postfix or exim

[Preston Kutzner]

On May 11, 2009, at 11:19 AM, Marius Gedminas wrote:

> On Sat, May 09, 2009 at 03:05:37PM -0700, Noah wrote:
>> I am hoping to set up an ubuntu box for handling mail.  What is the  
>> Best
>> MTA - exim or postfix?  Is there some pages that can explain the
>> differences?
>
> "The Best MTA" is a religious question.
>
> Postfix is the default recommended MTA on Ubuntu systems, as far as I
> understand, from quotes like this:
>
>    Postfix is the default Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) in Ubuntu.
>            -- https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/serverguide/C/postfix.html
>
> I use it, I like it.

The strange thing is that exim is usually installed by default, and  
usually installed as the MTA when packages are installed that require  
an MTA.  A good example of this is mailx.  On a fresh system, if you  
install the package mailx, it will automatically install exim for  
you.  However, if you already have postfix installed or are installing  
it at the same time as you install mailx, it will not install exim.  I  
still wonder why Ubuntu installs exim as the default if no other MTA  
is already installed.

-- 
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?