Dear Promise Kumalo,

Thank you for the recommendations.

So for Exchange equivalents in the Linux world, it is Zimbra and Kolab.

________________________________ From: CentOS centos-bounces@centos.org on behalf of Promise Kumalo promise.kumalo@outlook.com Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2018 11:38 PM To: centos@centos.org Subject: Re: [CentOS] Which is better? Microsoft Exchange 2016 or Linux-based SMTP Servers?

hi there

I would categorize Exchange 2016 as "groupware" rather than SMTP server per say, because you sent lots of stuff out of Exchange.

so to compare Exchange with postfix, exim would not be a proper comparison. For Linux based groupware that i know is completely free is Kolab (https://www.kolab.org/). its fairly easy to setup. Not sure about Zimbra is its Still free as of now.

If you are to use postfix, exim or sendmail you would need to setup a webmail for that and use something like SquirrelMail or Dovecot of which that more a bit complex than just setting up Kolab.

So in Short if you ware looking for Exchange equivalent in linux try Kolab or Zimbra. don't look at postfix or exim.

On 07/18/2018 07:04 PM, Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming wrote:

Good evening from Singapore,

I am torn between deploying Microsoft Exchange 2016 and Linux-based SMTP servers like sendmail, postfix, qmail and exim.

Relative ease of installation and configuration is an important consideration factor.

Microsoft Exchange 2016, Domain Controller, and Active Directory are relatively easy to install and configure. Linux-based SMTP servers are extremely difficult to install and configure and of course, extremely time-consuming.

One of the features of Microsoft Exchange 2016 is that you can create additional folders on your Inbox in the server (server-side). Can Linux-based SMTP servers do that?

Does Exchange 2016 offer more user-friendly features or Linux-based SMTP servers?

Besides the above considerations, how about security? Traditionally, Linux is far more secure than Windows.

Judging by security, Linux-based SMTP servers ought to have a higher percentage of the market share?

Finally, I can only use Windows Server 2016 Standard Evaluation Copy FREE for a period of 3 years MAXIMUM. But I can use Linux servers and Mail Transport Agents (MTA) FREE perpetually.

Please advise.

Thank you very much.

===BEGIN SIGNATURE===

Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming's Academic Qualifications as at 30 Oct 2017

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Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming's Academic Qualifications – Historical Records, Office of the Grand Historianhttps://tdtemcerts.wordpress.com/ tdtemcerts.wordpress.com Historical Records, Office of the Grand Historian

https://tdtemcerts.wordpress.com/ [2] http://tdtemcerts.blogspot.sg/

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Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming's Academic Qualifications – Historical Records, Office of the Grand Historianhttps://tdtemcerts.wordpress.com/ tdtemcerts.wordpress.com Historical Records, Office of the Grand Historian

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Andrew Holway wrote:

...

...

In addition, if you go to 365, you are NOT BUYING the software, you're renting the service. You will be paying every year, and a service contract will cost, and, presumably, cost more every year.

Still a lot better than trying to run your own hodge-podge of nightmares on Linux.

Beg pardon? Did I make a mistake on the email address? I thought this went to the CentOS general discussion list.

mark

On 07/18/2018 10:24 AM, Andrew Holway wrote:

...

...

Still a lot better than trying to run your own hodge-podge of nightmares on Linux.

Beg pardon? Did I make a mistake on the email address? I thought this went to the CentOS general discussion list.

I specifically meant setting up and running email services on linux is not for the feint of heart and delivers little real value considering the plethora of free and commercial email services available.

I would disagree.

Postfix and Dovecot are both very well documented.

Running the server yourself protects your users from content scanning by the companies that profit from tracking users.

And running itself lets you run DANE for SMTP which makes MITM a lot more difficult when the other server you are talking to supports DANE for SMTP.

The major e-mail services do not offer that.

Sure it is more work, but it isn't that difficult to get it right.

Andrew, you should understand that you are talking to experts in Linux here.

No, i was talking to the OP who is seemingly not an expert. Advising those who not competent that they can set up and run their own mailserver is probably negligent.

Whipping up Exim and Dovecot for your own private email server is one thing. Setting up for an organisation is a completely different story. Mailservers are extremely hard to do well and a job for a specialists. Just making mail deliverable requires specialist knowledge and keeping an up-to-date and effective spam filter is near impossible nowadays.

