Will Evolution Exchange Microsoft? 324
Anonymous Howard writes "Infoanarchy has a comprehensive review of Ximian Evolution. The reviewer claims that the Windows/Outlook combination is inherently inferior in terms of security, because users have too many privileges on the host system. Also, Evolution's indexing appears to be quite well scalable."
Evolution 1.0.3 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Evolution 1.0.3 (Score:4, Insightful)
Users on a subscription model don't have to worry about licensing issues in the same way that a dog chained to a post doesn't have to worry about trampeling its neighbors' lawns.
Re:Evolution 1.0.3 (Score:2, Insightful)
As opposed to Open Source where the IT managers pay nothing for upgrades and patches and doesn't have to worry about licenses?
Would You Trust a Source Named Anarchy? (Score:3, Funny)
Enough said.
Re:Would You Trust a Source Named Anarchy? (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of people trust his source now.
I might... (Score:2, Insightful)
More than I would trust one ending with
At least the word anarchy (probably) makes you pay attention to what they are saying and force you to evaluate the information critically.
If it passes this evaluation it is, IMHO, more worth than any information you just swallow down because some source with "authority" tells you.
This is one of the good things about slashdot too. Half of what is posted here is rubbish, there are true gems here too. But you have to use your intellect to find them.
Re:I might... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anarchy, smanarchy, I say.
Instead of Outlook/Windows (Score:3, Funny)
Evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Media player apps (Score:2)
NNTP support (Score:4, Insightful)
So, what's holding back NNTP support? It can't be all that difficult to do, after all Evolution provides all the infrastructure for handling large lists of messages. Only when NNTP support arrives do I think Evolution will be-feature complete.
Re:NNTP support (Score:2)
The best you can do is configure an Exchange server to take an NNTP feed and file it into public folders. That's a hack at best and nowhere near as convenient as a real NNTP interface in Outlook would be.
Outlook Express has NNTP, yes. But, there are so many other Windows based newsreaders that are better (e.g. Agent and Gravity).
Re:NNTP support (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, while I agree that technically, dealing with newsgroups is similar to dealing with mailboxes, the two have always been semantically different in my mind. Whether your email is stored locally or on a server, and whether the news articles are on a server or cached locally, email tends to have more of a "sense of mineness" about it. By that I mean, e.g., I would expect my email program to let me set up a filter that puts any email with "narts" in the subject into my narts.com mailbox, but I would be very surprised if my newsreader allowed me to set up such a "filter" for putting things into alt.narts. Deletion is similar in its different meanings in each context.
Basically, I think there is a UI issue to resolve. Namely, an interface that is too consistent across the two applications risks implying more similarity than is really justified, while inconsistency requires the user to learn twice as many interfaces. I think the second option is better (though I don't know how best to go about it), since in either case, the user is going to have to learn two sets of semantics. The second one makes this explicit by also requiring the learning of two sets of syntax.
Re:NNTP support (Score:3, Interesting)
This actually kind of supports my original point, though. Some functions of a newsgroup "filter" would be present in the email counterpart, but you are not going to have 100% feature overlap (without majorly crippling either or both). That being the case, you either force the user to remember what kind of filter they are dealing with, or make it difficult for them to be confused (by using, as you suggest different color schemes, widgets, layouts, and terminology).
An example of this in Unix would be regexes and globs: they are similar, but by giving them different names (instead of using vague words like "wildcard" or "pattern") and trying to make it clear when and where each is used, we avoid confusion and errors.
BTW, I have a great example of email/news confusion; in college, my friends and I commandeered an unused school newsgroup for a little while. I showed my girlfriend how to access it from pine (de facto standard school email client), and she ended up hitting "R" to reply to a news message of mine, incorrectly assuming that this would perform the same function as it does when reading mail. Of course, the newsgroup function would more accurately be called "follow up", as it responds with a *public* message. Basically, if the pine interface had differentiated a little better between the two UIs (or, mea culpa, if I'd explained it a little better to begin with), it would have prevented a little bit of embarrasment on the parts of my friends and me.
Re:NNTP support (Score:2)
While this is 100% true, I cannot stop from wondering how many of the featurs will have to be polished and/or debugged until they are really working.
