Re: [WinMac] Re: Email Choices

Bruce Johnson(johnson[at]Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU)
Tue, 23 Mar 1999 20:56:06 -0700

Alex Dearden wrote:
>
> >If you had some UNIX experience or some money to
> >spend I might suggest going that route.
>
> don't forget Linux. It'll run on virtually any modern Pentium machine and
> all PowerPCs. I don't know of any particular email servers for it but I'm
> sure they're out there.

Uhhh.... does sendmail count? ;-) If you need list management, try listserv or
majordomo.

>It's amazing how fast Linux is gaining popularity
> (they even have a magazine: Linux Magazine www.linux-mag.com) and there
> are tons of software out there for free.
>
> Samba for example is an SMB suite for LInux so that it can communicate
> natively with PCs running Windows.

A Un*x box running Samba was, in fact, one of the first clients tested with NT...
  
Linux <more or less> is unix, with all the attendant strengths and weaknesses.
An improperly configured Linux box is a network managers nightmare (there are
a LOT of security holes that are open on the typical install) but properly
done they're wonderful machines.

 IF you are willing to risk alcoholism, a well-made linux box with a sizeable
disk or disk array and sendmail is a wonderful choice as an enterprise-level
e-mail server, and costs you nothing more than the cost of the machinery and a
lot of liver cells. Get an alpha, and run it even faster ;-) (for those of you
not getting the sysadmin in-joke sendmail is notoriously and justifiably known
as a gigantic PITA to get working right)

Use Qmail, and you can keep your liver ;-)

Our network servers are a mix of NT, Digital Unix and Linux boxen...the NT
boxes are doing file and application service, for our e-mail, web service and
other connectivity we're sticking with Unix...but we were using Unix long
before we were using NT. There are _still_ days when I think we should wipe
the NT boxes except for the two apps we need NT to serve, and redo our main
servers as Linux + Samba...the unix boxes certainly give us fewer problems.

Also, most of the 'internet appliances' I've seen advertised (another good
solution for e-mail, BTW) are such properly configured Linux boxes...

And no, we're not touching Exchange with a fifty foot bargepole...

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Tue Mar 23 1999 - 19:57:05 PST