Ubuntu is under attack

[Mike Bird]

On Tue, 2005-12-20 at 18:24, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> 1) You can't just provide an email address. You also need to provide a 
> smarthost.

For the typical consumer, that's the same host that they told
Outlook Express to use for SMTP when they setup their Internet
Account.

A future enhancement to the installer could ask once and use
the same value for Evolution, Kontact, and the MTA.

> 2) Many of our users won't have an email address, or indeed any sort of 
> internet access

Are you arguing that Firefox and Evolution should be removed
from the default install?  If not, how is this relevant?

Mail can be delivered locally (or to /dev/null for those who
prefer that).

> 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

Agreed that /dev/null should be a permitted option.  However,
most people will either want to see these messages themselves
or else will want their guru to see these messages, or both.

> 4) It's an extra couple of questions on install that would only benefit 
> a tiny number of users

Most people have working email.  Everyone on this list has
working email.  I don't actually know of any Linux user that
doesn't use email, although I concede the possibility that a
small number of such users exist.

People were using local email on Unix boxes long before most
people could justify a connection to the ArpaNet.

> 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.

How?  Why?

When your Uncle's PC has a problem, would you rather get an
email in your inbox or would you rather have your Uncle read
it to you over the phone from a notification bubble?  I've
had far too many of those calls from Windows users - I don't
want to start getting them from Ubuntu users too.

What does your notification system NOT do that email CAN
do - including local and remote routing (or routing to
/dev/null) and reliable queuing?

What does your notification system tell people to do about
those files in lost+found?  How many languages does your
notification system support?

What is the size of your notification system?

Why waste space on a superfluous notification system when
mail, mailx, and sendmail are required for LSB?

--Mike Bird