Take, for example, the "gpg support": the article bluntly states "you just create a keypair, tell Evolution the ID of your key and it does the rest: signing, encryption, key import, signature verification etc. - it's all there just waiting to be used.". Well... this is purely fiction: ok, it *apparently* works, it encrypts ok, but it messes up the signature check (see also ximian's bugzilla [ximian.com]). Two points here:
first, this is the reason I didn't switch to Evolution. Everybody has access to my public key, so the signature-checking is a feature as important as encryption (to me at least).
this casts a shadow on the whole review (as someone posted, "Would You Trust a Source Named Anarchy?" [slashdot.org]). If all the "testing" was as shallow as it was for the gpg support, the answer is definitely "no".
Re:NNTP support (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the in-line pgp bug reports didn't start flowing in until after the 1.0 release which by that point was too late to fix for the most part because it to fix it right, we have to redesign the way we handle it completely.
btw, I as well as the mutt maintainer and every other mail client author that implements in-line pgp will agree that in-line pgp is just plain broken to begin with.
if you read the bug report that you linked to, you'll notice that there are a lot of possible security holes that all clients must face when implementing in-line pgp.
I would highly suggest you convince your friends to use PGP/MIME. There is some slight brokeness in Evolution's PGP/MIME implementation too (it sometimes says a signature isn't valid when it is, but it will never ever say a signature is valid when it isn't) but this is being fixed in the development branch. If you have questions about why this didn't work, feel free to email me or the evolution mailing lists and I will explain it in as much detail as you want.
Re:Cross-platform Newsgroups (Score:2)
Evolution runs in KDE just fine - do you have the gnome libs intalled?
Re:Cross-platform Newsgroups (Score:2)
Evolution runs in KDE just fine - do you have the gnome libs intalled?
You're missing the point -- I want all my apps to have the same look and feel. Using two (three) different widget toolkits is not conducive to this end.
KMail/KNode/KOrganizer gets me close but I admit, Evolution has the integration aspect nailed down pretty damned good.
Re:Cross-platform Newsgroups (Score:2)
Then check out Advance [sourceforge.net].
Advance is designed to look like Outlook. Its QT based, multi-user and database-backed. It includes support for KDE.
Re:Cross-platform Newsgroups (Score:2)
Thanks for the link. It's missing the goal though. We already have a killer email app. We already have a pretty damned good newsreader. And so on for the PIM. Why keep rewriting these bits? I have not looked into this yet but there should be a way to write a "shell" around the DCOP bits of these three programs which brings them all into one unit and, if I only need to fire off an email, can still pull up KMail and get at my messages without loading up everything else.
Re:Cross-platform Newsgroups (Score:2)
Reductio ad absurdum [umd.edu]. I expect that the two dials on my microwave operate the same way. I expect that every car I drive have controls that operate closely to each other. I expect that the remote I use on the couch be able to drive my VCR, DVD, Satellite and TV.
Re:Cross-platform Newsgroups (Score:2)
Its interesting you give a link for that phrase, as it doesn't mean what you think it does.
Heh, yeah I personally tend to call cases where you just take an arguement to the extreme reduction to absurdity, whereas the formal definition also requires it to be negated. Oh well.
But by those criteria KDE and Gnome (and Apple Macs, and MS Windows &c&c) are functionally identical. No less different than the controls in a Lexus from a Chevy Nova.
I don't expect to find both Lexus and Nova controls in the same car. That was the point I was trying to make.
Security vs useability (Score:4, Insightful)
But this is not a inherent linux strenght or windows weakness; it's just user behaviour. It's comparable with doing regular backups and such. Basically, the reviewer is saying: "My installation of linux runs a cronjob which makes a tarball of my important files daily, and my installation of windows doesn't; hence linux is less prone to data loss"
It's just a differance in accent; windows puts more of an accent on user-friendliness and linux more on security.
Re:Security vs useability (Score:2, Interesting)
Asking Joe to install security patches and turn off options to make his Outlook more secure is like asking a horse to bark. If he could understand what you are saying, he wouldn't do it anyway.
If his e-mail client AND OS are built secure from the ground up, then Joe will have to make an effort to compromise his system.
Re:Security vs useability (Score:2, Insightful)
So it doesn't boil down to security vs. useability. Start secure and be useable.
