In the department for 'completely general advice';
Don't start using your system for anything 'serious' until you're fairly familiar with how everything works together. It can be very stressfull and frustrating, when 'something' breaks and you're not sure how to fix it (or maybe not even *aware* that $whatever's broken) - since you may start to lose mail.
Make *one* change at a time.
Test everything, all the time.
Check the logs.
"lather, rinse, repeat" Yea I was planning on I am the only one that uses it, until I am sure that everything is working, some of my friends that I talked to them about this are interested in getting an email account from me. I am also going to keep my current email account active, just slowly move everything over to my own email address once it is ready.
Also you may want to subscribe to this list with a 'nomail' account, so you can still get help if your system breaks.
http://en.opensuse.org/Mailing_Lists#Nomail_subscription
I have the SUSE Linux Bible for SUSE 9.1, bought it from a local bookstore when I first started Linux, and it talks about Postix, Qpopper, and Cyrus but I was wondering if there are better programs now then there was back when that book was written.
Don't start with programs, start with your requirements.
If you wish to receive and send mails directly you need a static ip address and a hostname with matching reverse dns record. Otherwise don't bother.
While having reverse dns is definitely desirable, it's not *required*. I've been doing fine without reverse dns for years.
Static ip, if you can get it, is a very good thing though. Makes everything simpler.
I'm not sure if I am able to get a static ip, it depends on if my ISP will allow me to add that on top of my current internet account.