On 07/18/2018 12:33 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:

On 07/18/18 12:24, Andrew Holway wrote:

...

...

...

Still a lot better than trying to run your own hodge-podge of nightmares on Linux.

Beg pardon? Did I make a mistake on the email address? I thought this went to the CentOS general discussion list.

I specifically meant setting up and running email services on linux is not for the feint of heart and delivers little real value considering the plethora of free and commercial email services available.

Andrew, you should understand that you are talking to experts in Linux here. And even I (and I'm not considering myself an expert in Linux) have no trouble to set up mail server on Linux (with all blows and whistles like spam/virus filtering, etc).

So, Mark meant to say your posts are offensive to Experts on this list.

Please, take a note of it.

So, I don't think anyone can call me a 'non linux' guy :)

But are you guys really telling you think the calendaring / scheduling for individual users and the main corporate account, etc. .. are working well enough with any Linux solution.

I have researched this very recently and I have not found a solution that works even reasonably well.

Red Hat has even shifted their calendars to Google .. does anyone think if an enterprise calendar that really worked was out there they would not be using it?

On 07/18/2018 01:58 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:

<snip>

...

But are you guys really telling you think the calendaring / scheduling for individual users and the main corporate account, etc. .. are working well enough with any Linux solution.

I must confess, my servers are FreeBSD, but I'm quite sure the same is doable easily on Linux.

We use for calendars Owncloud (may migrate to nextcloud in some future to come). That authenticates against LDAP.

And does that calendar solution allow for things like:

1) Allowing all users in the organization to see users calendars and see when they are free to schedule a meeting with them.

2) Allow for designated people to schedule meetings for others (ie, your secretary/office assistant can schedule meetings for people, etc.)

3) Allow a calendar to schedule shared items .. like meeting rooms, shared vehicles, etc. So that people can check those out for specifc time windows, etc.

Those are just a couple of minor things a lot of solutions can't do

And do they work with imap, etc. Zimbra does not work very well with Thunderbird and Lighting (for example) .. many solutions don't work with Windows or Mac clients, etc.

For mail we use postfix, dovecot and maia for spam filtering (the last harnesses spamassassin, clamav and few other things).

Of course, zimbra you mentioned earlier in the thread (or was it not you?), and Kolab provide more corporate-like collaboration environments, but I shied away from them as I set myself a goal to give users individual handle on spam/virus filtering in email, and neither of them has per-user spam preferences (take it with the grain of salt, I might have missed something...)

Just my $0.02.

<snip>

On 2018-07-18, 15:05, Valeri Galtsev wrote:

No, owncloud/nextcloud don't work with IMAP as far as I know. Mail server is separate issue.

Depend on what you define as "work with IMAP", Nextcloud does not come with IMAP server, but installing an IMAP server on the side of Nextcloud/Owncloud using the same storage probably not that difficult. Furthermore, Nextcloud can have IMAP as authentication backend, and also have extension that allow accessing IMAP from inside Nextcloud interface, make it easier to give impression of integration to users.

significantly increases the chance one day openly available incarnation of each may become no longer available for us, and I will have to find replacement in a rush and find the way to migrate to it, and the more sophisticated the thing is, the trickier the migration will be.

That said, if the code actually FOSS, then anybody who is willing can fork the last FOSS code and continue developing it, and we have many of those, like Illumos out of Open Solaris, LibreOffice out of OpenOffice, MariaDB out of MySQL, Bareos out of Bacula, etc.

Nextcloud is fork of owncloud, and to my regret nextcloud doesn't work with postgresql,

Not true, Nextcloud can have PostgreSQL as database backend: https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/12/admin_manual/configuration_database/lin...

On 07/19/18 09:14, Johnny Hughes wrote:

On 07/18/2018 04:05 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:

...

On 07/18/18 14:36, Johnny Hughes wrote:

...

On 07/18/2018 01:58 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:

<snip>

...

...

But are you guys really telling you think the calendaring / scheduling for individual users and the main corporate account, etc. .. are working well enough with any Linux solution.

I must confess, my servers are FreeBSD, but I'm quite sure the same is doable easily on Linux.

