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  • Debian default mailer choice

    From Stefan Monnier@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jul 17 19:00:01 2025
    Why does Debian default to installing Exim4?

    I just crossgraded two machines (i386->amd64 and armhf->arm64) in
    different ways (once with `crosssgrader` and once with a fresh install
    followed by manual reconciliation) and in both cases I ended up with
    Exim4 installed while I had started with Postfix.

    I don't have anything against Exim4 (I just happened to choose Postfix
    many years ago and never had a reason to reconsider that choice).
    I know basically nothing about Exim4 other than the fact that installing Postfix instead saved a few kB (nothing very significant in the grand
    scheme of things).

    So here I am, wondering why Exim4 is favored this way.


    Stefan

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  • From Andy Smith@21:1/5 to Stefan Monnier on Thu Jul 17 21:30:02 2025
    Hi,

    On Thu, Jul 17, 2025 at 12:54:58PM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
    Why does Debian default to installing Exim4?

    Just historical reasons I think: No great mystery, just that a choice
    had to be made and that was the choice that was made.

    Personally I haven't been too thrilled with Exim's security track record
    of late and do kind of wish that the default had been Postfix, which
    would serve my needs in 99% of cases, and be simpler. But there's
    nothing except my own laziness stopping me from just switching to
    Postfix so these are very minor whinges from me really and I do still
    use Exim almost everywhere.

    Anyway as far as I am aware more effort is being made to remove the need
    for any MTA whatsoever (by removing dependencies on "an MTA") than to
    seriously consider switching defaults from Exim to Postfix. I think it's assumed that anyone who knows enough to know what an MTA is and have an
    opinion about which one they want, can make that choice themselves.

    Thanks,
    Andy

    --
    https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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  • From Marco Moock@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jul 17 21:40:01 2025
    On 17.07.2025 19:00 Uhr Stefan Monnier wrote:

    I don't have anything against Exim4 (I just happened to choose Postfix
    many years ago and never had a reason to reconsider that choice).
    I know basically nothing about Exim4 other than the fact that
    installing Postfix instead saved a few kB (nothing very significant
    in the grand scheme of things).

    So here I am, wondering why Exim4 is favored this way.

    It is simply a default for a metapackage, maybe you can find old
    discussions about that in mailing list archives. All people who want to
    install an MTA will choose one and install and configure it, regardless
    of the default in the case of the metapackage.

    An unconfigured MTA is useless in almost all use cases anyway and the
    nasty Postfix ncurses setup during the install process is annoying,
    especially if installed as a recommended packet (this existed in the
    past for smartd stuff).


    --
    kind regards
    Marco

    Send spam to [email protected]

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  • From John Dow@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jul 17 22:00:01 2025
    On 17 Jul 2025, at 20:09, Marco Moock <[email protected]> wrote:

    On 17.07.2025 19:00 Uhr Stefan Monnier wrote:

    I don't have anything against Exim4 (I just happened to choose Postfix
    many years ago and never had a reason to reconsider that choice).
    I know basically nothing about Exim4 other than the fact that
    installing Postfix instead saved a few kB (nothing very significant
    in the grand scheme of things).

    So here I am, wondering why Exim4 is favored this way.

    It is simply a default for a metapackage, maybe you can find old
    discussions about that in mailing list archives. All people who want to install an MTA will choose one and install and configure it, regardless
    of the default in the case of the metapackage.

    An unconfigured MTA is useless in almost all use cases anyway and the
    nasty Postfix ncurses setup during the install process is annoying, especially if installed as a recommended packet (this existed in the
    past for smartd stuff).

    Aye, it’s way too big a topic for the mailing list. If you’re interested in the whole debate (as far back as 2003) you can find highlights here:


    https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/DefaultMTA

    --
    John Dow <[email protected]>
    http://www.nelefa.org
    PVC:APKTIDQ4881ao2SFS0DZLOe7t6V0UwcuUV4x3dnkJR0TZsYX0usQ
    




    --Apple-Mail=_3107F9A5-85C4-41CD-863A-325BAA06332D
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
    Content-Type: text/html;
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    <html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><br><div><blockquote type="cite"><div>On 17 Jul 2025, at 20:09, Marco
    Moock &lt;[email protected]&gt; wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div><div>On 17.07.2025 19:00 Uhr Stefan Monnier wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">I don't have anything against Exim4 (I just happened to choose Postfix<br>many years ago
    and never had a reason to reconsider that choice).<br>I know basically nothing about Exim4 other than the fact that<br>installing Postfix instead saved a few kB (nothing very significant<br>in the grand scheme of things).<br><br>So here I am, wo
  • From Stefan Monnier@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jul 17 23:00:02 2025
    Aye, it’s way too big a topic for the mailing list. If you’re
    interested in the whole debate (as far back as 2003) you can find
    highlights here:

    https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/DefaultMTA

    Thanks, that very much answers my question.

    I guess if `ssmtp` had been extended to allow local delivery for local
    mail, it would be the most sensible choice (while waiting for "no MTA"
    to be an option).


    Stefan

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