Evolution installer for Win32 Released

markybob points out that an unofficial Win32 installer for Evolution has been released, writing "Of course it's GPL, so have fun and spread it around!" From the site: "Evolution is an incredibly versatile email/calendar/PIM that took the Linux world by storm a few years ago. It has been called an 'Outlook replacement' by every tech site from ZDNet to InfoWorld. Evolution played a major role in allowing the Linux desktop to move into the enterprise by giving being able to connect to Microsoft Exchange Server and schedule/accept Microsoft Outlook Meetings. Here's a screenshot of how it handles meeting invitations sent by Outlook."

CALs?

[RingDev]

Would Linux users running this still need to pay for the CALs to connect to the Exchange server?

-Rick

More is better

[rocjoe71]

Having seen what a weak point MS Outlook can be for the security of my clients, having an option to replace Outlook with something that doesn't carry the inherent risks of Outlook while providing them the same funcitonality as Outlook (calendaring being the big one) is really making me consider convincing them to switch.

...before anybody goes on to tell me how great iCal, GoogleCal or Sunbird is, just like to point out that my clients like many others don't see replacing one app with two as a good reason to switch. Plus, forgoing the option to process meeting invitations with one click would never be seen as an improvement.

OTOH, seeing how impossible it is to wean clients off of IE, Outlook, Acrobat Reader, etc. Evolution needs to be even better than advertised.

Spam filtering

[FictionPimp]

The only thing keeping me off this is the lack of good spam filtering. Even in linux I choose thunderbird because the spam filtering is easier to use and self containted. No need for bogofilter or spamassasin. How will you filter spam on a windows box?

Does it work with Kolab2 yet?

[LWATCDR]

Evolution is just part of the puzzle. If it worked with Kolab2 as a groupware server it would be a total solution for my office.

Re:CALs?

[kimvette]

Oh really? You need to buy Exchange CALs for servers which are not Microsoft Exchange? When did this occur? I'd better check with Microsoft to see if I can purchase Exchange CALs for use with Scalix. Thanks for the 411! I'm sure others will be interest in where they should purchase Exchange CALs for Zimbra. ;)

Notice I was referring to Exchange and Outlook BOTH together in the previous post. Availability of other full-featured PIM/groupware applications open the opportunity to run servers OTHER than Exchange, AND avoid having to pay for Outlook as well.

Re:Finally

[filesiteguy]

...you say that like it is a bad thing. I've used the Outlook 97, 2K, XP and 2003 clients and find them all to be pretty much the same. Outlook 97 would do just fine for me and probably 98% of the world....of course, you're still stuck with those pesky viruses if you insist on running Outlook in Windows.

Re:Cant Sync

[accessdeniednsp]

You don't need GTalk for reminders. It can send SMS to your mobile. It can also send you e-mail reminders. It also sends you a daily digest at 5am for your upcoming day.

You should really check it out again. It's improved even more since Day 0.

They should just fix it on Linux

[vtrac]

First of all I'd like to thank the evolution team for making evolution work with Exchange over OWA. It's certainly much better than using OWA through a non-IE browser, which looks like complete ass and is stripped of lots of features. It allows me to stick to my linux desktop full time and still access all the corporate stuff. That said, Evolution is the most unstable bit of open-source software that I've ever had the displeasure of using. At least 3-4 times a day, I have to forcibly kill it, kill all of its PIDS, and then restart it. It just decides to lock up every once and a while, trying to sync with the OWA server. I've never used it for anything other than getting my exchange email, since I use gmail for my personal account. Outlook is bloated and slow as hell, but I'd still bet it's better than Evolution on Windows.

Re:GUI look

[julesh]

Why does Evolution's GUI stand out as much? It doesn't look like a Windows application - the colours are wrong, for one, the toolbar delimiters are non-standard, the up-down widget as well, the checkbox is non-checkboxey, the icons are bland, and there are lots of buttons around.

Because it's a GTK application, and GTK doesn't use native widgets. As others have suggested, you can install a theme to avoid this issue, but it won't fix a few other sticking points that I've had with other GTK apps:

* Non-standard button placement, with cancel on the left and OK on the right (yes, I'm well aware of Apple's research in this area, but it's generally acknowledged that consistency is more important and all other Windows apps do it the other way around)
* Bizarre, hard-to-use open file dialog box which doesn't let you type in file names and doesn't recognise shortcuts (so if you double-click on one it tries to open the shortcut file, rather than the file it points to)
* Bizarre, hard-to-use save file dialog box which doesn't show a list of files already present in the directory
* Placement of application files in a nonstandard place (directly in a subdirectory of the user profile directory, rather than in the Local Settings or Application Data subdirectories) which can screw up the use of roaming profiles

If GTK people want to claim that they support windows, they're going to have to do better IMO. It's just like all the projects that claim to support MacOSX but don't properly integrate with the system. We might as well be running it on a Linux box if it isn't going to work right with the rest of the system.

Re:Too bad it doesn't work.

[Zane Hopkins]

Try running the step2.cmd rather than the evolution.cmd , and you should get a meaningful error message.

Unfortunately its not :(

[cloricus]

We have been using Evolution on our linux workstations and early win32 builds on the windows boxes for a rather long time. There are two huge problems that just make integration onto a network using Exchange servers pointless and annoying: first is it looks crap, not the program but the folder listing, if any one is expected to ever use it it needs to clone Outlook in the way the folders are displayed and the current 'it's close enough, it's good enough' just doesn't cut it in an environment filled with users who only know Outlook. Secondly administrators hate Outlook as you cannot add many mailboxes to the one account like you can in Outlook. Now I use Evolution at home and at work and I love it but until those two Exchange interoperation problems are fixed it will never gain mainstream adoption. Note that if they are fixed it has so many features over Outlook I think people will have trouble not looking at it.

Re:Finally

[jamesh]

Outlook 2003 introduced 'cached mode', where you are working on a local copy of your data but it is kept up to sync with the server almost constantly. It is very very nice when you are working over a slower-than-lan link!

Previously, you would have to run Outlook in 'offline' mode, and set it to sync frequently.

But other than that, yeah, they all suck the same :)

I am going to be a bit blunt...

[TheNetAvenger]

I am going to be a bit blunt...

I keep thinking this and for some reason feel the need to finally say it.

Why does 99% of Open Source software look like bad Win95 applications?

I know geeks don't like 'eye candy' but this is getting to the point where even geeks need to embrace images, high color icons and colorful design.

Geeks also need to embrace 'usability' as most products are written as us 'techie' types would be comfortable with, but that is NOT the mass of people using computers. And I don't mean 'copying' MS's usability from 1997 either, I mean real world current usability expectations.

The open source world CAN do so much better than this...

(I know this may not seem like a positive post, but hopefully someone will find it constructive and we will start to see applications that look like they were made in this century.)

Re:It still doesn't replace outlook...

[killjoe]

1) Your example only shows how to export one persons mail. What do you do if you have a thousand?
2) What about the contacts?
3) What about the calender? Can you export that to ical?
4) OK so you now have a comma separated file what do you do with it? Put it in a spreadsheet? How come it won't let you export them as plain email files?
5) If MAPI was well understood or sufficient there would be a jillion email clients that work with exchange. Alas not even the MS products for the mac work well with exchange. Entourage for a long time scraped outlook web access. Then went to imap. Is it using MAPI yet?

Re:Too bad it doesn't work.

[JWSmythe]

    Nope, it hung on the "This will take a while" message.

    I left it up for hours. Like, from just after I posted the last message until about 20 minutes ago. I tried to fire it up again, and still nothing interesting.