We use for calendars Owncloud (may migrate to nextcloud in some future to come). That authenticates against LDAP.

And does that calendar solution allow for things like:

1)  Allowing all users in the organization to see users calendars and see when they are free to schedule a meeting with them.

Yes at least about a part of it: calendars can be shared with some people or with everybody (which we didn't do, so I may be not 100% presenting "experimental fact" here). Not certain about "free/not free" mapped on calendars though.

...

2. Allow for designated people to schedule meetings for others (ie, your

secretary/office assistant can schedule meetings for people, etc.)

Yes, you can share calendar with anybody, and can set any set of choices

can read can write can "re-share" your calendar

You can share stuff to external people, and set individual authentication for them independent of our system (in general, it is not just calendars, but we use it for mostly synchronizing between all of your devices, and also sharing: files, calendars, address book; it can also be bookmarks, and there are variety of plugins expanding what else can be accessed/synchronized via web/dav)

...

3. Allow a calendar to schedule shared items .. like meeting rooms,

shared vehicles, etc.  So that people can check those out for specifc time windows, etc.

No, but for resource booking (if I read the question correctly) we use mrbs (https://mrbs.sourceforge.io/). I know, that is not "integrated" for you to have everything in one place. I never had time to look for extention/plugin to suck from mrbs booked slot into one's calendar.

...

Those are just a couple of minor things a lot of solutions can't do

And do they work with imap, etc.

No, owncloud/nextcloud don't work with IMAP as far as I know. Mail server is separate issue. Zimbra in that respect IS "integrated collaborative environment". And so is Kolab. They both are lacking per-user spam preferences. One more thing that added some minus for each of them in my estimate what to choose is: behind each of them there is commercial company. And that in my looooong experience significantly increases the chance one day openly available incarnation of each may become no longer available for us, and I will have to find replacement in a rush and find the way to migrate to it, and the more sophisticated the thing is, the trickier the migration will be.

My answers are mostly about owncloud which we use for quite some time. Nextcloud is fork of owncloud, and to my regret nextcloud doesn't work with postgresql, only with mysql/MariaDB, whereas owncloud works with postgresql as well as with mysql/MariaDB (still we have some reasons to migrate to nextcloud at some point).

I hope, someone with more knowledge will chime in.

Don't get me wrong. I've run qmail, postfix, and zimbra mail servers with IMAP, along with webmail front ends (roundcude, squirrel mail, etc), for windows, mac and linux clients for several companies (all on CentOS of course :D) .. I just don't think that calendaring that I have seen is as user friendly as google calendar (for example). But I'm all for people running mail servers on CentOS (or any other Linux) if they want !

No, I'm not getting you wrong. You gave nicely put set of properties [some]one may be interested to know of, which I tried to answer. Also: Thanks, Arif, for correcting/expanding in the other post what I said about owncloud/nextcloud. That was extremely helpful!

<rant> As far as google anything goes, not everybody volunteers one's information into paws of google (and quite likely one or more of 3 letter agencies collecting information that way). I know (call it educated guess) that about 70% of messages I send are ending up in google databases whether I want it or not. Someone said quite some time ago: you don't need to recruit spies anymore, just roll out "free" services, and information will trickle to you. I am old enough to know what collection of information on everybody leads to (Hitler Germany, Stalin Russia, ...), but I also know that the worst lesson of history is: people do not learn lessons of history. So, I do the best I can do: roll out services people I work for may need, and avoid by any means advertising google whatever myself, I just keep neutral when that surfaces in discussions with my people. </rant>

Valeri

...

...

Zimbra does not work very well with Thunderbird and Lighting (for example) .. many solutions don't work with Windows or Mac clients, etc.

...

For mail we use postfix, dovecot and maia for spam filtering (the last harnesses spamassassin, clamav and few other things).

Of course, zimbra you mentioned earlier in the thread (or was it not you?), and Kolab provide more corporate-like collaboration environments, but I shied away from them as I set myself a goal to give users individual handle on spam/virus filtering in email, and neither of them has per-user spam preferences (take it with the grain of salt, I might have missed something...)

Just my $0.02.

<snip>

---

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On 2018-07-19, Mark Rousell mark.rousell@signal100.com wrote:

Well said. I feel that too many people today have forgotten (or, more likely, never learned) these lessons from history. People give away their personal and supposedly private information too easily and, I feel certain, will come to regret it (some already have come to regret it).

