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Ximian

Evolution 1.0 Released 425

Posted by timothy from the lookout dept.
jdavidb writes: "I pulled up the Ximian redcarpet updater this morning and discovered that Evolution 1.0 is finally available! Now Outlook can start facing some serious competition, although there's still a long way to go. (Evolution does not yet emulate all the Outlook viruses, of course, nor does it integrate with Exchange Server.)" Here's Ximian's full announcement. Update: 12/03 14:59 GMT by T : Nat Friedman of Ximian points out that they're offering a software extension which does allow integration with Exchange 2000. There's good story on the new iteration of Evolution at NewsForge, too.
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Evolution 1.0 Released More

Evolution 1.0 Released

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  • Creation 1.1 hot on its heels. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03, 2001 @10:40AM (#2647502)
    By Microsoft, natch.

  • Proprietary Exchange-support to follow (Score:5, Informative)

    by havardw ( 180104 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @10:43AM (#2647518) Homepage
    See press release [ximian.com] at Ximian's site. Available early next at $69 a pop.

    • Re:Proprietary Exchange-support to follow (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @01:31PM (#2648569) Journal
      Yeah, NewsForge's take on the story seems a little more relevant that Slashdot's -- that Ximian is giving up its talk of "services" and is planning to make money from proprietary software seems at least as noteworthy as the fact that Evolution is now 0.01 versions better than it was before. (Generally I don't understand the obsession with 1.0 announcements for software that has had 20 releases and publically available nightlies or CVS since its inception.)

      Hey, I'd much rather see Ximian alive than dead and if Evolution works reasonably well on Solaris (haven't gotten around to trying it) I'm sure my wife will be in line to pay $69 to be rid of that godawful web interface to Exchange. But it seems like it might be worth mentioning that Free/Open Source software poster boy Miguel de Icaza is now in the proprietary software business. I can't help noticing that he's making himself scarce and letting Nat answer the phone...

      • The Mozilla guys had a good explanation of why 1.0 is special, at least for them. 1.0 means API freeze -- in the sense that the 1.0 API will be available at least until 2.0 (though it could be extended). This is not so important for users, but for developers outside the Mozilla project, it is critical.

        Since Evolution has a plugin facility, maybe the 1.0 obsession exists for similar reasons. Now developers can target it with peace of mind.

        -Paul Komarek

  • Exchange... (Score:5, Informative)

    by John Fulmer ( 5840 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @10:43AM (#2647520)
    >Now Outlook can start facing some serious >competition, although there's still a long way to >go. (Evolution does not yet emulate all the >Outlook viruses, of course, nor does it integrate >with Exchange Server.)

    A better way of putting this is "does not COMPLETELY integrate with Exchange Server". I'm running it with my company's Exchange servers, via IMAP, LDAP, and SMTP, and the only thing not working is Calendar and shared TODO.

  • installation (Score:4, Informative)

    by nocent ( 71113 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @10:43AM (#2647524)
    If you already use Ximian GNOME, you can install version 1.0 by subscribing to the Ximian GNOME channel in Red Carpet (System -> Get Software).

    Otherwise, download the binaries [ximian.com] or source code [ximian.com].

  • Were is IBM? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @10:44AM (#2647528) Journal
    I'd figure that Lotus Notes would be a *no brainer* for Linux considering their backing of the platform. Does anyone know what is holding them back? Are they just trying to shoot themselves in the foot or what?

    • Re:Were is IBM? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Surak ( 18578 )
      Yeah... Lotus Notes is so tied in to the Win32 platform it's not funny. I mean, the stupid thing integrates with Microsith Planet Exploder.

    • Re:Were is IBM? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03, 2001 @11:09AM (#2647643)
      I am working at IBM and there are several packages for Lotus Notes (5.04 -> 5.08, even beta 6.0) working on Linux. Rpm and Deb included.. works great. It does use a customized install of wine, but it is very fast and I havent had any problems over the past 6 months using it exclusively
    • Please no. I thought at first that I was the only one but it is clear that others [iarchitect.com] agree. Lotus however tends to work and it is admittedly popular. Rather Lotus under Linux than MS Exchange.

      However, what should be remembered is that Notes is a database and workflow application. It is not an Emailer or even a PIM.

