Thirty Days of Mutt - Day 10

January 23, 2021

My experiment to try mutt for thirty days is over today. After ten days I realize that I enjoy tinkering with mutt more than I enjoy using it as my primary email client. Consequently, I’ll be switching to a different email client for the next ten days.

What Works About Mutt

• It is hugely customizable.
• There is a vibrant community devoted to it.
• Through ssh and tmux, it is possible to access it from any computer.
• Encryption is a first-class citizen.

What Doesn’t Work About Mutt

• While you can run a terminal emulator on your smart phone, you will most likely not use mutt for mail on the go.
• HTML email is everywhere. Viewing it in w3m of Lynx is less than satisfactory.
• Even with urlview, deciphering a list of URLs embedded in an email to find the one you want is cumbersome.
• The burden of mapping an account and its mail boxes is on you.
• There is no built in junk mail filtering. I ran SpamSieve in another client to prevent mutt from being cluttered up.

Conclusion

I’ll continue to maintain my mutt setup. When I’m using my Linux laptop, which has only the Sway Window Manager, and I need email, I connect to my local server and access mutt. I guess mutt is a reserve email solution. Nice to have, enjoyable to tinker with, can be used in a pinch, but not what you want for day-to-day use.