[plug] This Mailing list

[Christian]

Matt Kemner wrote:

> I think it boils down the the fact that sendmail is optimised for "normal"
> email patterns (ie one recipient per message) which is why it may not be
> as fast handling large mailing lists as QMail might be, which I'm told
> is optimised for large numbers of recipients per message.
> That doesn't mean "sendmail is a bad MTA" and "QMail is a good MTA"
> It means they each suit their purpose.

I largely agree with this but I've heard so many different sendmail
problems recounted so many times that, while it's not necessarily a
"bad" MTA, I suspect there are usually better options.  People complain
about sendmail for being "bloated", difficult to configure, slow,
resource-hogging, and insecure.  The only real advantage I've heard is
that it is very flexible/powerful.  Calling it "bad" outright would
probably be an overstatement but I think it's worth considering and
evaluation the alternatives.

> I don't know what postfix is optimised for, only that is was written from
> scratch with security in mind, which is one of the reasons I wanted a
> closer look at it.

Qmail was also written with security in mind but Postfix will work
better in terms of being compatible with sendmail-oriented systems.  I
also think Postfix has a better license.  My own experience with Postfix
suggests that it works really well: it's configuration architecture is
designed with simplicity in mind but it can still probably do pretty
much anything most people would want.  It's fast, runs nicely and has
some neat features.  I don't think it has as many features as sendmail
or even qmail but I haven't come across any real limitations yet.  I
would recommend it to anyone who doesn't absolutely need a unique
feature of either qmail or sendmail.

Regards,

Christian.