  • nice, also good for Palm synching (Score:3, Informative)

    by ciryon ( 218518 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @10:45AM (#2647539) Journal
    Evolution is actually a very nice app and I use it at home, mainly because of the nice conduits avaliable for Palm synching.

    I hope it's finaly a stable program now, cause it had lot's of nasty bugs.

    Ciryon
    • From the article, "And built-in synchronization keeps Ximian Evolution users' calendars, contacts and tasks up-to-date with their Palm handheld devices," which i'd consider a must before switching, but does anyone know if it supports irda sync? My palm3e synced to an old-skewl imac 2 years ago (still think it sucks that apple axed the ir port), and ir recently started working in windows, so i'd rather not go back to lugging the cradle around with my laptop if i can help it.
      • Yes, it'll work with IrDA. See http://www.pasta.cs.uit.no/pipermail/linux-irda/20 00-May/001426.html for details (not evolution-specific, but it doesn't matter; the backend's the same).
      • You can get a more travel friendly hotsync cable pretty cheap.

        As for IrDA in linux, hrmm, I've never checked that out. I support palms, not on Linux but I wouldn't imagine it'd be too hard.

        The way it works in windows is that it just uses the IR port using the serial protocol. Looking at the linux kernel it seems you could do this either with IrCOMM or IrTTY (both?) however I don't have time now to test it.

        -- iCEBaLM

  • Exchange compatability (Score:3, Informative)

    by bonius_rex ( 170357 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @10:45AM (#2647543)
    Full compatability with MS Exchange Is coming [ximian.com]

  • Shame about Exchange (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DavidpFitz ( 136265 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @10:50AM (#2647554) Homepage Journal
    I like Evolution... really, I do. Except, I can't use it. We use Exchange at work, and there's nothing I can do to make Evolution work.

    I think Ev v1 was roadmapped to integrate with Exchange -- since it doesn't it's not a viable option for corporates who primarily use Windows, but have people using Unix.

    But, Exchange is not the be-all and end-all, tight integration with Lotus Domino would be excellent. Lots of big corporations use Notes heavily, and require a Windows client (Domino web services aren't great)

    Perhaps an open standard for groupware (discussion, IM, calendar, to-do etc.) could be adopted, and through that Exchange/Notes -> new standard could be employed, aloowing other people to bring integration with whatever groupware server they want to Evolution and other clients?

    Could be a very bad idea, but it's just off the top of my head!

    Dave

    • Re:Shame about Exchange (Score:2, Insightful)

      by RossyB ( 28685 )
      Evolution will talk to Exchange if the server admin has turned on IMAP4 or POP3. Ximian announced Connector which is a plugin to talk directly to an Exchange 2000 server.
      • Sure, but lets face it -- if you were controlling a network with Outlook clients, you'd just use regular exchange... it's easier to manage than giving POP/IMAP as well, one less thing to worry about.

        And, the whole point of Exchange is that I can schedule meetings with someone else, and maintain a server side to-do list etc.

        If I were a sysadmin, I'd just tell the minority (i.e. Unix people at my place) to use the Exchange web client.

        But it would be nicer just to be able to use Evolution :-)
      • Except the Connector is proprietary.
        • So is Exchange, what is your point?
          • I thought the whole point was an open-source replacement for Exchange?

            Isn't this the same Miguel de Icaza who started GNOME because KDE was dependent on the (at the time) proprietary Qt libraries? If we shouldn't use KDE because it's proprietary, why should we use his proprietary software? Because the money goes to him instead of TrollTech?

  • Gnome growing up? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by ukryule ( 186826 )
    Looks like gnome development is going well now ... along with Galeon 1.0 [slashdot.org] being released a week ago, some of the critical apps are starting to get 'solid'.

    Another twist in the KDE vs. Gnome fight?

    • I'd be the first to admit that I much prefer KDE/Qt, both from a user and technical viewpoint, but it is excellent to see GNOME and GTK+ applications making great strides too.

      There was a point not so long ago where I feared that GTK+ and GNOME had lost their way completely, and that would have been sad - I think the friendly (and sometimes not-so-friendly ;) rivalry and cross-pollination between the systems has been a bigger win than the split of resources has been a loss. Neither system can afford to sit on their laurels for too long or else the other will take up the slack and make them irrelevant.

