My professor used Mutt and I was always in awe every time I watched him zip through emails. From time to time I try to get into it, but always fail for a different reason.

This time, I made it about 30% of the way through this "quick guide" with a Gmail account. I don't want to have my password in plaintext, so I'm fine typing it in each time to get started, but I never got over the finish line. I got stuck somewhere around minimizing the number of system headers that go out with each message.

Please let me know if anyone has recommendations for a CLI email client that hooks up with Gmail on a modern Linux distro relatively simply.

In general I find that most people who have (or claim) a productive workflow sync their mail locally (rather than letting the client connect directly over IMAP). So decoupling your reader application from your mail fetching application.

[mb/i]sync or offlineimap, with or without notmuch.