Re:Security vs useability (Score:3, Insightful)
Believe me, a bunch of average Joes that aren't technically savvy were running Linux, most or all of them would be logging in directly as root since they wouldn't want to be bothered with SUing.
I'm not saying that OSes should be somewhat secure by default, and Microsoft has been doing a better job of this as of late, however you can't make them uber locked down systems like most geeks have, it will just piss them off.
Re:Security vs useability (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. In most cases security goes directly against usability. Why do I have to log into my *home* machine? Why do I have to log in as admin/root to install a new application? Why can I only run this particular program as admin/root? These are all questions that the typical home user will ask when using their home machine. Having to do these things ends up making the machine less usable to the home user(albeit more secure).
Re:Security vs useability (Score:2)
Perhaps the easiest user friendly Linux would be one where the user creation program embedded the passwords in various scripts (e.g., kppp, xkill, etc.) that required action at the console. This would limit the security vulnerabilities created by this to those who had access to the console (is it ttya0? I don't know these new numbers yet).
For most machines one only needs to worry about access that isn't taking place from the console, so weakening the security of console applications isn't too bad. Unless it's going to be in a public area, or
Look and Feel (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Look and Feel (Score:2)
I believe MS have no claims over Evolution at all.
Re:Look and Feel (Score:2)
Ximian to MS: I want to be just like you (Score:5, Interesting)
Sort of. I don't know why MS hasn't sued them, but I'm more curious as to why Miguel/Ximian insists on copying *everything* MS does. I have a strong dislike of Outlook's UI, and so there's no chance I'm going to use Evolution - it looks exactly the same as it's non-free competitor. Yiick!
Gnumeric of course was the first such example. Use a windows-like GTK theme and you'll have trouble telling the difference between it and Excel. Doesn't Gnumeric also use a VB-like scripting language? I know the function library is very similar.
Then there's the whole Mono/.NET thing. C#, the intermediate format, the runtime - it's all a Java clone, but dancing to MS's tune rather than Sun's. Given how the majority of the Free Software / OSS community has shun Java, why are these guys jumping on what is essentially the same bandwagon, albeit one that's shiny new and pink, rather than a more mature one?
ObJavaFreeSoftwareDisclosure: I *am* a free software Java developer, so I guess I am biased here.. but honestly, what gives?
Anyone taking bets on Ximian's next product? An IE clone based on Gecko? A shoddy OS based on Linux? Sendmail with GUI just like Exchange's?
Mike.
Re:Ximian to MS: I want to be just like you (Score:2)
Re:Ximian to MS: I want to be just like you (Score:4, Insightful)
Businesses are the same way. They've trained users on the software they need to do their jobs. While the total cost of OSS may be lower, we can't forget that switching to OSS would incur training costs more than likely. By making OSS emulate the competitor, you provide an extra enticement for switching.
Yeah, we might not like how some of the MS stuff looks, but the one good thing about most OSS software is that it's often times easy to customize the interface
Re:Look and Feel (Score:4, Interesting)
A guy came by my desk yesterday, and I was running Evolution on my linux box. He sat there and stared at it for a moment. He thought it was Outlook. I told him it wasn't. He wasn't even aware that something like Evolution existed for *nix. So, I let him play with it for a while - he picked it up EASY.
I've also been doing some user tests with Openoffice and KOffice. By far, Evolution is the easiest for the typical office users to learn. They even call it Outlook.
I'm not a fan of the Outlook-esque UI, but if that means that Joe Blow can easily switch to Free Software, then I'm all for it.
Re:Look and Feel (Score:2)
Haven't [out]looked back (Score:5, Funny)
so yeah, overall it totally rocks, and while there are a few bugs / annoyances in it, i've been very pleased overall
Re:Haven't [out]looked back (Score:2)
Ask Michael Jackson
Re:Haven't [out]looked back (Score:2)
Embrace and extend (Score:2, Redundant)
Simon
Not until... (Score:2)
I finally can get all my stuff out of outlook, damn it!!! Life sucks when you use outlook and the only thing you get exported out of it is crippled data and e-mail. ugh!
Open protocols are even more important (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet a much more important issue is the other direction - open and freely accessible groupware protocols implemented by a free-as-in-speech server solution, with Outlook connectivity provided by a Windoze plugin. For example, the Bill Workgroup Server [billworkgroup.org] takes this approach.