      It does remain to be seen, however, what will happen with GTK+/GNOME 2.0 - it has been a very long time in coming, and in the meantime KDE 2.x has built up a very large (but not unassailable) head of steam. It's very important that the GNOME guys get 2.0 right (not like the 1.0 release - remember that disaster?) if they want to continue to be more than a bit-part player.

      I watch the mailing lists with interest... it's a great soap opera :)

    • Re:Gnome growing up? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Thnurg ( 457568 )
      Don't you mean another twist in the "Linux getting ready for Joe User's Desktop" saga?

      Let's ditch the in fighting eh, and concentrate on the real issue here.

  • serious competition for outlook? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mr_goodwin ( 220609 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @10:52AM (#2647564)
    Not until it runs on Windows and Mac...

    Much as I love Linux, I don't think it quite has the same prevalence on the desktop.
    • " Not until it runs on Windows and Mac... "

      Um.. you're missing the point. The goal of creating a usable desktop under Linux (and by the extension of clean porting, other UNIX and UNIX-like systems) is to begin taking over the desktop market the same way Linux has been doing in the server market. There's no reason to run Windows if Linux can do everything that Windows can. Right now, I see the following impediments to that:

      1. Office file formats. The DoJ needs to make this call. They need to force MS to release specifications for their file formats as part of the settlement. Though, I will note that conversion by programs like AbiWord and Gnumeric are impressive.
      2. Games. Linux needs to be more game friendly, including some standards on what a distribution needs to have and how they need to configure to support them. If running EverQuest: Shadow of Luclin were as easy as putting the CD in the drive, I know about 20 people that would never need to run Windows again ;-)
      3. PR. Red Hat has been doing a good job, but IBM has only been preaching to the choir. We need good Linux PR.
      • 3. PR. Red Hat has been doing a good job, but IBM has only been preaching to the choir. We need good Linux PR.

        My girlfriend says that she saw a Linux commerical from IBM just yesterday on tv.

        It was something about the manager running around an empty server room crying, 'They're gone! They're all gone!' (referring to their servers). Then he gets the police down there and whines. Then a tech walks around the corner eating a donut and explains that they only have one server now instead of 100. They bought it from IBM and since it runs Linux it's x times faster/more efficient.
      • There's also some basic philosophical differences. Windows is ease-of-use-first, while Linux (and all UNIX systems) tend to be power-first. This is manifested in a variety of ways - even the best graphical UNIX development tools, for example, tend to be far more command-line-driven than their Windows brethren; I don't think you could claim that ddd (debugger) is nearly as full-featured or intuitive as the one in MSVC++, for example. Or powerful text editors? In Windows, you have UltraEdit32, among many others, while in UNIX you need to use either vi or emacs to reach the same editing power, both of which are far harder to use than UltraEdit32 is (albeit even more powerful).

        Granted, Linux is getting better - you can now do simple things like configure X graphically with XF86Setup, rivalling Windows's auto-configure desktop options (though it's still not perfect). But there's still some ways to go.
    • So grab the source code and start compiling.
    • Well, Evolution isn't really competition for Outlook anymore than Outlook is competition for Evolution -- they both run on different platforms with no overlap. In a somewhat ironic way, this means Exchange is now more universal and inclusive.

      So this is kind of a win for Linux the desktop and a loss for Linux the server.

  • Ximian Connector (Score:3, Troll)

    by reaper20 ( 23396 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @10:53AM (#2647568) Homepage
    This sounds like the true Exchange solution many of us are looking for - It is proprietary and closed though.

    Before the flamage on Ximian begins, let me just say, that the businesses that this product is for have already invested in closed source software, so I think its a great idea to finance Evolution this way.

    Great job guys, keep it up!

    • Re:Ximian Connector (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @11:33AM (#2647753)
      Yeah, but as long as no one is under any impressions that Ximian actually have anything to do with opensource.

      Ah... Maybe I'm venting, I've been watching evolution for soooooo long now and all the reports have seemed to imply that they where not interested in exchange because of closed protocol.

      Seems to me of course is that they where stopping anyone from "scratching that itch" Opensource style.

      Pffft. They can stick it where the sun don't shine. I'm gonna crack out that python and roll my own.

