Reasons behind defaulting atd and sendmail

[Mike Cronenworth]

-------- Original Message  --------
Subject: Re: Reasons behind defaulting atd and sendmail
From: Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>
To: Community assistance, encouragement, and advice for using Fedora. 
<fedora-list at redhat.com>
Date: 09/05/2008 10:04 AM

> 
> The fact that you don't use a service the way it was intended doesn't 
> make it useless.
> 
 > Pretty much every program with a unix heritage assumes that sendmail is
 > available to deliver occasional status and warning messages.

Thank you for your response, however, I did not install Fedora just 
yesterday. I came about writing this e-mail *after* observing common 
usage of Fedora by normal desktop users. Please read the other follow-up 
postings for more in-depth details, but I'll reply to a few of your 
other comments below.

> 
> The point of using mail for these notifications is that it can easily be 
> configured to deliver it where you want, instead of accumulating where 
> no one looks at it.
> 
> Turn it off if you aren't going to read it - but a better approach is to 
> configure sendmail to deliver it to a gmail account or a place where you 
> will read it without having to go out of your way and where the space it 
> consumes until you read it won't be a problem.  I suppose it would be 
> nicer if fedora had a 'fill-in-the-form' setup to configure sendmail to 
> use a remote relay that needs smtp auth and to forward everything since 
> those are common needs these days.
> 

Adding a form during installation to setup an MTA will only frighten new 
users. Most would probably skip it anyway as they wouldn't know their 
ISPs smtp server.

But! Let's say for a moment we have it your way and give users a chance 
to get e-mail notifications on their desktop. They'll only be receiving 
a logwatch e-mail telling them a `df` or what packages they installed 
from the latest Fedora update rollout -- I'm sure if I ran a poll a 
majority would say this kind of e-mail is useless. Just open a file 
browser to find free space.

> 
> I don't know what you think 'normal' users do, but most of the point of 
> having a computer is that it can do things for you automatically.
> 

sendmail is only utilized by logwatch through a default Fedora install. 
Yes, lots of traditional unix programs used a MTA, but Fedora doesn't 
install any of those. Why should a default Fedora install user have to 
suffer just because *you* want them started up?

I'm looking at the majority of users here. Simply because you use 
sendmail to send you an email or atd to tell you to wake up in the 
morning doesn't mean default Fedora install users use it. This kind of 
elitist attitude does Fedora no good.