> Joe Average User would most probably be pissed if he installed mutt but > doesn't have an MTA and then tries to send mail. That would take us back > into the old days of Slackware.
Joe Average User has to follow the recommendation, since he doesn't know the details. If he decides to do things different from what is recommended, he is lost anyway. Recommends is a recommendation. Mutt should recommend MTA, not depend. (actualy with the SMTP patch there is no reason to recommend an MTA.) shouldn't some debian base packet include /usr/sbin/sendmail with the lovest possible priority as alternative: a shell script that fails always and asks you to install some mail-transport-agent? or require users to have some clue, and not be able to find out that a missing /usr/sbin/sendmail means that no MTA is installed. Whatever you do, creating fake packages is a road to desaster and not a clean option. Andreas