While I agree with the above, it doesn't really address Johnny's question, which is which open source calendaring projects can compete with Google calendar for users' ease of use? If I give my users Zimbra, and they hate it, then what? For simple email use, there are plenty of clients which can talk IMAP/SMTP to a linux server, but the options for calendaring (and ''groupware'' in general) are much sparser.

It's a hard question, and each organization needs to weigh their privacy concerns against their users' requirements.

--keith

----- Original Message -----

From: "Keith Keller" kkeller@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us To: centos@centos.org Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 11:33:17 AM Subject: Re: [CentOS] Which is better? Microsoft Exchange 2016 or Linux-based SMTP Servers?

On 2018-07-19, Mark Rousell mark.rousell@signal100.com wrote:

...

Well said. I feel that too many people today have forgotten (or, more likely, never learned) these lessons from history. People give away their personal and supposedly private information too easily and, I feel certain, will come to regret it (some already have come to regret it).

While I agree with the above, it doesn't really address Johnny's question, which is which open source calendaring projects can compete with Google calendar for users' ease of use? If I give my users Zimbra, and they hate it, then what? For simple email use, there are plenty of clients which can talk IMAP/SMTP to a linux server, but the options for calendaring (and ''groupware'' in general) are much sparser.

It's a hard question, and each organization needs to weigh their privacy concerns against their users' requirements.

--keith

-- kkeller@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us

Zimbra's calendaring component is also a CALDav compliant server. Users can also share their calendars either via the zimbra web client(public, or restricted to an email address with a password), or exporting the calendar to an ICS file. CALDav compliant calendar clients like Apples calendar app on Mac and iOS can subscribe or connect to the zimbra server using its https://zimbra.example.com address. The Zimbra web client interface for using and managing calendars is just as easy to use as googles calendars.

David.

[...] People want their phone to remind them of their appointments [...]

It's a generalization. Not valid for all people.

Maybe SOME people want their phone to remind them of their appointsments.

My appointments are synchronized from owncloud to Thunderbird and to many (LineageOS-based) smartphones and tablets and >>I<< do NOT want to be reminded on the smartphones and tablets, but ONLY on Thunderbird desktop client.

Regards,

Meikel

----- Original Message -----

From: "Johnny Hughes" johnny@centos.org To: centos@centos.org Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2018 8:18:18 AM Subject: Re: [CentOS] Which is better? Microsoft Exchange 2016 or Linux-based SMTP Servers?

On 07/19/2018 03:18 PM, David C. Miller wrote:

...

----- Original Message -----

...

From: "Keith Keller" kkeller@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us To: centos@centos.org Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 11:33:17 AM Subject: Re: [CentOS] Which is better? Microsoft Exchange 2016 or Linux-based SMTP Servers?

...

On 2018-07-19, Mark Rousell mark.rousell@signal100.com wrote:

...

Well said. I feel that too many people today have forgotten (or, more likely, never learned) these lessons from history. People give away their personal and supposedly private information too easily and, I feel certain, will come to regret it (some already have come to regret it).

While I agree with the above, it doesn't really address Johnny's question, which is which open source calendaring projects can compete with Google calendar for users' ease of use? If I give my users Zimbra, and they hate it, then what? For simple email use, there are plenty of clients which can talk IMAP/SMTP to a linux server, but the options for calendaring (and ''groupware'' in general) are much sparser.

It's a hard question, and each organization needs to weigh their privacy concerns against their users' requirements.

--keith

-- kkeller@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us

Zimbra's calendaring component is also a CALDav compliant server. Users can also share their calendars either via the zimbra web client(public, or restricted to an email address with a password), or exporting the calendar to an ICS file. CALDav compliant calendar clients like Apples calendar app on Mac and iOS can subscribe or connect to the zimbra server using its https://zimbra.example.com address. The Zimbra web client interface for using and managing calendars is just as easy to use as googles calendars.

OK, what you say is true in theory. However, in Thunderbird on Linux and using Mac clients, etc .. and certainly on Windows workstation clients using outlook .. zimbra does not work well. It also does not work well on people's smart phone calendars. People want their phone to remind them of their appointments .. any solution that is iffy doing that is just unacceptable in this day and age.