    • Re:Ximian Connector (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gmhowell ( 26755 ) <gmhowell@gmail.com> on Monday December 03, 2001 @01:49PM (#2648715) Homepage Journal
      (Before flaming, please note that I seriously don't know the answer to this question)

      Isn't Ximian done by Miguel de Icaza?

      (Below this is trolling/flamebait/whatever)

      Isn't he the guy who started Gnome because he was pissed off at the proprietary nature of KDE/QT? How do we reconcile the two? Oh, because Miguel sees proprietary as okay if Miguel gets the money?

    • Re:Ximian Connector (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Ian Bicking ( 980 )
      I must admit, when I first read the announcement I thought bad things about Ximian, with a sort of gutteral "sell-out" feel.

      But after having thought about it, I have no problem with this at all. I think what they are doing is something like what Troll tech or Cygnus has done -- having a complete Free product, but demanding payment when it's used in a non-free way. Troll and Cygnus have this with GPL libraries and providing alternate licenses for payment.

      Ximian can't quite do this, unfortunately, since the GPL doesn't restrict any normal use, so it has to make the plugin proprietary. It's a shame that there isn't a way to do it otherwise, and it is dangerous to create precedence of proprietary plugins to GPLed products. But, I feel the basic intention is the same.

      At some point, there'll be a Free program that basically matches the functionality of Exchange, and someone (maybe Ximian) will make a Connector for that. If that is proprietary, then we'll have something to complain about.

      But until then, if Ximian can find a way to fund themselves, more power to them.

  • Wake up call ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @10:56AM (#2647585)
    Now Outlook can start facing some serious competition, although there's still a long way to go. (Evolution does not yet emulate all the Outlook viruses, of course, nor does it integrate with Exchange Server.)

    Until it fully supports Exchange Server, it'll never be a serious competitor to Outlook.

    Sorry, but face reality. In the corporate world it either has to be 100% compatible otherwise they just won't use it. Price is generally immaterial.

    Plus any company who can afford Exchange Server will no doubt be able to afford licences for Outlook so the whole "but its free" doesn't really offset the fact that its not fully compatible.

    However, in spite of all this, lets not knock them for a fine product. Always some work to do, but its definately on the right roads ...

    • Re:Wake up call ... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by JanneM ( 7445 )
      so the whole "but its free" doesn't really offset the fact that its not fully compatible.


      No, I agree. The whole "Do you want more Outlook viruses in your company intranet?" might well do it, however.

      /Janne
    • Exchange Server is expensive. Not only do you need NT Server licences (minimum 2), but you need the client licence packs because however legal your Outlook is, you still need a per client licence on the server.

      When you get to an Enterprise, this means lots of servers, again lots of money. Exchange Server is full of some very nice features, but they are very expensive.

      Note that use of a connector product isn't much help unless you can offload the data store and directory service too. Each client is another licence, no matter whether or not they are running Outlook or even a Microsoft OS.

  • I've been using Evolution since I believe .6 (I've been on it for over a year) exclusively and have yet to have a problem with it. YMMV, but I'm very impressed.

  • Cool, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ppetru ( 24677 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @11:06AM (#2647625) Homepage

    I'm using Evolution and Mutt as my primary mail clients now (I used to only use Mutt, but I forced myself into Evo so I could help with testing and bug reports). Evo is a very impressive application and I hope people who need such a tool will like it.

    However, I don't need or want such a tool. I just want a mail client that logs into my IMAP server, reads and sends mail. That's it. Integrated {contact manager,calendar,task manager,whatever} is cool, but I don't want it. I need something that does a thing, and it does it well, and I hope that other mail(-only) clients will raise to the standard set by Evolution (so far only Mulberry was good enough but it's neither free or open source, and there are a couple things I don't like about it either).

  • Two Things... (Score:2, Informative)

    by mshiltonj ( 220311 )
    1) It won't yet do email alerts calendar events, or so the pop up tells me. So my cell phone won't beep me when a meeting is in ten minutes and I'm still eating burritos at the mexican restaurant on the next block. Sucks.

    2) I can't expunge mail at all. It's got something to do with the UID EXPUNGE header while using IMAP and the commercial version of Sendmail running here. Pine can do it. Netscape can do it. So can Outlook. But Evolution can't. I've reported this issue, and unfortunately they didn't address it in the 1.0 release.

