MS Exchange server on FreeBSD?

Anthony Atkielski atkielski.anthony at wanadoo.fr
Sun Mar 20 01:52:50 PST 2005


Ted Mittelstaedt writes:

> Fine, you list the features you think are key ones and I'll provide it.

Why not just buy Exchange?

You make the same mistake that so many people with emotional investments
in software make:  You feel you must look for non-Microsoft solutions
_just for the sake of avoiding Microsoft_.  But in this case, as in
several other cases, the Microsoft solution tends to be the best
overall.  And if one has no sacred mission to drive Microsoft back into
the Pit, there's no reason to look for cobbled UNIX solutions that do
the same thing.

> No it doesen't.  Exchange has a better feature set than MANY of the UNIX
> solutions but not all.

Show me the one-stop UNIX solution that meets or beats Exchange.

> It was garbage but it was a serious competitor, because it was the only
> company that had the name recognition to build it's product up - if it
> had been allowed to do it.

It didn't actually have a product, though.  It bolted together standard
SMTP and POP bits and pieces and tried to call it an integrated
solution.

Exchange was written from scratch specifically to provide an integrated
solution.  Nobody else was or is going to come up with the same thing
without making a similar investment ... and the investment in Exchange
was substantial.

> Exchange in the beginning was garbage also.  As I recall Exchange 5.0
> couldn't even be configured to disallow promiscious relaying.

I used Exchange from the very beginning, and had no problems with it.

> The Exchange webinterface - which is usable from any operating system
> that you can run a browser on - provides exactly the same functionality as
> Outlook client with the Exchange Connector to an Exchange server does.
> Please explain how a Windows environment provides all the Exchange
> features to the end user and a non-Windows environment does not.

Not all non-Windows environments have equivalent clients.  A Web
interface doesn't count, any more than connecting a dumb terminal to a
mainframe makes the dumb terminal a PC.

> Not at the level that ISP's have mail passing though their servers.

ISPs should not use Exchange.

> When was the last time that some spammer stuffed your exchange servers
> outbound queue with spam?

I don't run an Exchange server.

-- 
Anthony




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