I'm looking for a MTA that is most appropriate for a linode 96 (read: VERY little resource usage). My requirements are very simple. I only need a MTA to accept email for a handful of addresses in my domain and foreward them to other already existing email services (such as Gmail).

What would you recommend for this?

Sendmail+clamav-milter (for virus scanning) has worked fine on a Linode 64. I do have some other defensive measures (e.g. blocking bogus HELOs and using the Spamhaus SBL and XBL blocklists), which help take the load off the scanner.

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Bus error (passengers dumped)

Hey,

I also use: Postfix + Courier-IMAP + Courier-Pop wuite happilly on a Linode 64.

You will surely get all popular and unpopular MTAs as answers and it might make your decision even more difficult but here's mine ... you could use the light exim4 daemon (if you use debian, it is apt-get'able). Implementing DNSBLs is done in a snap and if you require virus/spam scanning you can easily plugin clamav and/or spamassasin. Good luck

I've been using qmail since I started on a linode 64. I've since upgraded twice (now on a 192), but qmail remains my MTA of choice.

When it comes down to it, it's not so much the MTA that will affect your performance as the virus and spam filters you use with it. Clamav works great, but it's a hog on a machine with less memory. Same with spamassassin.

postfix+courier-*= THE WIN

Am i the only one who still likes sendmail?

No, I'm also a dyed-in-the-wool Sendmail fan...

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Bus error (passengers dumped)

You are defenitly alone with that...

I use Sendmail, but it's mostly because I learned it back before the alternatives emerged, and I'm too lazy to learn something new. I generally pull exim out of my debians and install sendmail, but every time I do it, I feel guilty for not learning exim.

I did run qmail a number of years ago to do lists with ezmlm, and I liked it. It was really lightweight, and secure back in the days when sendmail exploits were pretty common. But it had a goofy license that made it difficult to package or something -- I don't really remember.