one of them more so) how difficult they find UI changes. For a lot of people, it's not just finding the same- or similarly-named button, but spatial placement and appearance can also be important.
zwayhowder 4y ago
I got as far as the assumption of POP3 for fetching mail and stopped reading TBH. Here was me hoping for some cool new guide about Mutt with Oauth or similar.
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
  POP3 is still useful. I have many addresses for various needs and don't need to store email on servers for almost all of them (mostly because it costs money). There is at least one IMAP client* that supports fetching mail (not syncing like most of them do), but POP3 has much wider selection of clients and serves that need perfectly. *: https://github.com/nicm/fdm https://github.com/nicm/fdm
  - zwayhowder 4y ago
    Every company I've worked at for the last decade at least has disabled POP3. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying for a mail client to be useful in most orgs it needs to support IMAP (and these days Oauth2). Having just found the updated instructions for using Oauth2 with isync on the Arch wiki I know what I'll be doing this weekend :)
- znpy 4y ago
  Well, the guide is from 1996…
  - incanus77 4y ago
    Last modified in 2023.
- BeetleB 4y ago
  I still use IMAP. I use fetchmail to fetch it. Ultimately, mutt is more of a MUA and not an MDA, so let some other tool deal with it. (I no longer use mutt, but use notmuch).

jjav 4y ago

> I am shocked — shocked — to see the guide I wrote 22 years ago on Mutt & GPG to be linked as relevant in this modern guide. I don’t use the combo anymore, but there is sometime affirming to me about Mutt still being relevant after all this time. Good tools that do a good job are still valuable. Yes! That should be the standard to aspire to with all software. Not the constant change for the sake of change. I set up a very highly customized (simplified) mutt setup for my parents in 1996 and the exact same setup continues to work today and my now-almost-100 year old parent continues to use it. Anyone who has tried to keep older people using software knows the nightmare of UI changes. Even a small movement in the placement of icons is a big hill to climb. Consistency is key. My parent has given up on using the web because both the browser and website UIs keep changing all the time, it becomes too frustrating for them. So they gave up. But thanks to mutt they continue to use email actively, nothing has changed since 1996 when they memorized how to use it.

incanus77 4y ago
That's amazing, and great perspective. I see with my own parents (one of them more so) how difficult they find UI changes. For a lot of people, it's not just finding the same- or similarly-named button, but spatial placement and appearance can also be important.

zwayhowder 4y ago

I got as far as the assumption of POP3 for fetching mail and stopped reading TBH. Here was me hoping for some cool new guide about Mutt with Oauth or similar.

5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
POP3 is still useful. I have many addresses for various needs and don't need to store email on servers for almost all of them (mostly because it costs money). There is at least one IMAP client* that supports fetching mail (not syncing like most of them do), but POP3 has much wider selection of clients and serves that need perfectly. *: https://github.com/nicm/fdm https://github.com/nicm/fdm
- zwayhowder 4y ago
  Every company I've worked at for the last decade at least has disabled POP3. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying for a mail client to be useful in most orgs it needs to support IMAP (and these days Oauth2). Having just found the updated instructions for using Oauth2 with isync on the Arch wiki I know what I'll be doing this weekend :)
znpy 4y ago
Well, the guide is from 1996…
- incanus77 4y ago
  Last modified in 2023.
BeetleB 4y ago
I still use IMAP. I use fetchmail to fetch it. Ultimately, mutt is more of a MUA and not an MDA, so let some other tool deal with it. (I no longer use mutt, but use notmuch).