Alpine is a command-line-based email client. It is super easy to use and works with all IMAP and POP3 services. It has several advantages over GUI-based email clients. For instance: it is not only lightweight but also consumes less memory. You would not need any mouse interaction to open and read your emails.
Here at LinuxAPT, we shall look into how to install Alpine on your Debian 11 system.
To begin, update your system packages with the below command:
$ sudo apt update
Now install Alpine on your Debian machine with the below command:
$ sudo apt install alpine
This will install Alpine from the latest Debian 11 repositories.
As Alpine is a terminal program, so the only way to access it is from the command line.
As soon as it runs, it creates a mail folder on your system. The message appears only once. The best thing is that the complete process only takes a few minutes just like any normal email client we are used to on our desktop systems.
You can create new folders and proceed with IMAP and POP3 configurations now. Press Q to quit Alpine. The full email system works through the command line interface. There isn't any need of whatsoever graphical user interface. Alpine offers complete server admin solution, so you can read, compose, and send the emails right from your server environment. The client is secure and is constantly updated. It works absolutely fine and side by side other server related applications.
You can run the below command to remove Alpine from your Debian system:
$ sudo apt remove alpine
Everything including emails and all the records are removed. The system won't restore anything if you reinstall the application in the future.
This article covers how to install, run, and remove Alpine on Debian 11 system. In fact, Alpine features a full suite of support for mail protocols like IMAP and SMTP and security protocols like TLS.
