I could try to sort through that and try to answer specific questions in the order asked, however I think the answers make more sense if I don't.
The reason for a common mail spool in mbox format is that it is the standard. Many people (myself included) do not use the mbox format other than for archival purposes (for which it works great IMO), but that cannot be policy because of the number of people it affects adversely. On my own systems, ~/Mailbox is the standard with ~/Maildir being very easily done. These were local administration decisions and required some amount of reconfiguration of software which I have every right to do on my own system, and isn't terribly difficult if I actually want to take the time to make the changes. BTW, my personal inbox is ~/.mail/INBOX actually, so I personally deviate from my own systemwide standards. That's always possible on a user-by-user basis. As to the /var/mail vs. /var/spool/mail issue, well, it's all about where the mail spool should go. It originally was /usr/spool/mail and has since moved around a bit. Most unices have moved on to /var/mail with Linux being the big exception. The debate is whether or not the way Linux does things and has done them since long before anybody cared should be changed now. Some say yes, some say no. All agree that compatibility with the old location is important. Hope that answers your questions. -- Joseph Carter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> GnuPG key 1024D/DCF9DAB3 Debian GNU/Linux (http://www.debian.org/) 20F6 2261 F185 7A3E 79FC The QuakeForge Project (http://quakeforge.net/) 44F9 8FF7 D7A3 DCF9 DAB3 <Reed> It is important to note that the primary reason the Roman Empire fail is that they had no concept of zero... thus they could not test the success or failure of their C programs.
