Terry L. Inzauro wrote:
> 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 packages we wish to use are out of date (postfix, dovecot, amavisd-new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
>
>
>
>
>
I took a quick look at Debian, but as it was very similar to Ubuntu
(which I know is based on Debian) it looked to have the same problems
from our perspective. An example, from the Postfix setup was the
replacement of the LMTP process binary with a symlink to the SMTP
binary. This may not be a real problem, perhaps the two binaries are the
same, and Debian/Ubuntu are being smart, but as I could not find a
rational for the change I have to wonder if this may be a problem in the
future. Other examples are the strange reconfiguration of the Amavisd
config files, changes to SASL setup, all make us a little nervous.
