Emacs users: what software do I need to send and recieve emails with Ubuntu/emacs on my laptop?

[Peter Smerdon]

Hi list,
I would like to use Gnus to read email/newsgroups on my ubuntu laptop
but am unsure what extra software I need to install to do so. 
I have home email, work email and gmail/yahoo mail to configure, most
use ssl on the smtp end, do I need utilities like starttls installed? Do
I need fetchmail & sendmail or does Gnus manage all of these things?

Evolution is relatively easy to set up for multiple smtp accounts but
extremely rigid to use (IMHO) for example; it will not allow me to
customize key bindings which is somewhat of a dealbreaker. If I could
only get Gnus set up properly I would be much happier reading mailing
lists!

Thanks for any advice you can give me

Peter.