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At the time of writing, my question here:

Recommendations for good MTA / groupware solutions?

is at -2. What is wrong with it? I know some people don't think having a monolithic piece of software for an e-mail server is "The Unix Way", but that's just their opinion. The folks at Citadel or Zimbra would disagree, as would many other Unix admins like me who want more convenience that ideological perfection.

I can understand not voting it up, but voting it down seems very unfair; how is it objectively bad?

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    It got one downvote, are you really worried about it?
    – Michael Mrozek
    Dec 5, 2012 at 20:46
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    What Michael said. But also: people don't like "Recommend something for me" questions and they often attract downvotes.
    – mattdm
    Dec 5, 2012 at 21:17
  • @mattdm Well that's probably not a good attitude for this site to grow. These kinds of questions, when answered well, can provide useful information for anyone looking for similar types of software.
    – Jez
    Dec 5, 2012 at 21:52
  • Two downvotes now. Well the people on this site are showing themselves to be remarkably unhelpful, I have to say. "Our way or the highway", is that your motto?
    – Jez
    Dec 6, 2012 at 10:04
  • + search another site, ppl dont want to help others , the more i'm in internet the more they promote their way of thinking, and rule others, as overpowered admins /trolls .. etc
    – Xsi
    Dec 7, 2012 at 21:18
  • ppl here are some lack of ethics and there are also problems with mirroring their own thoughts
    – Xsi
    Dec 7, 2012 at 21:20

2 Answers 2

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Well, I have no greater ability to read the minds of downvoters than you (and I'm not your downvoter), but if you read the tooltip it talks about "research effort". I don't know how much you've actually done, but not much shows in the question.

E.g., if you ran apt-cache search groupware you'd find out about not only Citadel, but Courier, SOGo, and Kolab. Googling "linux groupware" would find you several more.

If you Googled for "debian mailserver", you'd find that there are plenty of guides that make configuring discrete components—even exim—fairly easy. Some even include web front-ends.

Maybe you have done this, and none of those were useful. But you didn't let us know.

And before wondering how hard it is to configure Citadel, did you check their web site?

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  • But I'm asking for recommendations; pros and cons of the various pieces of software. I'm already aware of most of what you just said.
    – Jez
    Dec 6, 2012 at 9:03
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    @Jez Pros and Cons are a review thing, not a QnA thing. This is't a very good platform for recommendations.
    – Caleb
    Dec 6, 2012 at 10:18
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[...] how is it objectively bad?

Voting is never objective, it is always a subjective decision on the part of the voter.

And subjectively, a lot of people do not share your opinion that software recommendation questions are good for U&L. I, for one, think they are generally pretty useless in the long run. The field changes too fast and each users situation is just different enough that solid concrete answers that can go down in an archive as encyclopedic reference questions are pretty rare.

On top of that, your question has some vague requirements such as "easy to configure" and is headed too many directions. You ask how easy one MTA is to configure (subjective) then switch gears to whether there are alternatives (listy).

To make matters worse, you don't appear to be looking for an answer from a truly Unix/Linux perspective, you have an idea in your head of an all in one solution that fits your usage and knowledge making this also borderline on too localized.

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  • Nonsense. There is no reason that a so-called "Unix/Linux perspective" should not be a software suite incorporating multiple pieces of functionality. This seems to be a frankly stupid dogma that I really don't know why people persist with. Look, it can be much more convenient to combine pieces of functionality that are similar into one software suite. Why do you have such a problem with it? Why do you tie Unix into this extra complexity of configuring 5 programs when you only need configure 1?
    – Jez
    Dec 6, 2012 at 10:08
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    You're missing my point. Your question asks "I'm looking for pros and cons of the various software suites." That is distinctly NOT a very U&L kind of question. A distinctly Unixy answer would be about the specific software packages that handle each function. You're looking for a review site that covers "software suites". That's just not a good fit here.
    – Caleb
    Dec 6, 2012 at 10:17
  • I don't see why not. I'm asking a question, it's quite possible to give an answer listing objective features which various different suites have.
    – Jez
    Dec 6, 2012 at 10:23
  • @Jez Configuring multiple programs really shouldn't be harder than configuring one. It should be less complex, as you can test each piece independently. I know in the case of (e.g.,) virtual-user mail setups, its more complicated (or, at least, you have to repeat yourself)—but that's because someone failed to follow the Unix philosophy and integrated multiple things (virtual users + MTA, virtual users + IMAP, etc.) into one package. There of course may well be very good reasons for that—the philosophy unworkable if followed to the extreme.
    – derobert
    Dec 6, 2012 at 15:56
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    @Jez: "please list the features" is asking for grunt work, not expertise. This site is really best for how and why questions. You can argue about that if you like, but if you want an answer for why your question got downvotes, there it is.
    – mattdm
    Dec 6, 2012 at 17:28
  • @mattdm OK then, how common is it for admins to use suites like this on Unix? Why would you want to use them instead of Exim/Courier/Roundcube combinations? Also, I'm not sure I could agree with the "grunt work" description. If someone else on this site has direct experience working with a particular software suite, they have insight that others wouldn't have. It's not simply a case of looking at a feature list.
    – Jez
    Dec 7, 2012 at 10:32
  • @Jez: well, that's a different question, isn't it?
    – mattdm
    Dec 7, 2012 at 14:41

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