I've posted this in several areas of the site, I had NO luck in the distribution section and that's where I was hoping to get most of my answers.

Ok, let me list what I want to accomplish and then someone can tell me if and how it can be done.

1. Setup a stable (hence Linux) mailserver

2. Have some sort of user collaboration with a shared calendar and address book

3. Have an online/automatic sign-up so my users can sign up themselves

4. When a user signs up they're automatically added to the shared address book

5. Webmail access only


I'm sure that's a somewhat complicated scenario but I'm hoping someone can tell me how to do it or point me in the right direction. I'm not a complete but I am still finding my way around Linux so I'm kinda hoping there's a distribution that will do this out of the box (see the post heading )

I've tried several Winblows solutions and none of them seemed to have everything I want, if you can tell me of one please feel free.

Thanks in advance!

SixShooterz

I can't help you out as far as "out of the box" but I can point you in the right direction as for what types of software you will need.

1) MTA (Mail Transfer Agent... common ones are Sendmail, Postfix, and Qmail.).
2) Apache/PHP - Webserver to run webmail on.
3) Horde IMP - It will do your webmail, except no substitutes.... other webmail systems will say they are "as good as Horde IMP" or "almost as feature complete as Horde IMP". I have tried many of them, so far they are all wrong. The Horde framework isn't the easiest thing to setup, but once it is going it is well worth it.
4) Horde Turba/Kronolith - Also uses the horde framework that IMP does. Provides calendar and contact stuff.
5) OpenLDAP - The only way to go for large, remote accessible, address books. Sure LDAP is useful for more then that, but it is also very useful for that.
6) Some custom php pages. Some of the stuff you want to do with signing up and whatnot might be doable using some sort of web based project... but the best way to do that would probably be to through together some php pages that are designed specifically for your needs.


I think you'll find a lot of this software will come "out of the box" on many distributions. But I would doubt you find anything that does 100% of what you need without adding some software or coding a few of your own interfaces.

Thank you jtshaw, I'll check into those solutions and report back what I come up with. I apreciate your help!

I remember using emumail a while back and having very good results. I believe it complies with most, if not all, of your guidelines. I also remember it being very easy to install.

Thank yu elconde, I'll check it out.

You might check out http://netwinsite.com/surgemail it looks to have everything you are looking for.

I never tried it before, but you might look at:
http://www.xmailserver.org/