Ok Totally linux newb and I'm interested in both switching completey over to linux from windows and also setting up a basic mail server using linux. I could just sit around asking pointless questions all day but to be honest, I think thats rude so I'm hoping I can pick up a couple good books on this. Anyone have any good recommendation on good books for crossing over and setting up a mail server? Also does anyone have any recommendation on which distro would work well for setting up a server? Right now I'm only using Mandrake 10.1 on one system and Knoppix on another, I know these distros are not the greatest for servers but they work great for newbs and I've used windows for years so I'm trying to slowly step in. Thanks!

Mandrake will work fine for any type of server. And as for mail, you need to decide which one you want to use. Just about all distros come with sendmail but it can be daunting for anyone, even experienced users hate it. There is qmail but I love to hate it personally, some swear by it but I think somethings loose in their head, it can be easy but its not as popular as some of the others, the documentation sucks from what I've seen and if you resort to the maintainers for help or bugs, they can be a real pain in your side.

Personally I'd say go with postfix, its based on sendmail, its easier to configure and setup and the documentation is great. It's also got a good track record of security patches, etc.

Cheers and welcome to the Linux world and LQ.org!

Oh and as for books, the O'Reilly series make great books. Running Linux and Linux in a Nutshell are good. They even have a Postfix book if you go that route that is really good.

Our Book Reviews section would be a good start point for you.

Book reviews are good ... but I'd really like to know if you could only pick two books on linux, which two would they be ... and if you currently own either of them?

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/ <--- Also good!

ugoff,

Is there a printable version of this?

Thanks.

I'm not so sure, probably not. But it does say somewhere 'this is a 300-page book' or something like that... I'll have to search it.

[edit]

Well, theres a .PDF version, but it's still a lot of paper...

Do you have the link for the pdf?

Thanks!