Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 07:37:36 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Watson <rwatson@freebsd.org> To: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be> Cc: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Good Mail Programs Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1011112073201.24978A-100000@fledge.watson.org> In-Reply-To: <a05100313b8156a984160@[194.78.144.27]>
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On Mon, 12 Nov 2001, Brad Knowles wrote:
> > (2) I want my mail client to be secure.
>
> Mutt was originally written by Mike Elkins, the guy who also
> wrote the PGP/MIME RFC. It is still the "Premier PGP/MIME MUA". I
> really don't think that you get much better security than this.
I've never found the fact that gpg had a remotely exploitable buffer
overflow, nor its various signature verification bugs, very reassuring.
Perhaps things have improved since I last used it :-).
> > The closest I've come to happiness so far is the Cyrus mail
> > server, bundled with a combination of mail clients serving different
> > needs.
>
> Cyrus is a good small-scale IMAP server. It is easier to
> install than UW, is designed for maximum compatibility for users both
> local and remote to the server, and has a lot of other nice features.
> However, it does not scale well. If you care about scalability, you
> want to go with a "black box" mail server solution, and UW fits this
> scenario much better.
I think you have this backwards; as someone who uses Cyrus, I can say that
(a) it's not intended to be compatible with other mail server software,
(b) it's not intended for local users, and (c) it scales quite well. I
have around 9 gigabytes of mail stored on my cyrus server, with many
mailboxes in the 100,000 message range, and have no problems--its use of
seperate databases for index meta-data scales nicely, and its
inode-intensive message model seems to work well for me also. Likewise,
having used UW, I can say it is intended to be compatible, it is intended
to support local users, and it scales extremely poorly.
> I'm not familiar with ckimail, so I can't speak for which side
> of the fence it should be one (or if you need to retain a third
> program).
ckimail is an IMAP tool to show new messages in mailboxes: it's a nice
light-weight alternative to actually loading your MUA. It's vaguely
reminiscent of the index tool from mh.
> IMO, mutt is one of those packages that tends to suck less.
> But, it won't walk the dog, empty the sink, clean the toilet, empty the
> cat litter box, or run in GUI mode. If you need something that can do
> all that and also run as a text-mode MUA, then I suggest that you need
> to write it yourself.
Yeah, no doubt :-).
My real gripes with mutt as an alternative to pine were that (a) it had a
very inconsistent user interface, and (b) its configuration system sucks,
especially to make simple changes ("My mail is in IMAP today"). If those
have been resolved, I should give it yet another try sometime.
Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Project
robert@fledge.watson.org NAI Labs, Safeport Network Services
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