Hi all,
to bring this thread to an end I will just forward this answer from Paul
Mansfield since it is the most complete and detailed one.
Many thanks to all who replied, each of your mails is valuable for me.
Thanks again,
Volker
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 10:16:43 +0000 (GMT)
From: Paul Mansfield <paulm@???>
To: V. T. Mueller <vtmue@???>
Subject: Re: [EXIM] need of arguments against exchange
On Thu, 14 Jan 1999, V. T. Mueller wrote:
> Trying to convince several people to use linux/exim instead of nt/exchange
> I would gladly appreciate any detailed information regarding "why NOT to
> use exchange".
Technically:
1) its use of resources demands four times the computing power of freebsd
according to most guides
2) its X400 gateway is very crude (ask
http://www.net-tel.co.uk who compete)
3) by default it permits relaying
4) MS cause poorly configured hosts to have illegal names with underscores
5) its ETRN doesn't comply with convention, even though it's vaguely within RFC
rules
6) as a news server its very inefficient, we have customers who've spent a
small fortune (GBP20k+) on an NT box with RAID disk system and gotten
swamped by a small feed which, if running on FreeBSD/Linux would have been
considered a trickle.
7) security problems abound, see
http://www.rootshell.com
8) its hard to administer an NT box remotely, you're always going to need a
monitor and keyboard, whereas you can (we do!) run all our machines as
"farms" - none have keyboards/monitors/mice
Non-technical:
1) its not free!
2) getting support from Microsoft is difficult or impossible.
3) it encourages clueless people to think they can set up a mail system without
any understanding even of the basics of mail
4) most windows users really should be given macintoshes to get them to
concentrate on tasks rather than fiddling with internals, too many hours
wasted on non-essential tasks
5) a Mac pretending to be an NT server actually offers more performance than an
NT box. Samba on Unix is also a good alternative. PCNFS sucks.
Paul
----
P Mansfield, Senior SysAdmin PSINet, +44-1223-577577x2611/577611 fax:577600
/* My parachute came with a "lifetime" warranty. Why am I not reassured ? */
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Volker T. Mueller Albert-Ludwigs-Universitaet Freiburg im Breisgau
Student der Informatik vtmue@??? +49 761 355-03 -80(fax)
--
*** Exim information can be found at
http://www.exim.org/ ***