Microsoft Exchange is not the only major proprietary groupware solution - Lotus Notes is here to stay, to be even more proprietary - it's quite impossible to read or write Lotus NSF files with anything but Lotus software. Free groupware standards exist and should be used by anyone. The user should have free choice between PHPgroupware, Evolution, Outlook and Lotus Notes, similar to IMAP providing choice between lots of different email clients.
Re:Open protocols are even more important (Score:2)
scalability (Score:5, Insightful)
It all took less than 10 seconds, and most of that time was SSL/IMAP reads from my IMAP server. Best darn mail reader I've ever used.
If you haven't tried it try this out: bring it up, select a message in the subjuct summary window. Right-click and go to the "create a vfolder on this message" sub-menu. It just rocks. You can even have vfolders that encapsulate multiple real folders or EVEN ACCOUNTS.
Very sweet!
Re:scalability (Score:2)
Re:scalability (Score:2)
Unfortunately, it sent out one from within an infinite loop...
Have to say I'd be impressed by that. OE 6 is just sssssssllllooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwww over here.
Evolution Comments (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Evolution Comments (Score:2)
Re:Evolution Comments (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Evolution Comments (Score:2)
I know it's probably not an option, but also investigate GNUCash. It seems like a dumb way to manage your finances at first, but it's pretty well implemented once you get used to the "double accounting" method (where $$$ goes into "A", and then you move it from "income A" into "expense B")
--Robert
Huge blind spot in OSS collaboration offerings (Score:5, Interesting)
And, of course, cost aside, this also implies that a shop with microsoft-free aspirations currently has to buckle under and purchase at least one Windows server/exchange combo, plus hire or contract the skill to administer the beast. This is exactly what happened to my small company recently. We were going to go Linux (and in fact our Web site and time tracking server were Linux-based), but being a "virtual" company, with everyone working out of our homes, we required strong group collaboration. So, reluctantly, in came the W2K Server box running nothing but Exchange. If only there were a Linux-based option (even if it weren't OSS!). And yes, we looked at Notes, but I don't even want to go there... Of course there used to be OpenMail by HP (I think) but that's been sold off, is unavailable, and we can only wait and see where that goes (and, regardless, it won't be OSS).
Now that a polished, capable client exists, it would be fantastic to complete the offering with a server.
Re:Huge blind spot in OSS collaboration offerings (Score:5, Informative)
InsightServer is built atop these unmodified pieces of Open Source software:
Cyrus IMAP Server, from Carnegie-Mellon University
http://asg.Web.cmu.edu/cyrus/
Exim MTA (Message Transfer Agent), from Cambridge University
http://www.exim.org/
Berkeley Database, from the University of California
http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/
GDBM GNU Database Libraries from Free Software Foundation
http://www.gnu.org/software/gdbm/gdbm
ProFTP from the ProFTPD Project
http://proftpd.linux.co.uk/
Apache HTTP Server from the Apache Foundation
http://httpd.apache.org/
Bynari has not modified these, and does provide the source code with the Open Source components.
Re:Huge blind spot in OSS collaboration offerings (Score:2)
"The big savings comes from substituting the InsightServer for Microsoft's Exchange server, and adding InsightConnector on the employees' Outlook(TM) client on their Windows desktops. From then on, Outlook clients behave as if they are talking with an Exchange server. Employees enjoy the integrated functionality of e-mail, contact information, and scheduling, while the employer gains Linux reliability, ease of central administration."
Check out Prochange Server (Score:2, Interesting)
www.prochange.org
We have already coded an initial version of virus and spam filtering, along with integration to the open source Apache James mail server. The project is in need of more developers, so be sure to take a look at the website!
Re:Huge blind spot in OSS collaboration offerings (Score:2, Informative)
Getting closer (Score:4, Insightful)
What will make it even better is the ability to import my mail from Outlook Express and handle about 10000 emails in a folder.
When it supports shared calenders then it will be great. Want to know why that feature is important? Well simply because the office manager can enter everyone's schedule into it and then everyone else can look at it to see where they're supposed to be, or if someone is gonna be going on vacation.
But all in all, it's a great program and I reall hope it keeps on improving. Now if only they got on of the MTA's to mimic the functionality of Exchange, as one easy to use package, then THAT would be awesome! I'd be able to convince my company to switch in no time.
