On Tue, 2005-02-22 at 23:05 +0000, David Woodhouse wrote: > On Tue, 2005-02-22 at 22:33 +0000, Carwyn Edwards wrote: > >About a two years ago I sat down to evaluate an MTA to replace sendmail > >- I specifically chose postfix because it was simpler to configure from > >the point of view of transitioning from sendmail. > > Given that sendmail is widely acknowledged to cause brain damage, that > is hardly a resounding endorsement. :) > > Seriously though, I'm not sure it's a criterion we're interested in. > > We should be interested in what's easy to use for someone who's entirely > new to it. If they're already running sendmail, they can continue to use > sendmail -- and if they don't want to do so, they can make a choice > about what to replace it with. Ok, I consider myself a "newbie" when it comes to MTAs. I currently run sendmail, but I've done as little as possible to get it working. I have no spam filtering at SMTP, no auto-sorting of messages into folders, basically nothing more than "get the mail to the spool". Why? Because sendmail frightens me, I'm lazy, and what I have now basically "works" and I don't want to break anything. Now if exim can be used as a drop in replacement with just a bit of tweaking for site specific stuff, great. If I can enable some of the features I'd like by uncommenting a few options in the default config, even better. So I'll bite and look at the latest exim package in FC3 (I am running a server, so I can't really use rawhide). I'd be glad to report how it goes if anyone is interested. > I think Alan's wrong to suggest that there's no middle ground between > caring about how easy stuff is to configure, and needing a complete > point-and-drool configuration GUI for it. We don't _have_ a GUI > configuration tool for any MTA, but we do have a web browser and the > excellent and fully indexed Exim documentation, and a bunch of useful > default features commented out but ready to use in the default config > file. As a newbie, I don't really care about a GUI either. As long as the documentation is easily accessible and the package provides sane defaults, I don't see the need for a GUI. Realistically, it would probably only be used once to setup the mail server initially. After that, it'd just sit there on the hard drive taking up space. Newbies have a tendency not to remove anything, whether it's being used or note. josh
