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I got x11vnc working but so I can connect from my laptop running vista to my workstation running CentOS5. It works OK except that I can't cut and paste between applications on Vista and Thunderbird running on CentOS5. Cut and paste works for some other applications, but something is different with Thunderbird.

I got vncserver (which is, I think, just an interface to control Xvnc - the vnc server built in to the X server) working also. Cut and paste works fine with this configuration, even with Thunderbird, but this only works with an X server on a virtual terminal - I can't use it to access and control the physical console. This is a nuisance because I often enough leave Thunderbird running on the workstation, then I can't start another copy of the second login.

So, now I have set up fetchmail and dovecot. These seem quite popular and I got them working with very little difficulty. I don't know much about them yet - I have a lot to learn before I will be comfortable that I have set them up well. Like I don't even know if my communications are secure. But it's only on my local network, so no great worries yet.

After a brief Google, I found the fetchmail configuration required to download messages from hotmail, where I have a test account. No problems here. The messages are delivered by SMTP to my local sendmail MTA and from there to my inbox.

Another brief Google and I had the required configuration for dovecot: I added

mail_location = mbox:~/Mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u

to /etc/dovecot.conf. With this, dovecot finds incoming email in my incoming mailbox (where sendmail deposits it) and stores folders in ~/Mail, with each folder being one mbox format file. I don't see how to get it to find messages in ~/mbox, where my local mail client stores them after reading them from my inbox. No doubt there is a way but...

Anyway, with these set up I tried connecting from Thunderbird: this was easy. I just created a new IMAP account, selected SSL and told it to connect to localhost. Bingo-bango I had access to my messages.

Then I installed Thunderbird on my laptop and set up an equivalent account, but specifying my workstation as the server rather than localhost. I opened up inbound connection to TCP/143, from the local network only. And I now have access to my messages from my laptop.

So now I can receive messages on either my laptop or workstation.

Next, outbound...