patk.1034@sent.as wrote: > We're evaluating our company's future server platform, and are pretty > much decided on Debian. An excellent choice. But on this mailing list that is simply accepted practice. :-) > I notice that Debian has settled on Exim as the default MTA, unlike many > (most?) other distros which seem to use Postfix. That is simply historical. It has been that way for a very long time. Periodically discussion appears in debian-devel (search the archives for it) but nothing comes from it. It is only the default and no matter what is chosen for the default there will be those who will want something different. That is one of the things that makes Debian a good choice for a base system. It allows you to be flexible about what you wish to do. > As we're also evaluating our mail server tech, I'd like to understand > the why of that decision -- and if it's still considered current/good > advice. It is simply "the way things have been for years and years" and for no other reason. > I asked in #debian, and was pointed at: > http://feayn.org/~lewis/exim.txt. Cute :-) That pretty much describes the situation perfectly! Seriously there isn't much more reason than the above. > From a tech perspective, having played with both now a fair amount, I > lean towards Exim's way of doing things. I and a good many others prefer Postfix. But Exim isn't Bad nor Evil and so things have remained on friendly terms. > But there's the project/community question. You do realize that the discussing Exim and Postfix is like the classic discussions between emacs and vi? It will be difficult to really get objective answers. People like what they like. > Exim project appears to languish a bit -- looking at mailing list and > #irc volume -- especially since the original dev retired, and one of the > project's other primary devs from Cambridge seems to be not so active > anymore. Being a Postfix person I have no comments about the Exim project. > Otoh, Postfix community seems active and 'verbose' ... including the > primary dev himself. Postfix development is very active. New releases with improved features are released regularly. The upstream mailing list is relatively friendly. I routinely ask questions there and get good answers to my questions. Just because installing Debian's "standard"[1] system task installs Exim doesn't mean that a lot of Debian users don't install Postfix. http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=postfix Of course since Exim is a default it has an advantage in the numbers because a very large number of people simply take the default. But the fact that so many users actively take action to switch from the default and install Postfix is telling of how well it is regarded. Bob [1] If you don't install the "standard system" task at installation time then you don't get any MTA installed. Then you can install Postfix for the very first time if you like and in that case you have installed Debian and never had Exim installed. That is what I do. Debian is very flexible and very easy to customize.
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