[sf-lug] thinking of moving to mutt. i use gmail. any advice/warnings/thoughts?

[Michael Shiloh]

I'm much more comfortable with text based programs, and in my old age have
become increasingly frustrated with and am trying to rid my ilfe of GUI
programs.

I'm considering moving from Thunderbird to Mutt. I used Mutt back in
college and my fingers still remember the Mutt commands. Plus, I like the
speed of Mutt.

I've done a little bit of research and it seems that Mutt does support the
modern protocols I need: IMAP, SSL, etc. I've found a few guides on setting
up Mutt with Gmail on Linux and it looks like it shouldn't be too horrible.

Before I take the plunge, is there anything I should know that might make
me reconsider?


Some information about my email style:

* In addition to my personal Gmail account, both of my part time jobs use
Gmail so I have 3 Gmail accounts.

* Against all conventional wisdom I keep all my mail in my inbox until I've
done whatever I need to do with it. Then it gets archived. I don't
subdivide my archive - I found this takes too much time to create and
maintain. Instead, I depend on good search facilities. Thus, each of my
accounts really has only 2 folders: inbox and archive.

* I keep a local copy of all email on my laptop. I do a lot of work offline
and I depend on having access to both the inbox and archive for all 3 of my
accounts. On the other hand, I do not delete mail from the Gmail server,
since I sometimes depend on having access to it when I'm not at my laptop.

* I have a spare laptop at home. I intentionally keep a local copy of all
email there as well as a backup. I know that if I don't use it for a few
days, when I first log in it will take a while to download all the email it
missed, but I'm OK with that.

* My local email folders are in Thunderbird format. I believe I read
somewhere that converters exist, although I haven't verified that the Mutt
format (whatever that is)  is supported.
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