Re: Postfix and local mail delivery - still relevant in 2020?

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

Sad Clouds <cryintothebluesky%gmail.com@localhost> writes:

> I'm questioning if having Postfix in the base system is that useful
> and how many people actually use it. I'm trying to understand how people
> use subsystems like Postfix when they have no requirement to run email
> servers. It seems the main reason for having it is to use it as a basic
> MTA and email daily/weekly reports to sysadmins. Essentially it is used
> as a monitoring tool, that can take the output from other tools like
> netstat, vmstat, etc and email it to someone. There doesn't seem to be
> any other use case for having it. Or maybe I'm missing something here.

I have a number of machines, and almost all of them send either daily
mail or messages on boot, typically to me someplace else.  This
basically requires an MTA

> It seems quite often Postfix is pointless on a desktop system. Most
> users tend to use some GUI MUA that has built-in MTA + POP3 + IMAP
> capabilities and doesn't even talk to a local Postfix subsystem.

For the user aspect, perhaps, but how are the people that are managing
these systems getting information?

> If you run a network appliance, you can setup Postfix to email daily
> reports to some remote email server. However you now have to setup and
> administer this email server, and maybe POP3 or IMAP server. You also
> need an email client. You could also use other peoples' email
> infrastructure (Gmail) but then they could potentially monitor all your
> activity. This seems like a lot of faff just for the sake of some basic
> email alerts and reports.

I find your assumptions strange.   I simply send all reports to myself,
at an address that has to work regardless, and then filter them into a
particular IMAP folder.  So the "work" amounts to pointing root to my
own address.