[lug] mail server preference

[Nate Duehr]

On Dec 6, 2006, at 4:10 PM, dio2002 at indra.com wrote:

> in relation to the recent thread about spam, i'm wondering what  
> folks are
> using as their preferred mail server these days.

MTA:

           exim4 at home... more out of habit than anything... exim3  
was on the first Debian server I set up and it seemed saner than  
sendmail for various reasons back then and still does.
           sendmail at work... out of having no need to mess around  
with it on Solaris machines that aren't mailservers.
           qmail at one ISP I've helped set things up at... because  
they were already familiar with it and it was "there".
           postfix on everything else I've ever set up that was a  
real mail server... because it's saner than sendmail (again that) and  
it's really fast, stable, reliable, lowest observed resource  
utilization, and lots of user-based support.  If I ever had any  
reason to move away from exim4, postfix would be it... I just don't  
want to deal with the brain-damage of rebuilding this highly- 
customized mail server right now.  Maybe later.

IMAP:
           courier at home... because uw-imap was killing the machine  
under heavy load.  Conversion to courier and Maildir both added  
stability (giant mbox files are frightening) and lots more speed.

POP3:
           qpopper... at the above mentioned ISP.  But I've  
personally been avoiding mail servers that don't do IMAP for many  
years now due to having far too much stored mail and enjoying having  
the server pre-sort things into my folders for me.  (GRIN)

MUA:
            mutt... because it's there and it always works via ssh  
anywhere I go...
            Thunderbird... because I can't ALWAYS be stuck in the  
80's at the command line.  (GRIN)
            Apple Mail.App... because it works pretty darn well, and  
it's on the Macs, at no additional charge after steep initial  
purchase price.  :-) :-) :-)

(Comment on work -- only worked for one place ever that didn't run  
Exchange as there internal mail host.  That other place ran qmail.   
One place front-ended Exchange with sendmail boxes on the public  
side, but they were bastion hosts in a DMZ, and unaccessible by the  
end-user population.  Another front-ends Exchange with a commercial  
spam/anti-virus company hosting the MX records.  So I do have to put  
up with the silliness of the Exchange/Outlook marriage daily, also.   
I'm comfortable in Outlook and have figured out its quirks enough to  
use it for daily mail and calendaring because every mixed solution  
I've tried for an MUA to talk to it and try to deal with being a non- 
Outlook user at the office has resulted in "something doesn't work  
right", which was more annoying than being free of the silly thing.   
I don't use it for personal mail, only official office junk.)

--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com