[sclug] Mail system explanation wanted please

[Neil Haughton]

Hi people,

I could use some advice.

I generally use Thunderbird for my email, connected direct to my ISP POP 
and SMTP servers. Classic domestic arrangement, you might say.

Trouble is that I like to ring the changes with different MUA's (keeps 
me young at heart, you see), but at the same time I don't like losing 
all my email each time I try something new. The ideal would be if I 
could keep all my mail (and address book) in some local folders (on my 
machine) in a format that a variety of MUA's would understand.

I get the feeling that I need procmail or postfix or something else set 
up on my machine, but I can't figure out (probably because I've had 
years of Windows being drummed into my head and the Linux way is all 
very strange to me)  how to point say Thunderbird, KMail or Evolution at 
the local folders, and how and what to use to collect the mail from my ISP.

Can someone give me a conceptual overview of what I should be doing? If 
I had the big picture, as it were, in my head I could probably work out 
the details myself by reading the documentation.

TIA

Neil.