Setting up SMTP AUTH with pine, Earthlink suggests I "contact Linux Support"

[Ilane Walberg]

I'm using pine on RedHat 7.3.  Earthlink just updated smtp server over 
the weekend and I logged on last night only to find I couldn't send 
email (or fetchmail either - but that's another problem -- I think).  
Earthlink is now using SMTP AUTH and with no Linux support, claims if 
I just set my outgoing server to their new one, that "everything will 
be all right".  I did and it wasn't.
 
I have pine's smtp server set to earthlink's smtp server.  When I 
updated this to their new smtp auth server, on attempting to send I got 
a message telling me to set up (or configure) authorization (I couldn't 
email from home so this is from memory).

Anyway, I really don't understand email configuration that well, so maybe 
someone out there can help me with the basics:
 
First, if I set up pine with smtp server as ISP's server, does that bypass 
my own sendmail (which starts up at boot time by default)?

I did a google search and found the statement "if  you use pine, 
authenticate by addding "/user=userid" after smtp server" and pine would 
pick the appropriate level of authentication.  I read this to mean that 
adding the quoted string to pine's smtp server configuration line, that 
this may be all I need to do?  I suspect not, (because it's never that 
easy, is it! ;)  especially as earthlink wants me to use the username 
'myaccount at tiac.net' (where myaccount is my earthlink account name).  
Could this really mean that I could get by doing "/user=myaccount at 
tiac.net"?   Earthlink support said I had to use port# 587.   What 
configuration parameter in pine would this be used in?  Or will pine 
automagically figure out that it needs to use that port as the default 
when I add the "/user=" line to smtp server?

If I still need sendmail, where should I look for a howto on setting up 
SMTP AUTH?

I know I'm too ignorant to really administer Linux well, but I've been 
developing under Unix and Linux for so many years, I'm just too stubborn 
to change!  Please help me not to be subverted over to the dark side!

Thanks for any and all advice, 
Ilane