Alpine, bitches. No images up in here.
I did this on Ubuntu. It’s nice to zip around in text again with only keyboard shortcuts to guide you. It feels like one of those text-based adventure games from back-in-the-day.
Here’s how I set it up with Gmail: http://javatarian.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/configuring-alpine-with-gmail/
Alpine is a fast, easy to use email client that is suitable for both the inexperienced email user as well as for the most demanding of power users. Alpine is based on the Pine® Message System, which was also developed at the University of Washington.
I’m not gonna lie to you. I’m tempted.
Discovered this as I’m writing a part of the book where I talk about my own early days of email — and how insane the command line seemed to the GUI- and Macs-only me of 1993.
Today, I’m way more comfortable in the shell. Mainly because I finally learned that, as with Photoshop and The Joy of Sex, you only really need to master 10-20% of the options in order to get by. The hard part is learning which 10-20%, I guess. (tips: start with
cdand “compliment her shoes or hair,” respectively)I’m deep into self-imposed “no fucking around with new/fun/distracting bullshit until you get further along” mode, but Alpine does look fun to try. Just to see if I could still do it.
