Console Love
by Mez on Dec.27, 2008, under Personal
Ok, so, some of you may know that I recently switched from using Xchat + ctrl_proxy to irssi for my main IRC connection. I did this as I’d been pestered literally thousands of times to “get a real IRC client”.
While I don’t agree with this philosophy (Xchat IS a real IRC client!), I have to admit, I’ve not regretted switching to irssi! Combining it with screen means that I can see the same IRC session from anywhere, and using irssi gives me quite a few cool new features (I’m a HUGE fan of regexes!). So, irssi, after getting used to switching channels, and managing everything is great for me. I can now authenticate to OFTC using SSL, I can use IPv6, and many many other things. Slick.
Anyway, as I’ve said, I also use screen. This is one of the best tools ever created by man. It’s increased my productivity, and it’s so simplistic to use.
So, why am I writing this now?
Well, over the past few ways, I’ve finally got around to using mutt for the first time, and while it’s not as pretty as some of the email clients you get out there, it does exactly what I need. And, although I’ve spent the last 2 days tweaking my configuration, getting confused, rereading the mutt manual, shouting and swearing, getting even more confused, rereading the mutt manual again, I’ve found that mutt, for me, is actually an email client that does what I want it to.
For example, using mutt, I now no longer have to worry that I’ll send an email to a mailing list using the wrong address, I can subscribe to a better “Inbox Zero” philosophy (Inbox Zero Status: 0!) and managing my email seems to come more naturally.
Mutt may be hard to get used to, a pain to configure just the way you want it, but, in the end, it makes sense. I’d reccomend everyone try it at least once!
So, yeah, I’ve moved my ubuntu email address over to mutt (in a screen window alongside irssi!) and will be moving the others just as soon as I can be bothered to goto all the different places and combine my .procmailrc. But I’ve made a start, and, for the forseeable future, it’ll be my mail client of choice.
It seems though, I’m spending a lot more time in an xterm than I am in anything else.
Maybe I should start using bitlbee too 
December 27th, 2008 on 9:05 am
Just in case, if you havent, give it a try to wmii its similar to dwm but easier to get used to… i use weechat-curses instead… tho never tried mutt i dont really like having all tons of mails on my lappy… also… any suggestions for a feed reader? (I’m using liferea rightnow)
December 27th, 2008 on 11:11 am
I use pidgin for irc. It’s just one of the like nine protocols I need, I don’t even have the tolerance to have a separate app open for Skype, so I’m just never on that one. ( I hope empathy brutally murders it )
facebook, twitter, SMS via Google chat, google chat, myspaceim, msn, irc.
December 27th, 2008 on 4:18 pm
and Finch ?
December 27th, 2008 on 6:15 pm
Altough I liked Mutt a lot in history, it was very confusing and “too simple” by it’s ideas. I wanted to use pine but it was dificult to configure for scandinavians letters and I found new version from it, called alpine. So far it is best email application for commandline what I have used. Blazing fast and very intuitive even for old people.
Screen + irssi + alpine + centerim + rtorrent + mc + ssh + mplayer and you get almost everything done. Altought that command line web-browsers are still bretty bad. All videos and music is easy to play and you can just enjoy using computer, even it would be old like PII !
December 27th, 2008 on 6:15 pm
santiago. I’m happy with KDE/Gnome, and irssi does what I need. No idea about a feed reader, but there are probably patches for mutt. Also, I don’t keep the mails on my lappy, or my PC, they’re on my server
so I have that “permanent connection” thing going 
ethana2, if pidgin does what you need, then great
but I find that it doesn’t for me. I’m what I’d like to think of as an advanced IRC user, so I need a lot more flexibility, that pidgin doesn’t give me 
I do use pidgin currently as my IM client, but I don’t see IRC as an IM protocol
Fabian – ah yes, finch – I’ll have to try that out sometime, but I’ve not really heard good things about it.
December 28th, 2008 on 12:34 pm
I think this setup is quite common among advanced user. Could you provide your configurations (for irssi, screen, mutt), it would be nice samples.
December 28th, 2008 on 10:02 pm
Console applications are great. I also use irssi as my irc client, but use tmux instead of screen (I like the BSD license, and tmux does everything I need it to).
I did give mutt a try a couple of weeks ago, but even after reading through all the documentation and using several different setups (one using offlineimap, another excellent command line app), I just couldn’t get it to work properly. Since then, I have settled with alpine, and absolutely love it.
February 20th, 2009 on 4:34 pm
“Mutt may be hard to get used to, a pain to configure just the way you want it, but, in the end, it makes sense. I’d reccomend everyone try it at least once!”
Yeah I agree to an extent but theres many much easier to use out the box clients that have pretty much the same feature set!
March 7th, 2009 on 10:26 pm
Santiago: For a good feedreader, try newsbeuter. Best text-based feed reader I’ve used. And it’s under active development.
#newsbeuter at irc.freenode.net is talkative as well.