Re:Getting closer (Score:2, Informative)
Evolution has two different forms of shared calender support. A p2p option for other evo clients, and through the exchange plugin Exchange's shared calender support.
Evolution is great (Score:2)
I like being able to sync up with my palm and have all my contact info reflected in my email client. The task and calendar functions work very well too. My company uses Notes but supports pop3 so I am set. Ximian I hope is working on a Notes connector. That would be the best.
Evolution is a very slick app. My only criticism is the adherence to UI standards based off the bloated slow Outlook model and the fact there is no easy way to insert and html document even while sending html based emails. This sounds like a silly thing but our timesheets are online and if I want to give my consulting company my status it is much easier to insert the html into an email than to send an attachment.
_______________________________________________
Perhaps (Score:2, Insightful)
-Dave
Re:Perhaps (Score:2)
Re:Perhaps (Score:2)
Few Points (Score:3, Interesting)
Second, Evolution costs more than Outlook in an Exchange environment. When you buy an Exchange client license you get with it an Outlook license. If I were to use Evolution I'd still have to purchase the Exchange client license PLUS the Evolution connector for Exchange. So, it's not always cheaper.
Finally, I consider Exchange to be Microsoft's best product. The server is very robust and extremely reliable. A good Exchange admin can set up Exchange and only needs to do minor maintenance and it'll run itself. Notice I said a GOOD admin...not just someone off the street. My Exchange servers run until something else, such as a hardware repair or firmware update, requires me to restart the system. The only software restarts I have to do usually are the fault of anti-virus software getting hung. Now that we've switched to Antigen those have gone away as well.
Re:Few Points (Score:2)
Nice try, but you forgot to factor in the cost of a Windows license for each desktop. In both scenarios you must buy the Exchange client license, but with Outlook you have to purchase Windows to use it on, whereas with Evolution all you have to buy is the connector. So Evolution is still cheaper.
Reply #2 (Score:2)
Of course, you could buy a bare PC with no support, but that depends on your situation. It's worth a little per machine to me so that Compaq can't say it's a software problem. They support the entire system when it goes wrong.
Re:Few Points (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course with OpenOffice at 1.0, the cost of Ximian connector is more reasonable for new machines because companies might NOT already have Office licenses. What Ximian needs to do is take and brand a version of openoffice bundled with ximian connector and evolution to be the linux/whatever Office replacement. They could EASILY charge 100 bucks per office suite and still be better.
Wrong. (Score:2)
Re:Few Points (Score:2)
Oh my, no. SQL Server 2000 is awesome. Exchange has merely stopped falling over all the time, it still doesn't have the interoperability or flexibility that should be de rigeur for MTA's.
Re:Few Points (Score:2)
Re:Few Points (Score:2)
It does a shitload more functions than qmail etc.
For what it does, it is pretty dang good (well, these days, when you can actually shut it down with out waiting half an hour and stuff like that). But it is still probably doomed, as is Micros~1.
But hey, I have been wrong before.
Outlook at work, Evolution at home (Score:5, Interesting)
But I've been using Outlook at work for years, including all of its "advanced" features like custom forms. I've been using Evolution at home for maybe 6 months. I deal with up to 100 emails a day at work and I have to say Outlook's scalability absolutely sucks. To keep it running at any reasonable speed, I let it "auto-archive". When my local mail box was about 85mb, the client was just too slow. Searches could take 3 or 4 minutes (on a fast machine). And the custom forms are horrible. I'll never use them again. We also tried importing a few thousand contacts through Outlook (to Exchange), but beyond maybe 100 for a single Outlook user, it grinds to a screeching hault.
It may sound silly, but my favorite feature of Evolution that's not in Outlook (97 at least) is the discussion threaded e-mail view. On a mailing list, for example, I can see a tree of the conversation and read it in conversation order rather than date. It's such a little thing, but that's really handy. With that, it's nice, easy configuration, it's speed, and all the other great features others are posting about, overall I prefer Evolution.
One other thing about it that relates to every Windows and KDE/GNOME app: Linux desktops are multi-threaded properly so windows will never freeze with an app and the desktop won't freeze unless the destop app itself has a problem. If Outlook freezes, well I've got to see that frozen windows until if and when I can "end task" and all of the other apps run slowly around it, when the desktop doesn't feel like freezing also. When connected to a big e-mail server, proper multi-threading is a great feature for the client to have.
