Best free Linux email server

[Jay]

I am looking to upgrade our email server from an EMWAC server (that is really just too basic) to something a little better. I can't really stretch to exchange or scalix etc so I would like a free Linux based server that has out of office and can be used with roaming profiles (normally a MAPI driver)

Webmail would be nice but not really that important.

I have a dual P3 800 system with 1 gig of ram and need to supply email to about 20 users. I also need to be able to use our Catchall pop3 mail box to drag all our emails from, then for the server to distribute them

Thanks

[ikonia]

depends on your distribution what mail packages and in what config are available to you.

The mail ones for your requirements are

1.) postfix
2.) exim
3.) sendmail

You can put various backends on them depending on what distro they are with and how much hassle you want.

There are none that do "out of office" nativly, you'll need to apply backend tricks to make them do that, and again, how easy that is depends on the earlier question.

20 users getting mail, how much mail do they get, do you want to do spam / rbl filtering.

Webmail is not a problem for most mail systems.

How do you expect your users to access it, (questioning due to the roaming profiles) thunderbird, outlook, outlook express etc etc etc.

[directhex]

depends on your distribution what mail packages and in what config are available to you.

The mail ones for your requirements are

1.) postfix
2.) exim
3.) sendmail

You can put various backends on them depending on what distro they are with and how much hassle you want.

There are none that do "out of office" nativly, you'll need to apply backend tricks to make them do that, and again, how easy that is depends on the earlier question.

20 users getting mail, how much mail do they get, do you want to do spam / rbl filtering.

Webmail is not a problem for most mail systems.

How do you expect your users to access it, (questioning due to the roaming profiles) thunderbird, outlook, outlook express etc etc etc.

sendmail? sadist!

[ikonia]

true ture, bit it is one of the "big ones" thats available and for 20 users it wouldn't be too hard to knock together a config.

[peterb]

qmail is another one to look at

dovecot provides pop and imap access for users

squirrelmail is a web based application

[ikonia]

Qmail is fine - but it is not packaged official by distros. Which for someone starting out with linux is not really appropriate.

[Jay]

our hosted POP3 has its own spam filter so that will not be an issue. Will any of the above hold the emails server side or will they be client side? (can be an issue with roaming profiles)

As for the users, once again a low cost client would be nice, but not express, i'm not a big fan.

Its not going to be a huge ammount of emails as its just report emailing and also allowing one user to recive our Contact Us page / apply here emails from our website.

I have used Linux before but I am still really a novice and see this as a good way to get stuck into it. What distro would be best for me do you think?

[ikonia]

the distro is personal choice, it really is, every one will jump in and tell you how good the one they use is, but its what works for you. Sorry that sounds like I'm not giving you an answer, but if X loves Y and you hate it and you force your self to try to like Y it just not going to be easy.

Consider this.

Debian solid - but slow with keeping up to date with software
ubuntu - built on debian base, but much more up to date and regular update as well as long term support (great for a solid server)
Fedora - bleeding edge, can break a log
Centos Redhat enterprise Linux with out the logos, not bleeding edge but solid with security updates
Redhat Enterprise Linux - paid for version of Centos
Suse Novells own version of linux
OpenSuse - comunity supported developed edition of Suse.

Thats really it in terms of main stream and mainstream support ability.

The mails will be kept where you tell them to be, eg: pop3 - your clients WILL download the mail imap - will be left on the server. Its up to you.

Question - if you have hosted pop3 - why do you want another mail service ?

[mroz]

Qmail is fine - but it is not packaged official by distros. Which for someone starting out with linux is not really appropriate.

Really? I'm completely clueless but managed to set up qmail for a test system on my home lan, though this was probably seven years ago (good god - most likely SuSE 6.x). Isn't configuring a mail server more complex than installing, or are the distro supported packages really easy to manage now?

I might dual boot XP & linux on my new buiild, but I don't know whether to stick with SuSE (OpenSuSE now, though my last install was SuSE 9.1 iirc) or switch to Ubuntu. I've not been using linux much recently as XP has some cool video tools. Can't wait for cross platform AVISynth 3.

[Jay]

I use Open SUSE on my laptop... its pretty good and enterprise Redhat in my last place with Scalix (had to do a full none GUI red had build with RAID, bit much for my first ever use of Linux)

We have a single POP3 catchall account eg catchall@mydomain.com, I used to just used EFS mail to grab it from the server and EMWAC to distribute it via SMTPD but I found it to be slow and could not be run on Linux. This is all to do with cost really, if we had the cash I would just get exchange and be done with it.

[ikonia]

I didn't say qmail was hard.

I said qmail does not come pre-packaged for most mainstream distros which unless the user wants to build his own packages, mange the correct patch set and compiler and core libraries and then build his own pop3 /imap packages thus breaking his whole systems package managment system isn't a good idea.

for someone reaonably new to linux and trying to put a multi user available group/company mail system which is what this sounds like you want support and ease of maintenance.

[Jay]

I agree that ease of use is the key here.

[mroz]

I didn't say qmail was hard.

I said qmail does not come pre-packaged for most mainstream distros which unless the user wants to build his own packages, mange the correct patch set and compiler and core libraries and then build his own pop3 /imap packages

I realised that - I just meant when I did it, I found all that much easier than the actual server configuration which you need to do either way, so I was wondering if current packaged solutions are now easier to set up.

thus breaking his whole systems package managment system isn't a good idea.

Yeah, sorry, fair point. I didn't take that into account...

for someone reaonably new to linux and trying to put a multi user available group/company mail system which is what this sounds like you want support and ease of maintenance.

...as for my toy system long term maintenance wasn't an issue, in that if I ever broke anything badly there were no serious consequences.

[Jay]

so this should work with the pop3 catchall account then?

[ikonia]

should what work ?

you need to decide which mail package you want. I suggest postfix or exim, or at a push courier.

Sit down, work out which distro you want to use then we can look at the alternatives.

Also, why do you need this second mail system when you've got a hosted pop3 system ?

[kopite]

Im using exim for my mail server and its been rock solid since setting up.

its a debian base