SSH email client terminal

[benpete420]

I would like to know an email that I can run on terminal. For free. I do not want to use theworld.com because it costs money. Anyone know any free ones?

 

[ratsg]

I'm a big fan of elm and use it frequently.

http://www.instinct.org/elm/

Pine, and its successor, Alpine, are more feature rich and may do better at meeting your needs.

http://www.washington.edu/pine/

https://www.washington.edu/alpine/

Hope this helps,

 

[benpete420]

What I meant

I mean like gmail, I can login using ssh, but something more along those lines, a hoster.

 

[scaredpoet]

You cannot ssh into your GMail account. GMail is not a unix or linux shell; it just doesn't work that way.

What you need to do is install alpine or elm, as stated above, and then those programs act as text-based, terminal e-mail clients that will retrieve your e-mail from your GMail account.

Here are some instructions on how to set that up (after you install alpine).

https://sites.google.com/site/hengobash/sh

Also, as someone who once wanted to do something similar for the sake of being all retro, I have to say that the novelty really wore off after a short while. E-mail that is pure text-only is getting rarer and rarer, and continuing to use alpine except for some very specific edge cases kinda gets silly after a while. Of course, you might have one of those very specific edge cases, and that's fine. But for 99.99% of users out there, there are tools built into your Mac that are so much better at it, including Mail and your web browser.

 

[ratsg]

What you need to do is install alpine or elm, as stated above, and then those programs act as text-based, terminal e-mail clients that will retrieve your e-mail from your GMail account.

Now that the OP has further defined his request, elm is no longer an option. The elm email client will only read the local mail store in mbox format.

Here are some instructions on how to set that up (after you install alpine).

https://sites.google.com/site/hengobash/sh

good to know that someone has done a write up on that.

Also, as someone who once wanted to do something similar for the sake of being all retro, I have to say that the novelty really wore off after a short while. E-mail that is pure text-only is getting rarer and rarer, and continuing to use alpine except for some very specific edge cases kinda gets silly after a while. Of course, you might have one of those very specific edge cases, and that's fine. But for 99.99% of users out there, there are tools built into your Mac that are so much better at it, including Mail and your web browser.

I guess that I feel a little sad for you then. Even when I read email in a GUI environment (using Thunderbird), I force the mail client to display everything to ascii text only. I'm on a lot of email mailing list, and it is pretty much standard practice that posted messages can only be in ascii text, no attachments.

I do have one list that sends out html formatted email, but it isn't an important one, and I will typically let stuff build up in that account till I really need to read it.

 

[benpete420]

ok

Theworld.com does not require you to download anything on my mac and all my friend has to do is do "ssh -something username@theworld.com" and then it will ask for your password. The only problem with the world is, it costs money.

 

[scaredpoet]

Theworld.com does not require you to download anything on my mac and all my friend has to do is do "ssh -something username@theworld.com" and then it will ask for your password. The only problem with the world is, it costs money.

And that is exactly why you get that flexibility with them. Theworld.com offers internet access and UNIX/linux shell accounts, in addition to just e-mail.

GMail on the other hand, doesn't offer this. They're an ad-supported "free" service, and you get what you pay for in that case.

For what it's worth: If you really know what you're doing, you could set up your own linux cloud server, register your own domain, set up e-mail services on it, and get e-mail through the ssh text interface for quite a bit cheaper than the $19.89 a month that theworld.com is charging, if your e-mail needs aren't particularly high-traffic. Of course, you wouldn't get their dialup internet access though, should that still be of actual value to you.

Some domain names can be had for as low as $5.99 a year. And the place I use for cloud servers has their lowest virtual server tier at $10 a month. Others go as low as $5, but resources (RAM, disk space) are a bit limited.

But again, you have to know what you're doing in order to correctly configure your domain and server to accept mail, and filter spam (unless you don't mind lots of spam), and preferably set up your domain records so that others are less likely to flag *your* e-mail incorrectly as spam.

I guess that I feel a little sad for you then.

Don't be. I've done it, and it was fun for a little while, but now I have bigger fish to fry than fretting over ASCII-only e-mail. If that's what you like though, and choose to expend the effort to continue along that vein, then more power to you.