If you prefer the tarball route Mozilla should be your port of call. The official Ubuntuzilla site has detailed instructions. Install it, fire up a terminal and type ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p thunderbird and you'll be good to go. If you want the latest version point your browser to a Debian binary of Ubuntuzilla over at Sourceforge.

The final version (3.1) has just been released but it won't be available in the Ubuntu repositories or an Ubuntu PPA. I've been using an alpha version of Thunderbird 3.1 on Ubuntu (Karmic Koala). If you're not already using either of these clients, setting up Evolution is very easy and Thunderbird will be in the repositories of virtually all the main GNU/Linux distros. The latter comes as part of a default Gnome install and Thunderbird is, like Getmail, only an apt-get install away. If you want similar functionality with a few bells and whistles too though, you might want to think about using one of the big hitters like Thunderbird or Evolution.

Fine granularity is one of the great payoffs of the command line.

And yes, because we're in command line territory we can roll out cron to schedule Getmail as well. Mutt is one of the more basic ones of course, but for the bog standard task of just reading those backed up e-mails from Google's servers it is quite adequate and as the author has indicated, using Mutt to read them obviates the need to set up accounts. GNU/Linux is blessed with a multitude of e-mail clients. After that, if you want to read your email, the venerable Mutt is suggested. The trickier part comes in configuring and setting it up. So, three cheers for the command lineĪs Ryan said, Getmail is only an apt-get install getmail away. Thunderbird is go Virgilįine granularity is one of the great payoffs of the command line. Besides, using the Thunderbird (or Evolution) e-mail clients to backup Gmail has other advantages too. It is an excellent piece, but Getmail is a command line program, and while most readers of FSM will doubtless be at home there and in configuring XML files, we also like to behave like electric currents and take the course of least resistance to get from A to B. Ryan Cartwright has written an article on how to backup Gmail with Getmail.

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