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. > > Fedora - a little too dynamic for use as a server. This is to be > expected as it is a development system which I don't think is aimed at a > production like environment, plus the latest release seems very desktop > oriented. > Centos 5.4 - while it looks like a good choice, there has been some > political infighting going on recently which makes us a little nervous > about its future. In addition we have found that a number of the core > packages we wish to use are out of date (postfix, dovecot, amavisd-new > among them). > Ubuntu 9.10 Server edition - I am not sure what to say here. While at > first glance it seems to be an ideal solution a, free server > distribution with a Canonical backing it up. However, the setup of some > packages seems to us "odd", overly complicated and arbitrary. > openSUSE - not tied, but some concerns over the Novel /Microsoft deal. > > Thanks in advance > John A >
Personally, Debian Stable (currently Lenny) is my Linux of choice for production system. Package management via apt is second to none and everything is very well documented with a willing and able community for support. Why restate whats already written: http://www.debian.org/intro/why_debian When it comes down to it, the best distro is the one "you" know how to use. I would start with a distro that you are most comfortable with and know how to use the best. Good luck and kind regards, _Terry
