Pine email client
Shares rank 4 of 5 terminal email clients by recommenders
People recommend Pine as a lightweight terminal email client that was common on university systems and makes bulk mail cleanup quick.
People recommend Pine as a lightweight terminal email client that was common on university systems and makes bulk mail cleanup quick.
6 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 83%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Long-standing university email tool
“Nearly every university Sun box in the 90s had Pine installed for reading email.”
Comment from 29 Oct 2026 in “NetBSD adds a new text editor called atto” Lightweight compared with bloated clients
“Forget waiting for some bloated email client, I'm using pine”
Comment from 21 Sep 2026 in “What Sun got wrong” Fast bulk deletion of mail
“I logged into the UNIX cluster, opened Pine, and deleted all the crap, page by page.”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Artemis computer running two instances of MS outlook; they can't figure out why”
Other terminal email clients people recommend
The four most recommended other terminal email clients, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mutt email client | 26 | 0 | 100% | 9 | — | Approved |
| aerc email client | 9 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | — |
| NeoMutt | 8 | 1 | 89% | 7 | — | — |
| Pine email clientThis page | 5 | 1 | 83% | 4 | — | — |
| Alpine email client | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
3 of the 6 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Nearly every university Sun box in the 90s had Pine installed for reading email.”
“Forget waiting for some bloated email client, I'm using pine”
“I logged into the UNIX cluster, opened Pine, and deleted all the crap, page by page.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.