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Fedora keeps sendmail — for nowFedora keeps sendmail — for nowPosted Aug 2, 2013 7:16 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)In reply to: Fedora keeps sendmail — for now by dlang Parent article: Fedora keeps sendmail — for now
The real problem is that the idea that a *nix system can send e-mail, send log messages to another server, and other things like that is considered "obsolete" and functionality that needs to be removed. I think you're confusing »removing package X that does Y from the Fedora default install« with »removing any package that does Y from Fedora completely«. AFAICT nobody is suggesting removing all MTAs from Fedora. In addition, people who do intentionally want to run an MTA are probably going to have a fairly strong preference for which MTA they want to run, and in 2013, in many cases that preference is not going to be Sendmail. It is reasonable to argue that if most Fedora users have no use for a local MTA in the first place, and out of those who do many will not actually want to use Sendmail in particular, it makes little sense to pre-install Sendmail by default. Those people who do want Sendmail specifically (as opposed to, say, Postfix) can still find it in the repository.
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Fedora keeps sendmail — for now Posted Aug 2, 2013 7:27 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand Lennart's argument, it's not opposing Sendmail in particular (saying that a different MTA would be better), it's making it so that the base install of Fedora will have NO MTA installed, not Sendmail, not Exim, not Postfix, nothing.
If you really think that the majority of your userbase is going to be on ISPs that don't let MTAs go out to the Internet, a better solution that "eliminate the MTA" would be to have the distro install ask for outbound mail server info, and ask for an e-mail address to use to send messages to the system owner/admin. then store this info in a 'known place' for the distro. configure the MTA to deliver to this mail server (and deliver root mail to the e-mail address provided), and have mail client packages auto-configure themselves from this 'known place' as part of their installation scripts (while allowing users to override this by configuring it themselves after install)
The mindset that "in some cases this isn't useful, so we should remove it completely from the install and force anyone who wants to to install it manually" seems very wrong to me.
Fedora keeps sendmail — for now Posted Aug 2, 2013 7:38 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] The mindset that "in some cases this isn't useful, so we should remove it completely from the install and force anyone who wants to to install it manually" seems very wrong to me. I think there is something to be said for keeping the default installation lean. One could argue that having something like gcc, Emacs or TeX around would be »useful except in some cases«, but even so these packages are usually not part of the default installation. I quite agree that it would be reasonable for distributions to allow the installing user to specify a destination for outbound mail to an administrator. It is by no means clear, however, that supporting this use case would require a full-blown MTA on the scale of Sendmail to be installed by default.
Fedora keeps sendmail — for now Posted Aug 2, 2013 7:42 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
actually, I will somewhat disagree with you.
I think that for an opensource/free software desktop, gcc should be installed by default. Emacs and TeX aren't needed (says a vi user ;-) but it's hard to do very much stuff other than just being a consumer of services without running into some need for gcc, at least indirectly.
Fedora keeps sendmail — for now Posted Aug 2, 2013 7:48 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] I think that for an opensource/free software desktop, gcc should be installed by default. I'm with you, but:
Fedora keeps sendmail — for now Posted Aug 2, 2013 10:27 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
personally, I don't like any distro's stock install for a production server. There's always something I want to add to the stock install, and several things that I remove.
I like how Debian has a "minimal" install, which is fairly close to the minimum needed to boot, talk on the network, and install additional packaged. This doesn't include gcc, but it doesn't include X or any "desktop" software either. This makes it a good starting point for a server build.
Fedora keeps sendmail — for now Posted Aug 2, 2013 12:08 UTC (Fri) by peter-b (subscriber, #66996) [Link]
Fedora also has a "minimal" install (@core) which is exactly the same thing: just enough to boot and install packages.
Fedora keeps sendmail — for now Posted Aug 13, 2013 3:36 UTC (Tue) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]
> Fedora also has a "minimal" install (@core) which is exactly the same thing: just enough to boot and install packages.
Well, it has more than that. For example, it had sendmail in it before we decided, with this change, to remove it from that set.
Fedora keeps sendmail — for now Posted Aug 2, 2013 20:29 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] But surely you agree that there are thousands of useful packages that should not be in the default install. What I haven't seen yet is what you think sets MTAs apart from those. Is it because an MTA has been in the default install in the past?
Fedora keeps sendmail — for now Posted Aug 2, 2013 11:48 UTC (Fri) by johannbg (subscriber, #65743) [Link]
"I think there is something to be said for keeping the default installation lean."
Those defaults are part of the problem not the solution since people dont seem to realize for the first nothing goes away from Fedora unless it's dead upstream or no one no longer maintains it here with us so it just means things just get shuffled in,out or between comps groups.
And while we have an "default" this will always be the case, people always scream if something is added or removed to the so called "default" instead of those individuals engaging and participating in the relevant sub-community and influence and have that discussion there.
Which is why I'm forming a Gnome SIG an Gnome sub-community within Fedora [1] which will be aimed to deliver upstream modern, high-quality Gnome optimized desktop only experience targeted towards regular people for regular usage on common hardware. No more lvm, no more rsyslog, no more sendmail no more half baked enterprise/admin/desktop "defaults" that wind up being equally crappy for everybody causing nothing but tension,arguments and friction within our community and no more holding back progress in the process.
And this will sail proudly under the name Gnome not "defaults" or "desktop" just like KDE,XFCE,LXDE Sugar and other sub-community already are and have been doing for all those years...
If you are interested in participating in this effort feel free to join.
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