    Evolution looks nice. But if I can't expunge my mail without loading up pine, then I'll stick with pine.

    Bummer.

  • Again, this isn't groupware (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SnapperHead ( 178050 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @11:13AM (#2647662) Homepage Journal
    Its nice, but I can't figure where they say its groupware. Currently, its a PIM. But, for some odd reason, there not intrested in intergrating it into a groupware application via XML-RPC or SOAP. If that where true, then they could start plugging into phpGroupWare. I have about 20 people a week asking me if I could ask them to do it, so I simply tell them to email there developers instead. Needless to say, nothing has come about.

    Also, we actually have a client side application for Linux and Windows that is working. (Buggy, but works) Its still under heavy development, but it pretty easy to plug into. A more portable version is in the works.

    Anyway, so people would stop asking me about it, please, email there development team and ask them to talk to the phpGroupWare guys about creating an XML-RPC or SOAP interface. I think these 2 projects would go hand and hand nicely.

    So, for those complaining about the lack of an "exchange server" enviroment, something is there, just not being used.
    • Dude , I'd start by getting an XML-RPC or SOAP client going on your end and just hand em the Spec.

      I'd sure be interested in PHPGroupware with XML-RPC or SOAP. It's sooooo easy to create clients and automatable that way. With the Soap , even the dredded VB goons can play (But XML-RPC's much cleaner IMHO)

    • there not intrested in intergrating it into a groupware application via XML-RPC or SOAP


      Thank gawd. XML-RPC and SOAP are an utter crock. Why this sudden desire to shoehorn everything into HTTP? Simple, it makes it easy to sneak non-web content in and out through firewalls without any of that tedious mucking about letting the security people know what you're doing. Uh, until firewall developers turn in the arms race, where application layer packet inspection becomes the norm and - oh hey! look at that!! You're right back to square one.


      RPC was invented to do remote procedure calls, that's what it's for,
      USE IT if you need it.

      and `phpGroupware'? What the hell is that? Oh look, it's your userpage. Riiiiight. Seeing as I haven't heard of it, it's not exactly the default corporate standard, is it. In fact it's... what's the word.. IRRELEVANT! Of course they have more important priorities than some toy "groupware" project.

      Sorry for the flames, but some people are just asking for it.

  • Okie dokey - time to figure out how to migrate! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @11:20AM (#2647695)
    Well, now I need to figure out how to migrate my email from Outlook 2002 (not Outlook Express), to Evolution. I _think_ I've got a way, but not sure. Has this feature been added to a recent version of Evolution?

    The previous way I figured out how I could do this was to fire up Eudora, as it could open Outlook 2000 email files (not sure about Outlook 2002) - then once you've got your email in Eudora's format (related to mbox format, as I recall - could be wrong), then it was easy to convert to a UNIX way of things. If Evolution doesn't do this automatically, it certainly should. That's one of the big challenges of moving people from MS software to anything else - converting those file formats with ease, and doing so _perfectly_, every time.

  • Exchange connector and GPL (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Otis_INF ( 130595 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @11:25AM (#2647718) Homepage
    An exchange connector is a library with a familiar interface that will handle all connections with the exchange server. Now, this Exchange connector for Evolution is not GPL-ed software but proprietry closed source software. Because afaik in memory linking is also prohibited, how is Ximian going to solve any GPL conflicts? Or is the GPL not able to force its license on the connector?

  • Binaries Only (Score:3, Informative)

    by uslinux.net ( 152591 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @11:29AM (#2647733) Homepage
    For those of you who just want the Evolution 1.0 binaries, and not the whole Ximian desktop, go to ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/ximian-gnome/ and get the following packages:
    * evolution
    * libgnome-pilot0
    * libgtkhtml20
    * libnss3
    Note, I installed under Debian, so other systems may be slightly different, however, this should be a very good place to start

  • If you're having problems connecting... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Linux Freak ( 18608 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @11:31AM (#2647746) Homepage
    ...it's not necessarily a busy mirror problem. I think it's real-carpet that's dying. I've had massive problems with it just hanging (and having to do kill -9's as root to get rid of it). I'm not the only one who has experienced this problem either; I've talked to others on IRC who have also had problems. The trick seems to be to remove everything out of /var/cache/redcarpet and then running it again.

