[TriLUG] E-mail questions

[Christopher Knowles]

OK, I have a bundle of questions that I have been trying to answer on my own, 
but haven't been having much luck with.

Let me give you my setup...

4 computers...

1 - Firewall...
2 - Desktop computers, one using Linux, the other Windows ME.  The Linux box 
is my 'main' computer.  
1 - laptop.  This is my computer away from home, and for when I want to sit 
outside and browse the 'net.

desktops are running Redhat 7.2, while the laptop is 7.2.92 (whatever)

Currently I am using Kmail to read my e-mail from both linux computers.  My 
laptop is set to download without deleting from the server... while the 
desktop is set to delete from the server.

My question...

I'm trying to move to a fetchmail/sendmail-or-whatever/procmail setup, where 
the desktop uses fetchmail to get the e-mail and does verious things to it... 
 However, this seems to break the utility of the laptop.  (As I want to run 
fecthmail all the time...)  Should I use a POP/IMAP server to allow the 
laptop access?  Can I punch that through the firewall without too much 
security issues?  Should I use the firewall as my mail server?  If I wanted 
to setup my own mail domain, should I use sendmail or smail or something else?

I've been looking at the documentation for sendmail, and I think I've decided 
that I don't want to touch that if possible.  :)

Anyway, if you could reply with good resources, or even descriptions of what 
you are doing to handle e-mail, it would be appreciated.  

I haven't really touched on the whole e-mail processing part of linux, just 
been playing with the other network aspects of it.

Thanks for the help.

CJK