It seems email is more important than an OS or even the internet.
OS and Internet has changed the world. People around the world can see and hear each other.
Yet secure communication is not easy (e.g US 2020 data breach).

There are basically two ways of doing email. Company servers that are on 24/7 use smtp to push mail around the internet. An smtp server program like mail or postfix can both send and receive emails. But obviously that won't work for home machines that may be on only intermittently. smtp will try again with mail that doesn't get through the first time but there's a high risk that mail may simply be dropped after a few unsuccessful tries.

Email clients like thunderbird use smtp only to send mail out. They use a different protocol called pop3 to download mail from a pop server or they might use imap to read the mail remotely. Both use "pull" rather than "push".

You see, that's 'email'. It's complicated.
It shouldn't be.
Not in a good world.

It was a lot more complicated in the old days. Then you had three programs working together. A mail transport agent used smtp to send email between servers, a mail distribution agent distributed incoming emails to individual mailboxes, and finally an email client was used to read and write emails. This was in accordance with the Unix philosophy that each program should do one thing and do it well.

Programs like thunderbird are Swiss army knives that speak smtp and pop3 to a limited extent and therefore can send and receive emails without you needing to run a mail server on your machine.

Hazel is exactly right. I will not detail it here, but at times it was even more complicated. There are MANY more choices today, but things for you and I are FAR more simple!

"I want to note that if that mail client causes you issues or you simply do not like it, there are MANY MANY other email clients out there, and MANY of them are really quite good! You do not have to seek far. While every distribution is likely to default to one, the REPOS for your distribution are likely to have SEVERAL other options. I would not even attempt to load one outside of your REPO system, unless you have developer experience: manual software maintenance is not something to dive into lightly. The packages in your REPO are tested and maintained by your distribution maintainers for you. Saves no end of problems.

(PS. Thank you again guys who maintain distributions! I appreciate you all, even the ones who maintain distributions I do not use directly!)

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Hey larstrier,

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but another advantage of local email clients (Thunderbird or other) is that they offer the possibility of reading and writing email while not connected to the Internet, and then sending and receiving once online again. Whether this is useful or not depends on each user's particular needs.

Cheers,

Rick

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Just wait 'til you go back to school and you find that their webmail is garbage but they also offer IMAP access. You'll use Thunderbird then.

It has a nice calendar.

I could not access my Google Gmail account using Thunderbird (on my other computer) since the day I dust up and use my Chromebook.

I have never used "Webmail." I always use "an email client," whether on Linux or something else. I like being able to collect all of my mail simultaneously, from every one of the email identities that I have, and then to deal with them – if need be – offline.

(Yes, several of them are "Gmail," but quite a few of them aren't.)

And of course, millions of (say ...) "Microsoft Outlook" users routinely enjoy exactly the same convenience, although the exchange of their communiques does not involve SMTP nor POP.

Fortunately, this is not a "Linux-specific" matter. Offline email clients are legion.

It seems that once your email is hosted on a commercial server or ISP you lose privacy and control. A number of people would like to have more control of your email and the number of notifications that get pushed out to you.

Has anyone looked into hosting your email on a Public Access Network such as Panix? You can set them up to be a Virtual Private Server and host email and websites. My question is whether they can interoperate with the mainstream global email servers?

Any responses would be welcomed.
Thanks
Jojo

Most VPS sites can interact with mainstream email servers. The issue I would anticipate would be that you would need to have a valid domain email server hosted by the VPS site to be able to send/receive email or you would need to use a mainstream server such as gmail/yahoo/etc. for your email. You also could set up your own domain and email server if the VPS site allows such. Lots of things to consider before you jump into that ocean.

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Thanks computersavvy.

I think a VPS like Panix can host one's own domain, and probably send email too. Whether it can be my own domain and avoid all the mainstream extra traffic and controls is a very good question I will track down.

I'm not sure what you meant by "having a valid domain email server" hosted by the VPS site. What makes an email server a valid domain?

I would like to avoid using mainstream servers if I could. I used Thunderbird many years ago and liked it, but now it seems as if it is just another wrapper for mainstream email servers.

Thanks again
Jojo
'

Two things to start with your own mail server: 1. your email server must be to current standards of behavior and security. Email security means it will, at the very least, refuse to forward email from non-verified sources. 2. You need an accepted MX record in the nameserver system. Generally this can be your own if you register and maintain your own domain. Otherwise, you apply to have an MX record registered with your ISP.

The, of course, if you fail to secure and maintain it properly, it may be blocked or blackwalled by any of several services or even your own ISP. There are enough threat sites out there without adding another.

As noted, the email server is not the domain. It must be configured for dns to recognize that it is a valid email server for your domain, whatever that is. There is a lot of admin put into properly configuring a domain email server, then once it is working properly the management is much less.

Thunderbird is an email client that can work with almost any email server regardless of size. Do not judge thunderbird as limited to mainstream email servers because it is far more than that.