    By the way, I just connected and it seems there is an "Urgent Update" for red-carpet, which brings it up to version 1.1.4-ximian.8. (Sorry, I can't tell you what my previous version was, 'cuz I already upgraded. :p But it was a Red Hat 7.2 system upgraded to the latest Helix Gnome only about a month and a bit ago).
    Gnome is looking hella good these days. I'm sure Evolution is just as good, but I have no reason to give up Pine anytime soon. ;-)
  • Anyone know why the Secure MIME option isn't available from the security mail settings? Is this a feature planned for later, or am I missing a package of some sort?

  • MY Exchange integration... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jethro ( 14165 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @11:38AM (#2647778) Homepage
    I use PINE for my Exchange integration Email work. Works perfectly - apparently PINE is as much integrated with Exchange as Evolution is, until they start selling their component that'll connect to the calendar.

    The calendar is the only reason I keep Outlook around, really.

    My real problem with Evolution is, it looks like Outlook. I cannot use Outlook for Email. I find the interface to be completely horrible, unintuitive and hard to keep organized. The whole "Rules" thing just does not work. With PINE, if you want to save a message to a different mailbox, you hit "S <ENTER>". With Outlook you have to Drag'n'Drop. Imagine that for 200 messages.

    Maybe it's because I've been using PINE for god-knows how long, but GUI mail clients just don't work for me.
    • actually, evolution has at least as much integration as pine with exchange.

      I use pine. I use evolution. I like them both :)
    • Uhmmm....

      I am a long time Pine user, and I used to like Pine. Sometimes, I tried switching to Mutt, but it just didn't cut it for me.
      Now, I exclusively use Evolution. Why, you may ask? Because with Evolution, if you want to save a message to a different mailbox, you drag'n'drop. With Pine you have to hit "S <ENTER>". Imagine that for 200 messages.

      The reason is, I usually keep my mail very organized, in folders and subfolders, organization, name, if it's a record company, festival, whatever. In Pine, it it REALLY, REALLY hard to move a lots of messages from one folder to one other folder. Basically, you have to sit there and hit "S <ENTER>" 200 times.
      In Evolution, I just mark them, drag them, and drop them. Wonderful!

      Plus, I get all the goodies with keyboard shortcuts whenever I need them.
      • In Pine, it it REALLY, REALLY hard to move a lots of messages from one folder to one other folder. Basically, you have to sit there and hit "S <ENTER>" 200 times.
        Or, you could hit ":" on messages you want to select, and then use the (A)pply command to save them to a different folder.

        Or you can use the Search-select key, ";", tell it to select by text in the from, to, subject or body of the Email, and then use the (A)pply command. For example, to get all the ones with "Festical" in the Subject line, you'd go ";ssFestivalENTER>"

        I guess I should've, as usual, elaborated more on the Outlook thing. The Save Messages isn't the ONLY thing that bothers me -it was just the first thing that came to mind.
  • Greetings.

    Ximian is great, except for one little detail, which prevents me to recommend it. From what I gathered in the monkey talk chat room and elsewhere is that once you install Ximian, you are mostly stuck with the current version of your distribution.

    For instance, Ximian and Red Hat 7.1. Red carpet does not allow (at least I have not found any links) to upgrade to Red Hat 7.2. I was told that one must uninstall Ximian Gnome before upgrading to RH 7.2. That is not very user friendly. BTW, how does one uninstall Ximian Gnome? Anybody have the receipe for upgrading a system with Ximian installed? An easy receipe BTW? (Not manually identify and manually remove each rpms for instance).

    This system upgrade is the one serious piece missing, which for the moment prevents me to recommend Ximian to others. And by ricochet, I cannot recommend Ximian's Evolution.

    Sincerely,
    Hans Deragon
    • Er, I don't know where you heard that, but I was using Ximian Gnome with Red Hat 7.1, and upgraded to 7.2 (which installs its own version of Gnome), and then reinstalled Ximian Gnome overtop of that.

      Zero problems (except for the red-carpet problem I described in an earlier post).
    • This question is a Ximian FAQ:
      How do I uninstall Ximian Gnome?


      If you're unhappy with Ximian GNOME, please write to support@ximian.com and let us know what the problem is. It's entirely possible we can help you, and you won't need to remove your desktop software.

