Many users at my university want jed to emulate EDT , VMS' system editor. This applies to XFree 3.2. You'll find out by yourself. I'll assume you have the teTeX distribution. This should help.
Manual configuration is a drudgery.
Alternatively, there are tools that ask for the information above and do all the work. One of the finest is pppsetup-X.XX.tar.gz. You feed it your ISP's phone number, your username, your password, and you're in business. Very fine tool. To retrieve your mail from a POP server, you use a POP client like fetchpop or fetchmail .