Default MTA
The best argument I have seen for removing smail as the default Debian MTA
is in the README file for smail itself (see below). I would not suggest
replacing it with Vmailer until Vmailer has had a year or two of use on
the internet on a wide scale. Until Vmailier is mature, I would suggest
Exim. Note the current upstream maintainer for smail is encouraging people
to move away from it.
>From the smail README file:
Note that a complete re-write of Smail is probably never going to
happen. There is now one new work-alike mailer (Exim) available, and
there are several alernative mailers too (ZMailer, qmail), with at least
one more on the way (VMailer). VMailer will eventually have even better
support than Smail for gatewaying between diverse networks (eg. UUCP,
X.400, etc.). ZMailer also has good support for inter-network
gatewaying and is highly configurable and extensible. Given this state
of affairs it is likely best to put new efforts into supporting one or
more of these new mailers which have already benefited from new design
efforts and simply maintain Smail until its wide installed base has a
chance to change over to one of these newer mailers.
George Bonser
The Linux "We're never going out of business" sale at an FTP site near you!
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