      If you really want to remove Ximian GNOME, it's quite easy: just use Red Carpet to uninstall all the Ximian GNOME packages. Start Red Carpet, then go to the Ximian GNOME channel, click "Remove," then choose "Select All" from the "Edit" menu. Click "Remove Packages." Red Carpet will remove all the GNOME software from your system. Then, remove Red Carpet itself, either by using Red Carpet or your native package management system.

      Once that's done, proceed with your upgrade as if you never had Ximian Gnome installed on your system...

  • Offshoots (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Marcus Brody ( 320463 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @11:45AM (#2647814) Homepage
    Hey, anyone know of any other projects based on the evolution code-base? I kinda like evolution from what I have seen of the pre-release versions. It looks like a real progression. However, I am sure there are alot of people like myself who like the advanced email features that arent really present in other linux-based mail programs. However, I really do not want a calender, schedules, task lists etc.

    In the same way that the Mozilla code base has been hacked - in a generally reductionist way - to produce the much-improved Galeon and promising K-Meleon, I feel that Evolution could benefit from the same process.

    Offers, anyone? Im a little busy right now.....

  • I'm very concerned for Ximian (Score:5, Insightful)

    by yobbo ( 324595 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @11:45AM (#2647820)
    I'm not trying to troll here, but I have strong doubts that Ximian will survive. But, before I continue, let me congratulate them on Evolution, as it is a very high quality product, and my preferred mail client.

    From the newsforge article, quotes from Nat Friedman, vice president of product development:

    "We expect less than we would have expected awhile ago. I think that people understand that businesses have to survive. And the people know that the bloody carcasses of Open Source companies line the horizon right now."

    and

    "It is proprietary is because they (Ximian) intend to make money from it."

    Effectively what I see here is an admission that open source software just isn't getting the bills paid (at least for Ximian, and Eazel RIP), and that they need to sell proprietry software in order to keep afloat.

    Unless we see open source companies like ximian generate significantly more revenue from services related to their open source projects, we just aren't gonna have the pleasure of using new products from them for much longer.
    • This is nothing new for OS/FS companies like GNOME and various Linux distros in general. You have to figure out a new business model. The same old model that MICROSOFT says is mandatory to make money says it is the ONLY model to make money in the software business. It is up to business people to determine a new model.

      Did MS make all the money they have now, back in the mid 80's? No. They have to develop a successful model. Regardless of all the things MS has done wrong, developing a successful business model is one thing they have done very well. Now times are changing and more and more is becoming digital and the legal system can not keep up with it. Models will have to change, people's feelings will be hurt, companies will fail, and when the smoke clears there will be a few champions standing a hill of slain compaines proving what they have to offer is going to be the de facto norm (at least for a while).

  • RPM Dependencies, KDE, & Pilot-link... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Spoing ( 152917 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @12:28PM (#2648147) Homepage
    Anyone know if the dependencies between KDE PIM that ships with 2.2.1/2.2.2 & Evolution pre-releases have been resolved?

    Evolution wanted one version of pilot-link, and KDE PIM wanted another...but the packages are mutually exclusive (a rarity, but it happened).

    Can this be forced & patched with a simlink?

    Personally, I prefer Evolution to KDE PIM, but I'm looking after a few different computers and want to leave the option of what one to choose up to the user. For now, Evolution wins so KDE PIM gets yanked though it would be nice not to have to pick and choose.

  • Exchange connector - why not charge? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bourne ( 539955 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @12:36PM (#2648205)

    I don't see any problem with charging for the Exchange connector. Think of it as encouragement to go open source!

    Let's say you're a small company with an Exchange server. You pay for Exchange. You pay for CALs. Then someone installs Evolution and lets some of your people access Exchange without buying into the whole MS-$$-desktop licensing (I'm thinking support people, especially). You're still paying something, though, to make Evolution work with Exchange.

    Then someone says, "You know, Evolution would work just as well with Courier/Cyrus/whatever as an IMAP backend, and then we wouldn't have to pay for the Exchange server or the Exchange connectors.

    And there's your incentive to go open source.

    Also, this puts the onus of supporting Ximian on the corporations, who can afford it. If I want to use Evolution for myself to access my IMAP server, it's free. If I want to use it to get into Exchange at work, I get my boss to spring for a license. I'm happy, he's happy, Ximian stays in business.

