I'm pretty much in agreement with you regards Galeon's claim for being lightweight. It's not particularly. However, the memory management for both Galeon and Mozilla are improving, which means that you're somewhat less prone to large memory leaks than you may have been under either earlier versions of the same browsers, or Netscape 4.x.

As to the "why bother with Galeon" argument, you might as well ask what the difference between a VW and a Porche is -- they're the same engine and manufacturer. The distinction is in intent and interfaces. Galeon is just a web browser. Personally, I prefer this orientation. It's possible to get a stripped Mozilla, but it seems rather more difficult. I REALLY DON'T LIKE programs which assume they know what I want, and provide their interpretation of my desires...with little opportunity for me to specify what it is I really mean. Give me my mail, news, and other preferences. Cut the crap of opening arbitrary content in some odd app. Mozilla is getting to resembe emacs in that any arbitrary keystroke is likely to activate some feature.

The overall appearance of Mozilla strikes me as busy. Nav bar, side bar, other crud. Just give me a really big browsing window and get the fuck out of my way. Galeon provides this by default, Mozilla needs futzing to get there.

Other features are starting to work their way into Mozilla. Tabbed browsing is one, there are others. My general point though is that Galeon shoots for usability first, and does a good job of delivering it.

Above and beyond this -- waiting an extra second or so for a page to load falls below my detection threshold, particularly on 56k dialup.

I'm not fully current on mozilla. In days past I found it was impossible to specify a mail client outside that specified by Mozilla. Tools such as muttzilla were created to answer this need (but never worked satisfactorially in my experience). The build of Mozilla I'm looking at still has more all-in-one aspects than I care for.

Mutt is transparent to this degree: it has human-readable config files, with human-readable values (unlike, say, Evolution). Options are documented. Copiously. And, I'm not aware of any functions performed outside mutt core that aren't configurable.

If you've got anything remotely resembling a point, try for a bit more relevance, Pete. We're not all snarf'n'barf, point'n'drool WIMPs like you.

There's configurability and there's sane defaults. Mozilla doesn't provide sane defaults. I've said it's getting better about the various preferences and configuration settings, but it's chasing taillights in this regard, not leading the pack. The all-in-one design is certianly breakage from Netscape's proprietary past (I've got an unwritten essay on why the office suite is dead).

The user-orientation of Galeon simply blows Mozilla away. Mozilla keeps getting in your way -- open a link in a tab, you're transported to that tab (Galeon opens it behind the current window, if you're browsing links in a page, you're welcome to continue doing so). You want to jump to a new tab? Preferences => User Interface => Tabs => Jump to new tabs automatically. That's Galeon. Equivalent Mozilla control? Oh, it's the "load links in background" checkbox. Not the world's greatest description. Read it three times (in two seperate sessions) before I was inclined to try it out.

Mutt is a one-trick pony, er, dog. It's a mail client. It has some rudimentary support for various connection methods, but you'll typically use another tool to do same -- an MUA for retrieval (eg: fetchmail), and an MTA for sending (eg: exim).

I don't use IMAP (I may, I'd like to try out a few mailers, and seperating content from interface will streamline the process). IMAP support is admittedly one of the weaknesses of mutt, and multi-user support (you have different "personalities" for different mailboxes) a frequently aired complaint. Not sure if there is a good solution or not, or if that's what you're looking for.

Otherwise, your basic solution is: local mail spool is checked by default (or better: procmailed to your mailbox under $HOME), likewise your POPD account is fetched via fetchmail. IMAP support should, if I'm reading things right, be pointed at by "imap://hostname/mailbox" as a mailbox specification. There are folder hooks which can set various configurations. Yes, getting a .muttrc from someone probably wouldn't hurt. I'd be inclined to think, however, that authenticated user access to multiple systems is inherently more complex than the simple task of browsing web pages.

There's a reason, though, to the single-use, solid-design, human-readable configuration, philosophy of Unix. It keeps shit simple. Programmers can get their heads around the problem. You decide you don't like mutt, drop elm, pine (ugh!), Sylpheed, Netscape Mail, mailx, mh, or Aileron in its place. You don't have to jigger with the other components of your mail configuration -- exim, procmail, and fetchmail don't give a shit. Try that with MS Outlook (locked into Exchange) or Evolution (I don't know what's going to break, but suspect something will). Design problems of Mozilla (how does a user add themes or plugins again -- oh yeah, you gotta be root) are among the reasons its packaging for Debian is gimpy -- the architectures just plain fucked up.

My point earlier in this thread: Galeon gives me what I need, easily and stays the fuck out of my face

Mozilla's flying in the face of this at its own peril. There is, BTW, no reason why a suite of products couldn't provide the same functionality as an integrated browser / mailer / newsreader / editor. OpenOffice has fucked up in the same way by providing an integrated executable, and is desperately trying to undo the damage (my assessment: they won't succeed in doing so, for at least the next three to four years). Your "brutal point" fell out of a horse's ass.