Re: default MTA
On 05/28/2013 07:05 PM, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> And on desktop systems, nobody reads local email. We might want to think
> of a better notification system, but email is definitely not fit for
> that anymore.
I do read the mails that my system is sending me (smartd, cron, mdadm,
etc.), and I like the feature to receive such notifications in my inbox.
If you want to reinvent the wheel, and have notification for example in
a gnome popping bubble thing, feel free. But please do it as an option,
and do not impose such choice to everyone.
I'm fine with whatever default you choose, if at least I can keep things
running as I'm used to though, and if there's an *easy* way (eg: not
hidden in a dpkg-reconfigure or an obscure config file) to select the
old behavior (for example, with an easily reachable option in d-i).
On 05/28/2013 08:05 PM, Simon McVittie wrote:
> The participants in this thread are debian-devel subscribers: the sort
> of people who know that Debian is a Unix system, know what a Unix
> system is, and have some idea of what a "btrfs scrub cron job", or
> indeed an MTA, means. That's a pretty limiting audience for an
> operating system. The Universal Operating System should also be
> usable by people who don't meet those criteria, and I think Joss is
> right to speak up on their behalf.
If we want to be universal, that means we satisfy all cases, and we do
not limit ourselves to the choices of the majority only.
On 05/28/2013 08:05 PM, Simon McVittie wrote:
> I'm quite prepared to believe that *our* Unix systems - and in
> particular, servers and development machines - need an MTA, but my
> parents' laptops really shouldn't need one.
Are you saying that they don't know what a mail server is, but they
installed Debian on their own, and made the choice of Debian as well on
their own? I'm having a hard time believing this, which is why I'm asking.
A few remarks here:
1/ Your parents don't read mail? That is surprising to me. In this days
and age, everyone does.
2/ Can't you configure their system to send *you* the system
notifications so that you can fix a problem? That is a very nice feature
to have.
3/ If you want them to receive the system notification, it's nice as
well to get it by email, because this way, they can forward you anything
that they don't understand.
The point is: did you at least configure the root alias, so that it gets
forwarded to a mailbox which someone actually reads?
On 05/28/2013 08:05 PM, Simon McVittie wrote:
> Ideally, we can have a sensible default that is suitable for both
> experts and non-experts; but if we can't, then the non-experts should
> probably have priority.
I'm not sure I agree with the above. I'm fine with Debian being the OS
for the experts.
On 05/28/2013 08:05 PM, Simon McVittie wrote:
> but my parents don't even know that they *have* an MTA.
They don't have to know. If at least they receive the system
notifications in their inbox, or if you do, then everything is fine.
Thomas
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