    Caveat: Exchange still wins in the corporation until Evolution + Open Source server XYZ can provide shared calendaring and scheduling.

  • Love jump up and down and be excited with you but I have to say these products are nothing to write home about.

    Ximian (on 6.2 500mhz 512MB ATI & 7.2 800mhz 512MB nVidia) is slower than molasses uphill in January. Totally unusable for day to day work. Looks nice slow as shit.

    Evolution is also slow and v1.0 has done little to improve that. Further it is a clunky way to do mail.

    I am open to suggestions to get it up to speed but my current experience with it is that it is too slow to be used.

    <OSX uber alles>

    ty, tyvm
  • The description of this Connector makes it look like it might live on the server side.

    Does exchange itself have a plugin architecture? When I used to be responsible for the care and feeding of Outlook clients the saddest thing was watching the parasitic developers that developed Outlook add-ons try to keep up with changes in Outlook. These, mind you, were Microsoft's friends, at least for as long as it takes for Microsoft to implement all the extra features of fax clients and remote access accelerators into Outlook proper. If Ximian intends to keep up with Microsoft on Microsoft's OS and groupware server, I'd reckon they're in for a wild ride.

    Perhaps this connector will be a middleware Linux server translating between the Evo clients and the Exchange server. OK, now you're only trying to keep up with Exchange. Just remember to add the cost of a reasonably powered Linux box to the equation. Since this connector is proprietary, be prepared to get stuck with binaries that may not work with subsequent releases of the distro(s) they support. How happy would you be to admin a Redhat 5 box right now?

    If this thing is client side, then it is surely an abomination.

    "Things in the real world cost real money, son." Blah-blah-blah, this Ximian-Connector business still smells like bait-and-switch.

    I hear chants of "It's not done 'til Lotus don't run" echoing in the distance.

  • Exchange users will pay more... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NetJunkie ( 56134 ) <jason.nash@CHICAGOgmail.com minus city> on Monday December 03, 2001 @01:14PM (#2648439)
    Using Evolution with Exchange is going to cost a company more than using Outlook. When deploying Exchange you buy a server license, either standard or enterprise, and then you buy client licenses for each user. Along with that license you also get an Outlook license.

    If we wanted to move to Evolution we'd still have to pay the same amount, and then have to pay for the Exchange connector on top of it. The price just went up $70/user to move to Evolution. I can't seem to locate my quote for our Exchange migration here, but a quick check shows a 5 user client access pack for Exchange is about $350...so the price per user just doubled.

    I'll pay it... I've been waiting for this since Evolution was first announced. Every LinuxWorld I ask them about Exchange support so it's nice to see it coming soon. But, it will be harder for someone else to do a mass migration.

    Something to consider.... I hope it works for them. I see Ximian as a company that needs to stick around for the Linux desktop to really take off.

    • Re:Exchange users will pay more... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Quikah ( 14419 ) on Monday December 03, 2001 @02:38PM (#2649078)
      Actually I think they would pay about the same. You have to subtract the client OS license since they will be running Linux instead of Windows. Then once you do that you subtract the Office license since you will be using OpenOffice or StarOffice 6.

      Regardless right now I think they are targetting developers who have a Linux box for development and then a windows box for their administrative stuff (email, office, etc.) They are enabling the devleoper to get rid of the Windows box. Should this prove successful (and OpenOffice/Staroffice 6 actually works well) I think they will start to target the general business user.
  • the community created an open source plug-in that
    was analogous to connector?

    As a side note, I think they've found a great balance between being open source and still selling code. Most of the mass of the app is free, and that rules.
  • The Exchange connector costs money? So, what? As long as it keeps this company a float.

    I use Ximian Gnome and Evolution as my email client exclusively and have been VERY impressed. Sure, it is fluff to get my Slashdot headlines through the app but I love the integration of my PIM and email functionality. It is solid and I have yet to hit many of the bugs other people have seen (maybe RedCarpet is good for something besides taking up desktop space).

    The app performs well and looks good. Now, if they could just get Gnome itself to speed up then I would be a happy camper. I am about this far from going back to WindowMaker because Kde and Gnome feel so slow next to Wmaker on a quick Celeron running SuSE 7.2.

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