On one of the mailing lists that I manage which has lots of non techy subscribers there is currently a discussion of ways to get more universal use of email by group members. (Many of the subscribers are members of various local groups of people that work closely together.) There has been discussion of Webtv (an endorsement from a user), talk of "email appliances" (various dedicated devices for email only), encouraging people to use the same software even the same hardware, forming tech support subgtoups etc etc. (There has been aversion to Microsoft expressed.) I got to thinking that a Linux based turnkey email system that would run on most any hardware (486's or better?) would be an ideal thing to suggest. Has anyone ever set up such a thing? To be worth doing it would have to be fairly polished, otherwise various gotcha's, awkward aspects etc would defeat the intent to be a turnkey systems for novices. Of course there are likely to be some ISP dependent parts but maybe they could be minimized. To elaborate a bit more on my idea... There are "restricted" shells; I guess what I have in mind would limit options severely to reduce problems but I'd be inclined to have ways that people who knew / learned enough could remove the restrictions incrementally if they were so inclined but done in such a way that they would be very unlikely to do so unintentionally. Has a project to develop something like the in the Open Source movement been attempted? If not, any thoughts on what software would be suitable? Thoughts on tradeoffs of doing something with Netscape versus a non Xwindows mailer only (or with Lynx) etc etc? Fred who is still a Linux novice but learning some and is discussing with a fellow novice collaborating with a small group of other novices by email to support each other in the learning process. Inquiries welcome. -- Fred H. Olson fholson at cohousing.org Minneapolis,MN 55411 (612)588-9532 Amateur radio: WB0YQM List manager of: Cohousing-L and Nbhd-tc (Twin Cities Neighborhood issues list) More info: http://www.mtn.org/~fholson/sig-detail.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: tclug-list-unsubscribe at mn-linux.org For additional commands, e-mail: tclug-list-help at mn-linux.org