[svlug] Exim on Red Hat 8.0

[Karsten M. Self]

on Tue, Jan 07, 2003 at 06:01:07PM -0800, Florin Andrei (florin at sgi.com) wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-01-07 at 16:31, Greg Herlein wrote:
> > > > I didn't have any major complaints with Sendmail. Sendmail has run well for
> > > > me. I just wanted to try out exim. My initial impressions are quite
> > 
> > What are the compelling arguments to switch?  If my sendmail is
> > working fine, what advantage(s) are there to converting?
> 
> Different groups prefer different MTAs. Other groups prefer Postfix,
> others Qmail. This group likes Exim; that's why you'll see strong
> advocacy for Exim here.

Another possible explanation is that exim is the default MTA offered
with Debian, which is itself fairly popular around SVLUG.    This is of
course somewhat chicken-and-egg:  exim is popular because it's offered
on Debian, but it's the Debian default because the conifguration and
maintenance are sane.

Other relative merits:

  - It's FSF Free Software / OSI Open Source Certified (as opposed to
    qmail).

  - As noted, it's got a better security reputation (noting that
    Sendmail's been pretty good since the mid/late 90s) and
    configurability than Sendmail.

  - There are many useful plugins and modules you can add to exim.  It
    offers a great deal of flexibility, most of which can be added
    fairly painlessly (anyone who's tried gathering, building, patching,
    installing, and configuring qmail add-ons can appreciate this).

  - It's not the fastest, safest, most configureable, what have you,
    MTA.  However, it *does* balance a bunch of competing interests
    pretty well.  
    
Compare it to postfix and courier as other midweight alternatives.
Marc's got a good MTA list which may or may not be an LJ article by now.

Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
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