On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Linus Torvalds
[off-list ref] wrote:

The LKML thing is why I really love how gmail works. LKML just goes
into the black hole that is the gmail thing, and I never see it. But
then, when I get cc'd about something in the middle of a thread when a
question comes up - I just magically see the whole thread without
having to look around in other folders or anything like that.

I'm sure 'notmuch' etc does that too, but pine sure never did. If I
made my filters automatically move lkml posts to my lkml folder, by
the time I got cc'd, I had to go back to that folder to see the
history of the thread.

'notmuch' is the only mail client that I know does that (because it
has tags). So I do exactly the same in Gmail than in notmuch; "mark as
archived", and then I don't see the messages in my inbox, but the
actual mail never really moves, it just doesn't have the 'inbox' tag
any more.

Moreover, searching all your mail is very fast, just like in Gmail.

One benefit is that it's open source, so you add your own key
bindings, or whatever you like, and unlike projects like GNOME, they
have similar development practices as in git; you send patches to the
mailing list, no bugzilla crap.

Of course, it only works with local mail (maildir), but you could use
mbsync (as Theodore Tso suggested). That's what I do in my mail setup;
I use mbsync to synchronize ~/onlinemail with the IMAP server, and
after I archive mail, I run a script that moves that mail to ~/mail,
so it's removed from the server on the next sync.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras