Email Setup

Email; We all use it somehow or other and so it is one of the important things to be able to use straight away in Linux (as far as I was concerned anyway; its a bit like losing your mobile in the computing world)

So, there are various ways we can use email, and most of which you will probably already be familiar with. We'll start with the easiest...

WebMail

OK, so WebMail... there really isn't much to say about this-

You need a browser (see Using the Web)
Then, if you use Hotmail, Yahoo etc you can use this as normal.
If you want to access your university mail go to: http://email.swan.ac.uk

Using a Client

Mail Clients save a lot of time, they can retrieve mail automatically, filter it, get mail from different accounts all at once and manage your contacts.
In Linux (or, on our systems at least) you have a choice between Evolution Mail and Thunderbird. My personal preference being the latter, as its easily available and widely used under Windows too (honest- look here).
So how do you use it?

1. Either open a terminal, or browse to Thunderbird (probably located under Internet in the Applications list)
2. Select the option to set up a new email account
   
3. Enter your name as you would want it to appear in the 'From' line of your emails, and your SUCS email address (username@sucs.org) in the Email Address box
4. After clicking next, you need to select IMAP (As opposed to POP) and enter 'sucs.org' in the Incoming Server box (Don't put the 's in!), click next.
   
5. In the next screen, ensure your username is in the User Name box  and click next.
6. You can set the account name to whatever you wish, this is just to identify it.
7. Confirm the details and the SUCS account will be created. We need to tweak it a little to make it work because we like security here on our server.
   
8. So, go to account settings (by right clicking the name, or in the main window)
9. Go to 'Server Settings' and tick the box that says 'Use secure connection (SSL)'
10. You may also wish to turn HTML formatting off in Composition settings, as some people dislike it and will simply not read emails written in HTML format (don't ask why, I don't know).
11. OK, now it should all be ready to go. Click on the account and click read mails. You should be prompted for your password.
12. If nothing appears to happen, try closing it and re-opening.
    

Setting up POP mail is a similar process. For those who don't know what POP mail is, you probably aren't using it (except maybe for University mail). But, POP can be used to access your WebMail which is outlined below... (or will be when i get round to it)

_{Questions/suggestions about this page: stringfellow@sucs.org}