l10n support ~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you want to see non-ASCII characters on a Debian system, there's no use fiddling with the variable "charset", as described in the manual page muttrc(5). Instead, you'll need to have the Debian package "locales" installed on your system and set the LANG or LC_CTYPE environment variable. e.g. US users will want to add "export LC_CTYPE=en_US" to their ~/.bashrc. If you have a /etc/locale.gen file read carefully the comment and do what it says, or it will not work. No, linux systems do not need --enable-locales-fix or --without-wc-funcs, so don't bother me saying these switches cure your problems. PGP support ~~~~~~~~~~~ GnuPG support works out of the box with the default /etc/Muttrc. You do not need any of the example files in /usr/share/doc/mutt/ unless you plan to send signed+encrypted messages to pgp2 users. BUFFY_SIZE support ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Please do not ask for this to be enabled, it annoys too many people. See #179970 for details. gpg-2comp ~~~~~~~~~ /usr/share/doc/mutt/examples/gpg.rc uses a wrapper program called gpg-2comp which is not available as a debian package. This program is needed only to sign and encrypt messages with a method compatible with PGP 2.x. Users who don't need this feature can use the commands provided in the default /etc/Muttrc. The pgpewrap and pgpring programs used by some example rc files have been installed in /usr/lib/mutt. The files /usr/share/doc/mutt/examples/*.rc are just examples and are not supposed to be used as is. Actually they are not supposed to be used at all, PGP support works out of the box if gnupg is installed. GnuPG passphrase ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The GnuPG passphrase is not asked if the $GPG_AGENT_INFO environment variable exists. Scripts ~~~~~~~ Look at /usr/lib/mutt/{debian-ldap-query,mailspell}. pgp_encryptself ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This mutt 1.0.x configuration option does not exist anymore and this will not change. To achieve the same effect you can add something like --encrypt-to=your@mail.address to the relevant ~/.muttrc configuration lines (pgp_encrypt_only_command and pgp_encrypt_sign_command) or to ~/.gnupg/options . S/MIME Support ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ See README.SMIME for details. About temporary files and security ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When using mutt to view an encrypted message, the plain text is saved in a temporary file. If you have reasons to worry an attacker may recover the deleted file from your hard disk please take appropriate actions to prevent this (e.g. use a ramdisk or shred(1) or wipe(1)). Also don't forget about the temporary files created by your editor. Mutt creates temporary files in a secure way. See #222125 for details. /etc/Muttrc.d/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The default /etc/Muttrc will source more configuration directives from files in the /etc/Muttrc.d/ directory ending in ".rc". The system administrator may use the directory for local customizations and packages enhancing mutt may use it to install their configuration directives. The directory is processed last in /etc/Muttrc, so that settings there may override the defaults from the file.