For your extension of the analogy consider Grant is a person who has
never driven a car before in his life. He has to learn how to use the
gas pedal and brake pedal with some coordination. You stick him in a
somewhat slow and clunky little thing with a mushy automatic transmission.
Then you pray that he gets it all correctly. Consider that he has only
seen British busses as his mode of transportation until now. So he does
not even know for sure how to control the radio. Is he going to be able
to get into the car and drive on rush hour LA area freeways through the
Orange Crush or the Sepulveda Pass area safely without <gisp> Reading
The Fine Manual cover to cover? If he wants to keep riding the Windows
bus then he should get a Windows program. If he is willing to learn
then he should pick up one of the BSDs is security is most important
or Linux if widely available confusion er help is important. Then he
should learn. That's what I have done. All the Windows bus-like objects
are behind the Linux firewall that I have learned to make cater to my
needs. The learning is painful. Having learned is wonderful. And I *KNOW*
what the results are getting me.
His third option is to hire a 'nix expert and pray....
{^_^}
From: "Fenwal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> IMO Get Mandrake for excellent hardware detection and ease of install.
> You will be up and running quickly plus you will have a GUI (KDE) to
> work with. Next get postfix (already included in distribution), follow
> the excellent documentation links on spamassassin site and you'll be up
> and running (you can install either from CPAN shell or use RPM). Don't
> want to edit files by hand? Install webmin and it will allow you to edit
> both postfix and spamassassin from web based GUI. I myself use Debian
> 3.0 and postfix from backports.org, spamassassin from CPAN.
>
> For the Car analogy. You might have driven cars and trucks for 40 years
> but linux is like those special race cars, it needs tweaking and knowing
> a little bit more than windows to know how to run it. With mandrake you
> don't have to know about the inner workings, if you want to get maximum
> benefit, you'll have to learn whats under the hood.
>
> HTH
> Mus
>
> Grant Baxter wrote:
>
> >On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 11:41:32 -0600, you wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>Grant Baxter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>I'm planning on setting up a mail server so I only have one SA
> >>>installation to maintain instead of three.
> >>>
> >>>I've used Windows only for the past twenty or so years. I've never
> >>>touched any Unix variant, so I would like some recommendations for the
> >>>easiest Unix variant to set up and get running as a mail server with
> >>>SA (including all the pieces parts I need, if you feel like it).
> >>>
> >>>I don't want to need to learn Unix to set this mail server up.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>That's kind of like saying you would like to buy a car (for the first
> >>time), but don't want to learn how to drive, put gas in, or change the
> >>oil.
> >>
> >>You might be able to make the initial purchase (install the OS) and
> >>maybe even drive it for a few weeks (get the mail system up and
> >>running). But sooner or later, you're going to have a problem which
> >>will require you to open the hood....
> >>
> >>
> >
> >First of all, that's a terrible analogy. I've driven cars, trucks, and
> >even buses for 40 years, and never once opened the hood on any of
> >them. That's what mechanics are for.
> >
> >Second, you've just made the case for os's like windows, and why *nix
> >is a niche os. I didn't have to learn anything about the inner
> >workings of XP to have it running like a champ. I found a mailserver
> >called 602Lan Suite for XP, unzipped it, ran the installer, picked all
> >the defaults, and bam working mailserver.
> >
> >Thus my question of which *nix can I use to get a mailserver and
> >SpamAssassin working together. I don't want to have to get a computer
> >science degree to install an OS and a couple apps.
> >
> >Don't get me wrong, I'm not some kind of *nix basher or Windows nazi.
> >I could care less about the os/software I use. The day that I think
> >that some flavor of unix suits my needs better than windows, I'm
> >there.
> >
> >I also know that *nix is a great backoffice tool. However, for *nix to
> >ever emerge from the backwaters of computerdom it's got to become a
> >lot easier to install and maintain.
> >
> >Thanks for your insight.
> >
> >grant
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
