Section 6.2. Using Mozilla Mail & News

Mozilla Mail & News is the mail client that comes with the Mozilla web browser if you install more than the minimal installation (which only contains the browser and the composer itself). Chances are that your distribution already carries Mozilla, but if it doesn't, or you'd rather have a newer version, you can download it from http://www.mozilla.org. A freestanding version of Mozilla Mail & News is Thunderbird , which you can find at http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/. Thunderbird is particularly good at filtering junk mail and preventing email viruses from entering your system.

The concepts for setting up and using Mozilla Mail are quite similar to those for KMail, so we will cover only the differences here. To open the mail client, start Mozilla and select Windows Mail and Newsgroups from the menu. If you are starting the mailer for the first time, a wizard will pop up that lets you configure your email. Check "Email account" on the first page, and your identity information on the second page (Mozilla's account handling is slightly less flexible than KMail's because it ties identities to accounts, whereas you can change identities at will with KMail).

On the third page, select whether you get your incoming mail via POP or IMAP (it's not possible to retrieve your email locally with Mozilla Mail & News, a big drawback), and specify the incoming and outgoing server name (specify localhost both times if you are running your own MTA). Complete the remaining information on the next pages, and you are ready to run Mozilla Mail & News. The screen layout is by default the same as that of KMail.

As when using KMail, one of the first things you probably want to set up when using Mozilla Mail & News is additional folders and filters that sort your incoming messages into these folders. You can create new folders by right-clicking the folder list and selecting New Folder in the context menu that appears. You can configure the filter rules by selecting Tools Message Filters.

This concludes our discussion of email clients on Linux. As you can see, many options, from simple to sophisticated, are available to help you administer and digest the daily flood of email messages.




Part I: Enjoying and Being Productive on Linux
Part II: System Administration