Re: default MTA for sarge
On Sunday 13 July 2003 02:24, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote:
>
> I would lean towards exim4 configured for local delivery only. It is a
> sane default for just about every system. The admins who know they want
> another MTA can easily replace exim and the users who have no clue what a
> MTA does have one installed quietly and securely waiting for the day they
> might want more from it.
>
> Enough of a Linux system assumes that a MTA is present that not installing
> any would be wrong. Asking an user which MTA they want is equally wrong
> because many users have no clue what one is.
I have one more comment about this.
In another post I mentioned that the only reason I have a local mail daemon
setup on some machines is to allow reportbug to work. It occurs to me that
perhaps (*PERHAPS*) during the install we could query:
"Hi, are you connected to an ISP that you use for all of your email
sending/receiving needs? Or perhaps this is a workstation setup inside a
corporate setting? If so in the blanks below please provided the name of the
SMTP server as well as the IMAP4 or POP3 server you use." These settings are
provided by their ISP or IT staff and asking for them should not be
completely confusing. Especially with a bit of sugar text.
We could store this value and then *ANY* app that needed the setting could
just look it up. Perhaps asking about proxys as well.
A few questions like this would go a LONG way to making the initial install
much easier for those interested in a functioning desktop. In particular
laptop users are a very interesting subset of users who do not want much of a
traditional Linux / Unix setup.
I suppose this is a side rant/suggestion for "let's have some generic meta
configuration questions rather than only tying them to specific packages".
Perhaps not a sarge solution but something to consider. Discussions on this
probably need to fork off to a new thread but starting here made sense.
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