On 12/1/2009 9:09 AM, John wrote:
> Sorry to bring this here, but we are having trouble setting up a
> Postfix/dovecot mail system.
>
> Background:
> We are a bunch of retirees, so cost is a factor in any decision. We all
> have IT experience, some of going back decades, however the world of
> Linux and its software is new to us all. We used the cook book approach
> to setting up our first mail system. It uses Postfix/Dovecot on top of
> Fedora 8 and so far it works like a charm. While the cook-book approach
> got up and running fairly easily I think we missed out on the learning
> side of things.
>
> However, there is a growing concern about the basic OS slipping too far
> behind on important changes, the same goes for some of the packages we
> are planning on using, so we have started looking at alternatives.
>
<soapbox>
I personally use Gentoo for all my Linux needs.
There are several reasons for this.
1. It forces you to learn Linux. The handbook gives a great
walk-through of how to set it up.
2. It is multi-platform; x86(_64), sparc(64), ppc(64), alpha, etc.
3. It is a build from source distro, but you don't need to know how.
The Portage system takes care of individual packages and dependencies.
You can tune and rebuild the entire system, if desired.
4. The base install is minimal; compile tools, python, perl and common
commands.
You get what you need, nothing more.
5. There is a security team in place to monitor vulnerabilities.
6. There is no "OS upgrade". Only package updates.
It will happily work forever updating single packages when *you* want.
There is still an easy way to update everything as well.
7. There are stable, testing and experimental types of packages. All of
which are easily accessible.
8. Tracking down dependencies is a non-issue.
</soapbox>
I know other alternatives, such as FreeBSD, would also work well.