Yeah, I'm not saying it is perfect, nothing is. Zimbra standard also includes active sync so your iOS and android device can connect to it like if it was an exchange server. I have dozens of users doing that and the calendars work as intended. I also have a few dozen users connecting to our zimbra server via the Apple calendar program via CALDav protocol and although Apples program is not 100% CALDav compliant it works fine for the things people actually use. They send invites and get reminders for events just fine. For our outlook users there is a connector that allows outlook to connect to our zimbra server as if it were an exchange server. I wasn't aware that thundebird had a calendar component but it works fine for IMAP and POP. I'm not saying it is perfect but if you have a mix of platforms like I do(Windows, Mac, Linux, android, iOS) and have to host the data yourself, I think Zimbra is a decent solution. That being said, I would prefer to use googles offerings. It would make my job a lot easier. Being an email admin, dealing with spam/phishing/malware, maintaining security patches, OS updates, and hardware sucks.

Am 28.07.2018 um 00:09 schrieb Gordon Messmer:

Personally, I use SOGo (which also supports EAS).  It didn't get many mentions in the this thread, which is unfortunate because it's *really* good.

Please pay attention that you will have to pay extra for ActiveSync to Microsoft as SOGo does not cover that. Expressively documented by the project.

Alexander

On 07/19/2018 09:57 AM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:

<rant> As far as google anything goes, not everybody volunteers one's information into paws of google (and quite likely one or more of 3 letter agencies collecting information that way). I know (call it educated guess) that about 70% of messages I send are ending up in google databases whether I want it or not. Someone said quite some time ago: you don't need to recruit spies anymore, just roll out "free" services, and information will trickle to you. I am old enough to know what collection of information on everybody leads to (Hitler Germany, Stalin Russia, ...), but I also know that the worst lesson of history is: people do not learn lessons of history. So, I do the best I can do: roll out services people I work for may need, and avoid by any means advertising google whatever myself, I just keep neutral when that surfaces in discussions with my people. </rant>

Your points are valid for sure .. but if you are not encrypting your email, then all of it is likely being scanned and saved anyway. Any router along the way can log packets and see whatever is transmitted that is not encrypted.

Most of the world uses android phones (I think it is like 75% now) and all the mail that goes there is available to google as well, right?

Not to say I like it .. I don't. But people want it to work, work in a user friendly way and convenient access from everywhere .. and from their phone, their home pc, while traveling, etc.

On 07/19/2018 07:14 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:

On 07/18/2018 04:05 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:

...

On 07/18/18 14:36, Johnny Hughes wrote:

...

On 07/18/2018 01:58 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:

<snip>

...

...

But are you guys really telling you think the calendaring / scheduling for individual users and the main corporate account, etc. .. are working well enough with any Linux solution.

I must confess, my servers are FreeBSD, but I'm quite sure the same is doable easily on Linux.

We use for calendars Owncloud (may migrate to nextcloud in some future to come). That authenticates against LDAP.

And does that calendar solution allow for things like:

1. Allowing all users in the organization to see users calendars and

see when they are free to schedule a meeting with them.

Yes at least about a part of it: calendars can be shared with some people or with everybody (which we didn't do, so I may be not 100% presenting "experimental fact" here). Not certain about "free/not free" mapped on calendars though.

...

2. Allow for designated people to schedule meetings for others (ie, your

secretary/office assistant can schedule meetings for people, etc.)

Yes, you can share calendar with anybody, and can set any set of choices

can read can write can "re-share" your calendar

You can share stuff to external people, and set individual authentication for them independent of our system (in general, it is not just calendars, but we use it for mostly synchronizing between all of your devices, and also sharing: files, calendars, address book; it can also be bookmarks, and there are variety of plugins expanding what else can be accessed/synchronized via web/dav)

...

3. Allow a calendar to schedule shared items .. like meeting rooms,

shared vehicles, etc. So that people can check those out for specifc time windows, etc.

No, but for resource booking (if I read the question correctly) we use mrbs (https://mrbs.sourceforge.io/). I know, that is not "integrated" for you to have everything in one place. I never had time to look for extention/plugin to suck from mrbs booked slot into one's calendar.

...

