On Fri, 21 Aug 2015 17:20:17 -0500 Richard Jasmin <frazzledj...@gmail.com> wrote: > telling user has mail is easy as pi in console mode and when using a server. > But how do we tell the user they have mail without a configured mail client > when under runlevel 5? The activation of X11 practically hides all console > activity. > > We would need a UI tool to do this. We cannot assume use of neither gnome nor > KDE. User may have MATE or other UI installed.We should make an app > indicator(and mail viewer) as lite as possible. > > Also, when launching xterm or similar, user is never told if they have mail or > not.This should be a more eay fix.Since xterm emulates a vterm/getty checking > mail this way should never fail.
To a first approximation, for the majority of users, if they don't have a mail client configured, they don't have mail. One of these days I'd still like to get mail-transport-agent removed from "standard", to get rid of one of the last listening services in a default install, as the majority of users don't need it and those that do can easily install it. That said, if you care about a local mail server, and you don't have a local mail client configured, there are a few different tools to handle that case, including variations on biff or services that use desktop notifications. You could also configure a local mail client, since you might want to read that mail once you know of its existence. - Josh Triplett
