+* "Not much mail" is what Notmuch thinks about your email
+ collection. Even if you receive 12000 messages per month or have on
+ the order of millions of messages that you've been saving for
+ decades. Regardless, Notmuch will be able to quickly search all of
+ it. It's just plain not much mail.
+
+* "Not much mail" is also what you should have in your inbox at any
+ time. Notmuch gives you what you need, (tags and fast search), so
+ that you can keep your inbox tamed and focus on what really matters
+ in your life, (which is surely not email).
+
+* Notmuch is an answer to [Sup](http://sup.rubyforge.org/).
+ Sup is a very good email program written by William Morgan (and
+ others) and is the direct inspiration for Notmuch. Notmuch began as
+ an effort to rewrite performance-critical pieces of Sup in C rather
+ than ruby. From there, it grew into a separate project. One
+ significant contribution Notmuch makes compared to Sup is the
+ separation of the indexer/searcher from the user interface. (Notmuch
+ provides a library interface so that its indexing/searching/tagging
+ features can be integrated into any email program.)
+
+* Notmuch is not much of an email program. It doesn't receive messages
+ (no POP or IMAP support). It doesn't send messages (no mail composer,
+ no network code at all). And for what it does do (email search) that
+ work is provided by an external library,
+ [Xapian](http://xapian.org). So if Notmuch provides no user
+ interface and Xapian does all the heavy lifting, then what's left
+ here? Not much.
+
+If you've been looking for a fast, global-search and tag-based email
+reader to use within your text editor or in a terminal, then Notmuch
+may be exactly what you've been looking for.
+
+If you're a developer of an existing email program and would love a
+good library interface for fast, global search with support for
+arbitrary tags, then Notmuch also may be exactly what you've been
+looking for.
+
+## News
+
+[[The latest news from notmuch|news]]
+
+## Documentation
+
+To get started with notmuch, just run "notmuch" at the command line.
+The configuration wizard will walk you through initial setup,
+including specifying the location of your mail store and how to start
+the initial indexing. After that, come back and checkout our docs:
+
+ * [[Notmuch manual pages|manpages]]
+ * [[General how-tos|howto]]
+ * [[Searching]]
+ * [[Excluding and deleting messages|excluding]]
+ * [[Initial tagging|Initial_Tagging]]
+ * [[Tips for using notmuch within Emacs|emacstips]]
+ * [[Remote usage|remoteusage]]
+ * [[Performance|performance]]
+
+Apart from the wiki, help is available via email and on IRC (see
+below). Join the mailing list. Read the archives. Ask questions.
+
+## Email clients and front ends
+
+Notmuch ships with a powerful set of [[command-line tools|manpages]], an
+[[email client for Emacs|emacstips]], another
+[client for vim](http://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch/blob/HEAD:/vim/README),
+and a [[Mutt integration script|notmuch-mutt]].
+
+There are also many other [[email clients and frontends|frontends]] based on
+Notmuch.
+
+## Screenshots
+
+* [[Emacs UI screenshots|screenshots]]
+
+## Packages
+
+* [Debian](http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=notmuch)
+- Please use at least the packages from squeeze-backports, squeeze
+ packages are very outdated!
+* [Fedora](https://community.dev.fedoraproject.org/packages/notmuch)
+* [Gentoo](http://packages.gentoo.org/package/net-mail/notmuch)
+* [Slackware](http://slackbuilds.org/repository/13.37/office/notmuch/)
+* [Ubuntu](http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=notmuch)
+
+## Source code
+
+All of the code for Notmuch is available as [free
+software](http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html) released
+under the GNU [GPL version
+3](http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.html). The latest
+versions can be checked out via git with this command:
+
+ git clone git://notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch
+
+You can browse the
+[Notmuch code history online](http://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch). And
+finally, you can
+[subscribe to the `notmuch-commits` list](http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch-commits)
+to watch every commit made to notmuch and the notmuchmail.org web
+site.
+
+Here are
+[source tar balls of notmuch releases](http://notmuchmail.org/releases/).
+
+We have a [buildbot](http://buildbot.notmuchmail.org/grid) (here's
+its
+[configuration](https://github.com/tomprince/buildbot-configs/tree/notmuch)).
+
+## Bug-tracking and patches
+
+Patches are most welcome and should be sent to notmuch@notmuchmail.org.
+Please try to follow the [[patch submission guidelines|patchformatting]]
+when submitting patches.
+
+The tagging and filtering features of notmuch make it quite suitable
+for use as a bug- and patch-tracker. We are currently experimenting
+with using it for this purpose for notmuch development, using a
+utility called [[nmbug]]. The status of current patches can also be
+followed [online](http://nmbug.tethera.net/status).
+
+## Contact: Email & IRC
+
+Comments? Please feel free to email the notmuch mailing list:
+notmuch@notmuchmail.org (subscription is not required, but you can
+also subscribe to the
+[notmuch mailing list](http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch)). You
+can also browse the
+[online list archives](http://notmuchmail.org/pipermail/notmuch/),
+read them as a
+[web forum (nabble)](http://notmuch.198994.n3.nabble.com/), or
+download an [mbox file](http://notmuchmail.org/archives/notmuch.mbox)
+of the entire mailing-list.
+
+The `mb2md` utility can be used to convert the archives to maildir
+format which is convenient for reading the archives within notmuch
+itself.
+
+If you prefer real-time chat, there is often someone on the
+[#notmuch](irc://chat.freenode.net/#notmuch)@irc.freenode.net IRC
+channel.
+
+## Feature ideas
+
+We have started a [[feature requests|feature-requests]] page on this
+wiki. No, things you add there won't automatically get implemented -
+but it's a nice way to collect ideas.
+
+## Website
+
+This wiki is maintained using [ikiwiki](http://ikiwiki.info). Here are
+[[instructions on how to edit the wiki|wikiwriteaccess]].