Those are just a couple of minor things a lot of solutions can't do

And do they work with imap, etc.

No, owncloud/nextcloud don't work with IMAP as far as I know. Mail server is separate issue. Zimbra in that respect IS "integrated collaborative environment". And so is Kolab. They both are lacking per-user spam preferences. One more thing that added some minus for each of them in my estimate what to choose is: behind each of them there is commercial company. And that in my looooong experience significantly increases the chance one day openly available incarnation of each may become no longer available for us, and I will have to find replacement in a rush and find the way to migrate to it, and the more sophisticated the thing is, the trickier the migration will be.

My answers are mostly about owncloud which we use for quite some time. Nextcloud is fork of owncloud, and to my regret nextcloud doesn't work with postgresql, only with mysql/MariaDB, whereas owncloud works with postgresql as well as with mysql/MariaDB (still we have some reasons to migrate to nextcloud at some point).

I hope, someone with more knowledge will chime in.

Don't get me wrong. I've run qmail, postfix, and zimbra mail servers with IMAP, along with webmail front ends (roundcude, squirrel mail, etc), for windows, mac and linux clients for several companies (all on CentOS of course :D) .. I just don't think that calendaring that I have seen is as user friendly as google calendar (for example). But I'm all for people running mail servers on CentOS (or any other Linux) if they want !

I can't use google calendar because it used tracking cookies which I block.

So it doesn't work for me.

Would actually love to see a distributed / federated calendaring platform developed, that I suspect would do well.

What I mean is Company A can choose to federate with Company B when needed to allow cross-scheduling when needed while both still maintain complete ownership of their calendar data.

On 07/19/18 09:14, Johnny Hughes wrote:

On 07/18/2018 04:05 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:

...

On 07/18/18 14:36, Johnny Hughes wrote:

...

On 07/18/2018 01:58 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:

<snip>

...

...

But are you guys really telling you think the calendaring / scheduling for individual users and the main corporate account, etc. .. are working well enough with any Linux solution.

I must confess, my servers are FreeBSD, but I'm quite sure the same is doable easily on Linux.

We use for calendars Owncloud (may migrate to nextcloud in some future to come). That authenticates against LDAP.

And does that calendar solution allow for things like:

1)  Allowing all users in the organization to see users calendars and see when they are free to schedule a meeting with them.

Yes at least about a part of it: calendars can be shared with some people or with everybody (which we didn't do, so I may be not 100% presenting "experimental fact" here). Not certain about "free/not free" mapped on calendars though.

...

2. Allow for designated people to schedule meetings for others (ie, your

secretary/office assistant can schedule meetings for people, etc.)

Yes, you can share calendar with anybody, and can set any set of choices

can read can write can "re-share" your calendar

You can share stuff to external people, and set individual authentication for them independent of our system (in general, it is not just calendars, but we use it for mostly synchronizing between all of your devices, and also sharing: files, calendars, address book; it can also be bookmarks, and there are variety of plugins expanding what else can be accessed/synchronized via web/dav)

...

3. Allow a calendar to schedule shared items .. like meeting rooms,

shared vehicles, etc.  So that people can check those out for specifc time windows, etc.

No, but for resource booking (if I read the question correctly) we use mrbs (https://mrbs.sourceforge.io/). I know, that is not "integrated" for you to have everything in one place. I never had time to look for extention/plugin to suck from mrbs booked slot into one's calendar.

...

Those are just a couple of minor things a lot of solutions can't do

And do they work with imap, etc.

No, owncloud/nextcloud don't work with IMAP as far as I know. Mail server is separate issue. Zimbra in that respect IS "integrated collaborative environment". And so is Kolab. They both are lacking per-user spam preferences. One more thing that added some minus for each of them in my estimate what to choose is: behind each of them there is commercial company. And that in my looooong experience significantly increases the chance one day openly available incarnation of each may become no longer available for us, and I will have to find replacement in a rush and find the way to migrate to it, and the more sophisticated the thing is, the trickier the migration will be.

My answers are mostly about owncloud which we use for quite some time. Nextcloud is fork of owncloud, and to my regret nextcloud doesn't work with postgresql, only with mysql/MariaDB, whereas owncloud works with postgresql as well as with mysql/MariaDB (still we have some reasons to migrate to nextcloud at some point).