Re:Outlook at work, Evolution at home (Score:3, Interesting)
View -> Current View -> Group by Conversation.
Probably an Outlook2k thing (what I have). Outlook 97 is awful -- upgrade a little and you'll probably find you have less problems with scalability also (also depends a lot on your Exchange server, if that's slow, you're going to be slow).
: Linux desktops are multi-threaded properly so windows will never freeze with an app and the desktop won't freeze unless the destop app itself has a problem
Don't care to be a usage nazi, but Linux desktops tend to be in no way multithreaded. Just multi-process, in that the window manager runs separate from the rest of the GUI. This has its good and bad points, but in any case has zero relevance to the interaction of mail clients. You are using an ancient version of Outlook that doesn't multithread or do much of anything in the background. I could cast many aspersions on 5 year old versions of Linux as well...
Re:Outlook at work, Evolution at home (Score:2)
Travis
Migration (Score:2)
Re:Outlook 97? Are you serious? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, if Outlook 97 has worked until now, why pay many thousands of dollars to upgrade to a new version which contains at minimum the same number of bugs and security holes. Any minor new features aren't worth it. We're now forced into MS's upgrade cycle.
confusing usability and shallow learning curve (Score:3, Insightful)
Console-based and keyboard-based apps can have excellent usability, as applications like Emacs show. What they don't have is "usability for beginners"--it takes a while to get proficient at them. But once people are proficient at them, they can be more efficient with them than in GUI-based systems.
It is true that this may limit their adoption in corporations, but it is absolutely not true that therefore we all should settle on user interfaces that make making easy things easy to learn their number one priority.
Also, few if any of the old clients have collaboration features like Outlook -- they are email clients and nothing else.
Gee, this is no coincidence. In the UNIX world, collaboration and group applications happen in the file system. This is doubtlessly confusing for people who are used to Windows, but it has worked very well for the last 30 years on UNIX systems. Windows/Evolution-style systems don't look like an improvement over that.
Don't get me wrong: Evolution is a nifty E-mail client, and it will doubtlessly attract many users, in particular users coming from Windows. However, neither Windows nor Evolution are the single gold standard for usability--there is not single gold standard for usability. There are many different kinds of user interfaces and many different kinds of people. Let's not fall into the Windows/Gates trap of believing that one size fits all.
I hear people talking about (Score:3, Interesting)
Nonetheless, if one was an SA or esp in management (of an SA group), I would think that finding an e-mail client that offered similar functionality, better security and ease-of-use as compared to Outlook would be welcomed. Particularly when these "idiot" e-mail viruses continue to be a problem. They waste the time of the SA group (cleaning up the mess) and kill productivity for the poor saps that are "victims" by opening these viruses. Finally, due to the similarity between Evolution and Outlook, a memo describing the new e-mail client and that it works like Outlook would likely suffice for transition.
The fact that it DOESN'T run on Windows is an issue that will hopefully be resovled, although doesn't affect me, I admit...
still has some ways to go (Score:2)
Evolution is a good start in its category. But let's not overpromise.
Cool... but... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm desperately looking for a new email client. I'm still using Eudora Lite 3.16 at home, simply because I haven't found anything to replace it with. The newer versions of Eudora are laden with spyware and ads. I looked at Pegasus and disliked it. Outlook and Outlook Express have nice ease of use, but we all know the utter lack of built-in security (this is Win98SE btw).
Yeah, I'm probably going to nuke one of my boxes and put Linux back on it soon, but I'll still have a Windows box around for playing games, and it's likely to be my main PC while Linux is my putter/hack TiVo box.
So, any suggestions on a decent Windows email client? I was really hoping Ximian was cross-compiled, but it doesn't appear so.
The best email client under Windows (Score:2)
It's also feature rich. View multiple accounts, threaded conversations, etc. The software is solid as a rock and regularly updated. It costs $35 but you get a month free trial. One thing I appreciated is when I went over the 1 month it didn't lock me out from my email, it just encouraged me to pay. All in all one happy chap.
Phillip.
I need a server replacement for Exchange (Score:2)
My problems with Evolution are (Score:2)
I would not mind paying for it, but I want to compile a native FreeBSD binary -- they chose not to offer FreeBSD support [ximian.com]...
