Which SME or E-Smith version is right for me as of May 2004.

This depends on memory of your system, your experience,

For the least work its probably best to go to the oldest supported version which also takes less memory

SME 5.6,

runs on 32 megs memory, while SME 6.0 takes 64 megs minimum.
Most every thing works or has a work around figured out for it.
Able to be upgraded to SME 6 when you need something not available on 5.6

SME 6.0

New file system supports virtually unlimited hard drive size but still has a Maximum of 2 gigs per file.

Has extra file system enhancements for future such as undelete when software is developed to use it.

Has support for more devices such as more ethernet adapters.

Cons – multi drop email pickup doesn't appear to work.

June 29, 2004 - a new fetch mail update for version 6 has been released so may have a workaround.

May have other difficulties that have yet to be unearthed.

Ideally you should check out everything on a spare server before putting into service.

Okay I goofed and put SME 6 in as upgrade to 5.5 – it works pretty good except for the multi-drop problem I mentioned – the question is how many other things are yet to be discovered.

June 29, 2004 - Version 6 is starting to look better. Certain enhancements are available which use a list to block Spam, and exe files and only work in version 6. SpamAssasin does not in my opinion work properly and should be not installed as yet. Clam antivirus works good but if you install the exe blocking and Spamhaus.org spam list you will have very little work for it which is excellent.

Ken Graham