I hope, someone with more knowledge will chime in.

Don't get me wrong. I've run qmail, postfix, and zimbra mail servers with IMAP, along with webmail front ends (roundcude, squirrel mail, etc), for windows, mac and linux clients for several companies (all on CentOS of course :D) .. I just don't think that calendaring that I have seen is as user friendly as google calendar (for example). But I'm all for people running mail servers on CentOS (or any other Linux) if they want !

...

...

Zimbra does not work very well with Thunderbird and Lighting (for example) .. many solutions don't work with Windows or Mac clients, etc.

...

For mail we use postfix, dovecot and maia for spam filtering (the last harnesses spamassassin, clamav and few other things).

Of course, zimbra you mentioned earlier in the thread (or was it not you?), and Kolab provide more corporate-like collaboration environments, but I shied away from them as I set myself a goal to give users individual handle on spam/virus filtering in email, and neither of them has per-user spam preferences (take it with the grain of salt, I might have missed something...)

Just my $0.02.

<snip>

My belated addition. This is great overview of nextcloud vs ovncloud features (which makes evident the set of abilities of each):

https://civihosting.com/blog/nextcloud-vs-owncloud/

Valeri

---

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Am 18.07.2018 um 20:27 schrieb Johnny Hughes johnny@centos.org:

So, I don't think anyone can call me a 'non linux' guy :)

But are you guys really telling you think the calendaring / scheduling for individual users and the main corporate account, etc. .. are working well enough with any Linux solution.

I have researched this very recently and I have not found a solution that works even reasonably well.

did you checked this

http://sabre.io/baikal/

http://sabre.io/

-- LF

So, you'd say a company should use outside email? I would very strongly suggest that's a BAD idea. For example, when M$ sucked all our local Exchange accounts to their cloud, I understand (I'm not in that group) that this was a one-way deal. From a friend, who's a consultant, he was dealing with a client who'd let M$ do that when they went to Win10, and trying to get the email down for backups, etc, was a nightmare.

It depends if the company has a sufficient size to support a production, mission critical email service. How many engineers to you need to ensure a proper support rotation? I work mainly in the SME space and haven't seen self hosted email in over 5 years.

I will admit that the screech of the cloud brigade is often loud and incoherent but you have to choose your battles. Email is a bitch. It seems, from a techie point of view, the problem with Microsoft is that they are forcing an all or nothing approach. If you take Office365 then you must take the Azure Exchange also which means the core infra guys are pretty much left high and dry, reduced to helping people install adobe acrobat on the new Windows10.

I empathise. I've worked as an infrastructure admin and "Devops" engineer for over 10 years and now my role has been automated away by Kubernetes. Change is hard.

On 7/18/2018 9:03 AM, mark wrote:

Based on experience at a number of jobs, Exchange may appear to be easy to configure, but as soon as you get past the utterly basic configuration, when management or other departments want more, it then becomes a major headache.

I like to say that Windows is easier to install and initially configure, but Linux is much easier to FIX. Things will always go wrong. Closed-source Windows software hides everything and its GUI often lies about the true state of what's going on under the hood. Open-source software can be cracked open and I can dig down to root cause of any problems. Check out the free support forums at Microsoft. It's pretty hopeless. Responses to problems with open source software are generally much more informative. Open source advocates love to show off how they can fix problems. Closed source engineers aren't allowed to share solutions with the public. If you really want support, you're going to have to pay for it. So pay for the product, pay for the support, and nag them like you own them. Or go with open source and pay a consultant. (Or a hungry college student.)

On 2018-07-22, Valeri Galtsev galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu wrote:

And on top of all: MS Windows is the only systems I know of whose vendor tells you, it is not safe to run without 3rd party software (antivirus).

AFAIK (my son runs Windows, to my shame) Windows now comes bundled with antivirus software. I have no idea if it actually works or not.

--keith

On 07/18/18 11:03, mark wrote:

Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming wrote:

...

I am torn between deploying Microsoft Exchange 2016 and Linux-based SMTP servers like sendmail, postfix, qmail and exim.

Relative ease of installation and configuration is an important consideration factor.

Microsoft Exchange 2016, Domain Controller, and Active Directory are relatively easy to install and configure. Linux-based SMTP servers are extremely difficult to install and configure and of course, extremely time-consuming.

