Linux® Bible, 2008 Edition: Boot Up to Ubuntu®, Fedora®, KNOPPIX, Debian®, openSUSE®, and 11 Other Distributions

Chapter 22. E-Mailing and Web Browsing

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Reading e-mail with Thunderbird Mail

• Managing e-mail in Evolution

• Using text-based e-mail clients

• Browsing the Web with Firefox

• Using text-based Web browsers

Web browsers and e-mail clients available with Linux have seen incredible improvements over the past few years. Their features rival those you can get on the most popular Windows clients. Security issues with Outlook mail clients and Internet Explorer browsers have many people taking a fresh look at Linux and open source software for accessing the Internet.

This chapter describes some of the best Web, e-mail, chat, and related tools for accessing the Internet that you can get with the Linux distributions described in this book. If you have never worked with the Internet from Linux, or haven't for a few years, you might be blown away by what's available today.

Using E-Mail

Any Linux desktop system worth the name "desktop system" will have at least one or two applications for sending, receiving, and managing your e-mail. Many users believe that superior tools for managing spam and generally better security mechanisms make Linux a great desktop platform for managing your e-mail.

Choosing an E-Mail Client

Choices of e-mail clients range from those that look like clones of popular Windows e-mail programs to those that run in plain text from the shell, and interfaces vary widely with the e-mail clients that are available with Linux. Here are some different ways in which e-mail clients are ...