Major Evolution gripe... (Score:4, Interesting)
1. My quota gets eaten twice. I lose the mail quota for having mail stored on the server, plus I lose disk quota for the local copies.
2. The directory is created with your default permissions, which for most shared systems include readability by others in the organization. I have been able to wander through other Evolution users' home directories and read their email. Joe User is not going to have a *clue* that this could be happening.
OK, sure, local caching is good, but use some compression or encryption or *something*. (And yes, I still use it, because it's the nicest client out there. But security is not *that* hard.)
Palm syncing (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh yeah, is there any easy way to transfer outlook messages to Evolution (I've only used some dumb roundabout ways)
Even Microsoft will evolve (Score:3, Funny)
Evolution _could_ make them switch... (Score:3, Insightful)
Right now Ximian is just providing _current_ Linux users one more reason not to have to boot to Windows...which is great and should be applauded, but that alone won't win over new OSS users. If Evolution is serious about drawing in Outlook users (which they seem to be considering the UI), they have to do so on Microsoft's turf. Until they provide an easy-to-obtain-and-install win32 port, however, current and potential Outlook users will continue down the MS Office path and thus continue to provide MS with an office application suite monopoly.
In this case, a win32 port would be an even bigger win because of OpenOffice. OpenOffice and Evolution would allow users to completely replace MS Office completely with better, user-friendly OSS alternatives. (Sure, Access would be the only holdout, but the fact is that a vast majority of MS Office users don't ever touch Access...and mdb tools [sourceforge.net] can give a little help to those that do).
The day I can replace an expensive, frequently-used application like MS Office on my parents'/friends'/dog's/lusers'/senator's Wintel computer with a better, free alternative is the day that I can convince them of the value of OSS...not before.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Exchange connector academic price??? (Score:2)
Now how am I supposed to tell my boss that Linux/Evolution/Open Office, will free us from the licensing costs and license tracking overhead of closed proprietary software? The OS academic open license for Windows XP costs $40.00/seat and the Office suite costs $60.00/seat...for a total of $100.00 per seat.
The exchange connector for Evolution costs $69.00! This doesn't give me an entire office suite....just an Exchange connector! And I still have the license tracking overhead of closed proprietary software.
I understand where you're coming from, but you're missing a couple points.
1) If you talk to Ximian, I'm guessing they may have an "academic discount" for Connector - and I KNOW they have a discount if you buy licenses in bulk.
2) You ARE getting a full office suite. Go grab OpenOffice.org [openoffice.org] 1.0
Re: (Score:2)
win32 port? (Score:5, Insightful)
Specifically I want HTML in my mail but no scripting (unlike the popular beliefs here, outlook can provide this functionality). This disqualifies any command-line clients. I want flexible filtering. I receive a lot of mail and filtering is essential to me. Outlook is pretty good in this area too. I don't use/care about calendering right now but may need it in the future. It needs to be fast. Outlook does not scale well. Searches take forever in my mailbox and sometimes it just sits there for minutes doing god knows what for no obvious reason leaving me waiting to read/send some mail.
Evolution looks like it has most of the features I need and I would consider using it instead of Outlook. I like the concept of a virtual folder and would probably use such a feature to organize my mail (1 virtual folder for each of my colleagues, 1 folder per topic I'm working on, 1 with everything in it, etc.). Because it is open source I have some level of confidence it performs well and is secure. If only it had a win32 version.
I think being crossplatform would convince a lot of organizations of standardizing on evolution. Reality dictates that most companies need to use ms office and depend on calendering. However, a lot of people are very annoyed by the continueing stream of outlook related security breaches. Most large companies have lost valuable time fixing such issues in the past few years. I'm an advanced user and know how to dodge security issues in outlook but it still is annoying.
If evolution is anywhere near as good as it is claimed to be, a lot of people would switch if it was available on their platform of choice. I certainly would give it some serious consideration.
One flaw (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sure it's possible to get it working, by reading some how-to's and following the instructions, but I never could. (under RedHat 7.2).
Compare this to the Windows version, where most folks can achieve sync with Palm Desktop simply by plugging in the device and running setup.exe.