Based on experience at a number of jobs, Exchange may appear to be easy to configure, but as soon as you get past the utterly basic configuration, when management or other departments want more, it then becomes a major headache.

I work for a US federal contractor these days, on site (civilian sector) and they just gave up, and moved to M$ cloud for it. And most people HATE IT.

Searching, if you're not using Outlook, is either terrrible or nonexistant (they've started auto-archiving here, and I'm hearing there is no search).

In addition, if you go to 365, you are NOT BUYING the software, you're renting the service. You will be paying every year, and a service contract will cost, and, presumably, cost more every year.

Linux, once you get over the learning curve, is not that difficult to administer. and there's a lot of online help (just don't expect us to do your job for you, as a few folks who've posted here over the years seeem to expect). You can also get contract help. If that's important, you might consider upstream, who do provide paid support.

And it will cost a lot less than M$.

...

One of the features of Microsoft Exchange 2016 is that you can create additional folders on your Inbox in the server (server-side). Can Linux-based SMTP servers do that?

I don't know of any mail system that you cannot do that in. Every one allows that.

<snip> > Besides the above considerations, how about security? Traditionally, > Linux is far more secure than Windows. > Yup. And fixes come a *LOT* faster, often in hours or days, as opposed to M$'s "there's no probem, it's your fault (insert one week to three months), ok, ok, we've got a fix > > Judging by security, Linux-based SMTP servers ought to have a higher > percentage of the market share?

Back in the last century, the old mainframe line was "nobody ever lost their job by recommending IBM"; since the nineties, it's been "recommending Windows", because that's all they know. We won't say how much M$ pays, both for advertising, FUD, and illegal under the table payments to manufacturers.

In my observation it stems from the practices of hiring IT professionals. Department or company personnel manager who has no IT knowledge (and shouldn't!) has to hire IT manager. Here is where certifications came into play (and MS Certifications are plentiful around...), so the top guy in the IT position is most likely MS-trained guy. And that defines the field of knowledge of the whole IT team eventually.

Incidentally, I contradicted myself above, did anybody notice? I told about IT manager "trained", and training is different from knowledge, simply speaking you just know which buttons to push. But between people who possess knowledge (therefore can look deeper even when following manual doesn't work) I know almost no one who has even single certificate...

Valeri

...

Finally, I can only use Windows Server 2016 Standard Evaluation Copy FREE for a period of 3 years MAXIMUM. But I can use Linux servers and Mail Transport Agents (MTA) FREE perpetually.

Yup.

   mark

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On 2018-07-19, Nicolas Kovacs info@microlinux.fr wrote:

I'd say mail servers are not the easiest thing to configure under Linux.

A public SMTP server is not the easiest thing to configure, period. It is the quintessential rope on which many admins hang themselves.

--keith

On 2018-07-20, Nicolas Kovacs info@microlinux.fr wrote:

Le 20/07/2018 à 07:44, Keith Keller a écrit :

...

A public SMTP server is not the easiest thing to configure, period. It is the quintessential rope on which many admins hang themselves.

It's not rocket science either, but you have to be willing to read (a lot) and experiment (a lot).

You also need to be willing to stay on top of your outgoing mail to make sure your network isn't sending spam, and you need to monitor the various blacklists to make sure your SMTP servers are not ending up on them. It's not like (for example) an IMAP server, which once you have working is mostly maintenance-free.

--keith

Le 20/07/2018 à 09:12, Promise Kumalo a écrit :

Just out of curiosity, why are you not using something like Kolab or Zimbra?

Don't know. Never tried these, because I'm comfortable with Postfix, Dovecot and Spamassassin. I might give these a spin though.

Thanks for the heads up.

Niki

On 2018-07-21, Michael Schumacher michael.schumacher@pamas.de wrote:

folks, didn't anybody check the name of this guy?

Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming turritopsis.dohrnii@teo-en-ming.com drops a bomb with provocative questions every now and then and NEVER ever responds to his own bullshit. He is just a troll!

This is why I asked him why he multiposted to different lists: I saw the same allegation in the Ubuntu group. (Multiposting itself is one minor sign of trolling.)

FWIW he did respond to a small handful of messages in this thread.

--keith