Email

Email enables you to communicate with users on the local system and, if the installation is part of a network, with other users on the network. If you are connected to the Internet, you can communicate electronically with users around the world.

Email utilities differ from write in that email utilities can send a message when the recipient is not logged in. These utilities can also send the same message to more than one user at a time.

Many email programs are available for Linux, including the original character-based mail program, Mozilla/Thunderbird, pine, mail through emacs, KMail, and evolution. Another popular graphical email program is sylpheed (sylpheed.good-day.net).

Two programs are available that can make any email program easier to use and more secure. The procmail program (www.procmail.org) creates and maintains email servers and mailing lists; preprocesses email by sorting it into appropriate files and directories; starts various programs depending on the characteristics of incoming email; forwards email; and so on. The GNU Privacy Guard (GPG or GNUpg, page 992) encrypts and decrypts email and makes it almost impossible for an unauthorized person to read.

Refer to Chapter 20 for more information on setting email clients and servers. See page 648 for instructions on setting up KMail to send and receive email.

Network addresses

If your system is part of a LAN, you can generally send email to and receive email from users on other systems on the LAN by using their usernames. Someone sending Alex email on the Internet would need to specify his domain name (page 1030) along with his username. Use this address to send email to the author of this book: [e-mail].