Posted: 7/16/2004 2:16:32 PM EDT
| I am looking for an e-mail server that I can run on my WinXP Pro box here at home. Any suggestions? Also looking for a web server and ftp server. |
Don't do it PLEASE don't do it... Windows XP Pro is NOT a secure enough OS for web/mail/ftp... You will get hacked, and then your box will start trying to auto-hack others... People who run servers on XP drive me NUTS, because their boxes are allways trying to hack my UNIX fileservers (and failing, since the attacks are Windows specific) & wasting my bandwidth... Also, a server by definition should NOT be a machine you use for other work -> no matter how much CPU power your workstation has... You can get Win32 versions of Sendmail & Apache, but they run better in their native environment (UNIX)... Get a spare Pentium II or K6 machine & a copy of Fedora Linux. |
Is it really that much less secure than WinXP Server? |
There is no XP server. Windows 2003 Server is a security nightmare as well... Windows is best kept off the internet due to security issues (eg behind a good firewall, with no incoming services open), and makes up a distinct minority of web server installations... If you want a machine to put a small website/e-mail installation up on, and just leave it alone, Linux or OpenBSD is the way to go... And it should be a dedicated machine.... |
well according to netcraft, win2k/iis 5 |
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I've been using apache on redhat distros of linux for years ... as well as sendmail (a long time ago) and postfix. It is wayyyy more effecient then any thing windows based. I remember one time, at a place where I was doing Linux admin work, the head of accounting came up to me and said, "hey, what would you say if we switched the linux box out and put up an exchange server, it has some features that I can use in Outlook ...". I just looked at him funny and laughed, and then told him that if he got rid of the linux server, then he would have to get rid of me ... becuase I sure as hell was'nt about to babysit an exchange server. |
know how long it took them to manage that? there a bunch of loosers. 
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Please tell me that you mean "They're a bunch of losers" |
And the movement rolls on!    
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heheh too easy seriously, it took them a long time to get it straight. the load was too great and they had to put it back on the original unix boxes multiple times. |
You DO know that Windows XP Pro has IIS built into it, right? It's not installed by default, so you have to install it by using the "Add/Remove Programs" in the Control Panel. IIS has a built in SMTP engine for sending mail, but not for receiving mail. Windows Server 2003 has a built in mail server that's an EXTREMELY watered down version of Exchange. Windows Server 2003 Small Business Edition is pretty inexpensive and has all that you'd need (and more). Get a good firewall, and turn on Microsoft's ICF. |
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I too prefer Linux as a server over Windows of any kind but that's not what you asked so check out Merak mail server. It includes antivirus, spam filtering using Spamassassin, and webmail that doesn't require IIS. I've also used WorkGroup Mail which wasn't too bad. It did require IIS for webmail which in my opinion is a security nightmare. For web server there is a good reason Apache makes up over 67% of all web servers out there and not just because it's free. You just can't go wrong with it. Pretty easy to setup on Windows or Linux. As for an FTP server on Windows I couldn't tell you. I like ProFTP on Linux. |