Evolution seems to assume that you are already syncing the Palm with another Linux tool, when in fact, lots of folks might be starting from scratch. I'd like to see this improved to the point where they have a setup widget for Palm devices that starts from nothing, loads appropriate drivers, and then allows you to sync all your data with Evolution with no fuss.
You can chalk this up to not being nerdy enough, but really, I don't think you should have to be a sysadmin to setup a Palm.
Evolution May Bring Exchange to OS X (Score:2, Interesting)
According to the Evolution hacker list, there is a port underway, though no posts have been made in the last month.
http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/evolution
It would be sweet irony if OS X users got 1) an email client for OS X that could deal with Exchange but not from MS, that 2) was better than Outlook itself.
One thing I'm not clear on is Evolution's functionality. Can it handle all of Exchange's functions like being able to schedule meeting rooms and other resources, tasks, etc? If so, I could see a large number of users in my company dump their OS 9/Windows boxes and pick up new Macs running OS X...
Another goal for the OSS community, BUT... (Score:3, Insightful)
Here are some of the things that we have that work, and work well. So far, we have:
kdevelop - development environment
KDE3 - desktop environment
Evolution - mail, PIM, colaboration (albeit, you need the Connector to use Exchange Server)
Mozilla/Konqueror - pick one. Browser, o'course. And there are others that are 'satisfactory' for most tasks as well.
Xine/mplayer/xmms - media
PDF viewer - many are available that work well.
samba client component - combined w/ all the various file managers for X, it's equally as functional as the Windows clients.
These items are getting there, but still need a lot of/some help:
GIMP - 'replace' photoshop. Still needs a lot of work on making it easier to use for 'non-script writing' users. Several generations behind Photoshop in that respect, but quite/just as powerful for a technically advanced artist.
OpenOffice - I'd say it's arrived for most things, if it were able to deal with Word documents and had revision history support. There are just too many documents out there that are in Word format that will still need to be read and written to. Those features need to be supported.
gnumeric - as far as I know, it should be able to do anything someone needs to do, but I've never really used Excel or gnumeric, besides for some very basic work. It did what I needed it to.
There might be some commericial solutions to these things (WineX, for instance), but the idea is to not have to rely on MS's horrid licensing extortion, etc.
Here are the main applications that I feel are the main things that are keeping linux back on the desktop in companies:
AutoCAD - there really aren't any OSS CAD solutions, let alone one that's comparable to AutoCAD. IMO, the best thing AutoDesk could do would be to release a version of their software for linux. The (possible) added development that would be necessary to port it would be beneficial to the overall stability of their product as well. I really don't see there being an OSS solution for AutoCAD in the near future, unless it's an abstration layer. CAD is such a complex, involved item and would require a high degree of backward compatability.
Complete independence from any Microsoft product - Unless this happens, MS will still have a strong foothold on manipulating the industry, and will make things general hell for everyone else involved as long as possible.
Re:Hemos uses Outlook (Score:2, Informative)
Also see: href="http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcent
NOTE: This virus is associated with and can be dropped by either W32.Klez.A or W32.Klez.D. Please read those write-ups for additional information.
Re:Win32 version? (Score:2)
Re:Win32 version? (Score:2)
Re:Hold you horses! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see what this has to do with Outlook.
I think the quote was misleading, or just assumed we'd assume. Windows/Outlook is inherently inferior because users have too many privileges on the system, which lets those
If I was to run Evolution on Windows I'd have exactly the same problem
There's no scripting support in evolution (at least, not yet). I don't know of any security problems with it. I'm sure someone could configure it to make Word the default editor, thus allowing that MS flaw of surpassing macro checks, but that's not "inherent". Outlook tries to do too much, which is a recipee for disaster. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Re:FUD (Score:2)
Re:FUD (Score:2)
My father, running as a user with no Admin access(as I have him set up) had a virus which totally disabled McAffee as well as several NT services. Basically I spent many hours reinstalling stuff to totally clean everything. Granted, there wasn't TOTAL damage, but that's no real consolation for this "mature" OS of yours.
Re:Patent pending (Score:2)
Main Entry: insight
Pronunciation: 'in-"sIt
Function: noun
Date: 13th century
1
2
synonym see DISCERNMENT [m-w.com]
Jesus christ.
Anyway, gnus and vm for emacs have been doing vfolders for ages. Even uses the same term.
Re:Patent pending (Score:2)