Slackware64-current: return sendmail to "n" series (alongside postfix)
by jwoithe from LinuxQuestions.org on (#5GRJ0)
As has been noted previously, postfix has displaced sendmail as the MTA of choice in Slackware, with sendmail relegated to extra/. However, there are evidently a large number of Slackware users who are utilising sendmail with relatively complex configurations involving milters and custom rulesets which have been refined over the years. Porting these to postfix will take considerable time which is hard to justify given that sendmail still has active upstream support.
To ensure that sendmail doesn't quietly disappear, could a move back to the "n" series be considered prior to the release of Slackware 15.0? Postfix could still remain the default option, and there are good technical reasons for this. However, having sendmail in the "n" series alongside postfix provides some degree of certainty for those who rely on sendmail - that it won't be dropped unexpectedly in the future.
There is a precedent for such an approach: Slackware includes both proftpd and vsftpd. I have no problem with this because there are some classes of FTP servers which are easier to configure with proftpd while others are best implemented with vsftpd. Similarly, while postfix is an excellent choice for perhaps most mail servers, there are some situations where sendmail is still the better option.
To ensure that sendmail doesn't quietly disappear, could a move back to the "n" series be considered prior to the release of Slackware 15.0? Postfix could still remain the default option, and there are good technical reasons for this. However, having sendmail in the "n" series alongside postfix provides some degree of certainty for those who rely on sendmail - that it won't be dropped unexpectedly in the future.
There is a precedent for such an approach: Slackware includes both proftpd and vsftpd. I have no problem with this because there are some classes of FTP servers which are easier to configure with proftpd while others are best implemented with vsftpd. Similarly, while postfix is an excellent choice for perhaps most mail servers, there are some situations where sendmail is still the better option.