Thanks to all who replied. Your sapient advice has gotten me up and running. This reply is being composed in mutt, somehow it seems to have known to use vim as the editor and I'm not complaining. (I learned ed, ex, and vi in '82 and emacs is a hobby that can wait ;-)
Some notes for those who follow in my shoes, and especially for those who intend to write the newbie doc: 1. MacOS and Windows users just don't expect their PC to be a mailserver; they expect a POP3 client to fetch and send mail. Note that the Mutt manual claims that it supports this if you compile it with the pop option, see Chapter 4.10 of the mutt manual. So one could theoretically get by with just fetchmail and mutt. However... 2. Since every Linux box is multiuser and exim is installed by default, newbie docs should plunge in and have the user configure exim. Option 2 worked as advertised for me. 3. A possible strategy for documentation: Examine the configuration tools for Outlook Express and Eudora on both Mac and Windows. Run the configuration wizards for setting up new mail accounts on each. Write a debian newbie doc that maps this experience to the appropriate program and file in Debian-Gnu/Linux. For example: I knew my email address, my password, my ISP's mailserver name (same for both pop3 and smtp, extremely commone in this day & age). This is enough info to get me up & running with Communicator, Eudora, or Outlook, but I couldn't find a stand-alone document to get email running on Linux. Again, thanks for all the help. I'm not an expert yet (no groovy automatic sig w/examples of how each one of Will Trillich's tips led me to frag my system in a different way<G>), but I am getting my mail, using multiple mailbox files, and have mutt running in colors that I can read. Paul Mackinney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
