Alpine vs. Mutt

by cs

Here are some real-world reasons why Mutt sucks less than Alpine:

  • Mutt can handle MIME/PGP multipart messages out of the box. This is a nightmare on Alpine. I have yet to find someone who gets topal to run in less than a day.
  • Google contacts can be accessed from Mutt using goobook.
  • With header and body caching enabled, Mutt is way faster at browsing IMAP directories.
  • Mutt makes it embarrassingly simple to backup remote mail to a local drive: Simply save it to a local mail folder.
  • Mutt will let you delete mails from a gmail IMAP inbox.
  • Pine, Alpine and Re-Alpine seem to be unmaintained as of March 2012. Mutt is comparatively lively.