Ubuntu is under attack

[Matthew Garrett]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 09:42:27PM -0400, Derek Broughton wrote:
> Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > Becuse the assumption that pretty much everyone checks the regular mail
> > stream is inaccurate. In a default install (even pre-Breezy) that mail
> > doesn't go anywhere that most users are likely to see it. My girlfriend
> > doesn't go around opening terminals in order to check whether any cron
> > mail has turned up.
> 
> But your girlfriend _does_ go around reading her "girlfriend at gmail.com"
> mail, which I think is Mike's point.  If you _insist_ on the MTA, then use
> debconf correctly to specify where to send system notifications, then she
> would have it sent to her usual email account - NOT local delivery.

There's multiple problems here:

1) You can't just provide an email address. You also need to provide a 
smarthost.
2) Many of our users won't have an email address, or indeed any sort of 
internet access
3) Even those who do have email addresses don't necessarily want to 
receive piles of email telling them that there are files in lost+found 
without telling them what to do about that
4) It's an extra couple of questions on install that would only benefit 
a tiny number of users

As I said, a better approach would be to ensure that notification 
reaches the users it needs to reach independently of email. I think 
that's achievable.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org