Requirements

Mailman currently runs only on GNU/Linux and any other Un*x-like operating system, such as *BSD, Solaris, etc. It works on MacOS X but not on MacOS 9. It probably does not work on Windows, although it's possible you could get it running on a Cygwin system (please let the developer community know if you have success with this!)

You must have the Python interpreter installed somewhere on your system. Currently Python 2.1 or newer is required, with Python 2.3 or 2.4 being recommended. Mailman should work with latest patch release on any Python branch from 2.1 to 2.4, which as of this writing (29-Aug-2006) is Python 2.1.3, Python 2.2.3, Python 2.3.5, and Python 2.4.3.

Note that because Python 2.1 and 2.2 are no longer being developed, and only critical bugs are being fixed on the Python 2.3 branch, it is recommended that you upgrade to Python 2.4. It is possible that support for Python 2.1 and 2.2 will be dropped in a future release of Mailman. Python 2.3 support will most likely be maintained for the duration of the Mailman 2.1 series.

Most GNU/Linux systems and MacOSX come with Python pre-installed, so you just need to make sure you're running an up-to-date version. You can do this by executing the following at your shell's command line:

% python -V
Python 2.4.3

You must have a mail server (MTA) that you can send messages to, and a web server that supports the CGI/1.1 API. Apache makes a fine choice for web server, and MTAs such as Postfix, Exim, Sendmail, and qmail should work just fine.

You will need an ANSI C compiler to build Mailman's security wrappers. All modern versions of the GNU C compiler should work well.