Spamassasin, sendmail, Postfix

[Alejandro Imass]

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 3:33 PM, Ruben de Groot <mail25 at bzerk.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 06:30:21AM -0700, Randal L. Schwartz typed:
>> >>>>> "Ruben" == Ruben de Groot <mail25 at bzerk.org> writes:
>>
>> Ruben> And sendmail does not? You obviously are biased.
>>
>> I had at least a decade of experience with sendmail before discovering
>> postfix.  And now I use postfix, and you can't *make* me use sendmail
>> again.
>
> I'm not making you use anything. Just commenting on your assessment that
> sendmail cannot do something, while I know it can.
>

As stated in my previous response I second Randal's opinion. I am sure
that sendmail can and in fact probably does do anything that Postfix
can do, nevertheless, there are core differences that make Postfix
(and for that matter QMail) a better choice for small to medium
implementations, in fact large ones, but I don't want to get into that
right now.

The main difference is that Sendmail and the vast majority of MTAs are
monolithic and usually very hard to configure. Postfix on the other
hand is a bunch of different programs (non-monolithic) and extremely
easy to configure. There is a lot of debate of which MTA model is
better in general, but I think that non-monolithic allow to play well
and integrate with almost anything and very easily, whereas in the
monolithic model you may even have to recompile to get something
simple working. Furthermore Sendmail's legacy configuration methods
via m4 are really hard for the non-experts and with all the
administration ordeals that a modern admin has to deal with, banging
your head with m4 and restarts is not very comforting. Again IMHO.
BTW, I think that Randal is more known as Perl guy, more than a
Linux-guy ;-)

Anyway, my point is that an Operating System should not impose a
specific MTA by default, and let the installer chose their favorite
MTA. From what I understand you can't even remove Sendmail from
standard FBSD and must only be de-activated. I personally think that
sucks (if it's true anyway). Note that it is not my intention to start
a flame MTA-war here. I think that Sendmail is exclellent if you like
it, but Postfix is excellent as well, and we should be eventually able
to install FBSD with Postfix as default MTA.


>> Of course I'm biased.  I prefer postfix now.
>
> Nice for you.
>
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