My other email client is a daemon

https://www.osnews.com/story/143161/my-other-email-client-is-a-daemon/

Thom Holwerda Aug 24, 2025 · 1 min read
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I have a slight problem wherein every time I start up a game of NetHack, I completely lose touch with my surroundings for hours on end. Thankfully The DevTeam Thinks Of Everything and there’s a solution that allows communication with the outside world without breaking immersion: the mail daemon!

If compiled with -DMAIL and OPTIONS=mail is set in your runtime configuration (the default on Linux), NetHack will periodically check a user specified mbox file (MAIL) for new mail, and upon receiving an email a mail daemon will spawn in and deliver a scroll of mail to the player. Upon reading this scroll a mail program (MAILREADER) will be executed, which hopefully allows you to read your mail.

↫ George Huebner

I love everything about this.