Evolution 0.99, Release Candidate Out

savaget writes "Evolution 0.99 (Release Candidate 1) is out! "Yes, you read that right: the release candidate for Evolution 1.0 hit the wires this evening. After two years of hard work and more than 700 thousand lines of code written, the sleepless hackers at Ximian are finally getting to the long-awaited 1.0 release of Evolution, the GNOME groupware suite."" One of the most important projects in the open source world today. Best of luck to the monkey boys @ Ximian squashing any last minute arrivals.

Full annoucement here

[savaget]

Full annoucement here [ximian.com]

Evolution project homepage is here

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ximian.com/products/ximian_evolution/

http://www.ximian.com/products/ximian_evolution/ [ximian.com]

FTP downloading already /.'ed

[PoiBoy]

Just tried downloading the binaries. The FTP server has too many users.

Re:Already available on Red Carpet.

[Nadir]

Removing the nag screen has always been possible by setting an environment variable...
I have the following line in my .bash_profile

export EVOLVE_ME_HARDER=ok

Known issues

[Alien54]

Of course, people following this all along would know this stuff, but I can see lots of people checking it for the first time, etc getting surpised.

So, as noted:

- In this build only, Palm-OS sychronization is temporarily disabled. It will return in the next release.
- Under certain rare circumstances, IMAP connections over SSL can hang Evolution. We expect to have this issue resolved shortly.

Just in case these things are important to you.

Re:As someone who has hated Outlook for a long tim

[Fnkmaster]

Hmm, I've found Evolution to be far more stable and usable than KMail. In particular, Evolution's IMAP support is superb. KMail, despite claims to the contrary, does not seem to be happy with large IMAP folders at all, and I have watched it crash and burn once or twice, but it was really the extremely slow startup time while rechecking the entirety of my large IMAP folders. It's just too damned slow on startup. I have used it just fine with POP in the past though, I just think it has a ways to go on the back end support before it is as good as Evolution.

Re:Converting from Kmail?

[Clovert Agent]

Kmail put all mails into different files corresponding to folder in ~/Mail in mbox format. So, i "cat" every files into one big file and i tell evolution it's my mailbox.

Why did you do this? Evolution also maintains separate mbox files for each folder. Look in ~/evolution/local/

All you need to do is create directories off ~/evolution/local/[folder] for each mail folder and move the mbox file in there, renaming the file to "mbox" on the way.

In brief, for each mail folder, you want ~/evolution/local/[folder]/mbox

Evolution (IIRC) will create the various control files as required.

Re:pop3 or imap

[MindStalker]

Ok, BIG difference. With Pop3 you simply download the email into a local folder. With IMAP the emails stay on the server and you are browsing folders remotly. A goot IMAP client with make local copies of the mail also, so that you don't have to redownload everytime you want to look at a piece of mail. Think Webmail, without the web :)

Re:pop3 or imap

[timbck2]

Here's a good description of IMAP vs. POP3:

IMAP vs. POP [imap.org] (www.imap.org)

Re:Converting from Kmail?

[jacobito]

Why do people insist on posting bug reports to slashdot? If you want your issue to be addressed, there's a proper forum [ximian.com] for that.

Re:pop3 or imap

[Jon Peterson]

pop3 is a _very_ simple protocol that allows mail to be read, retrieved, or deleted from a server by a client. It's a had a few features added in later days, and might support simple management like password changing, but that's about it.

The main weakness of pop3 is that it treats the server end as a dumb, unorganised list of messages, and expects all cleverness (mailboxes, sorting, filtering, etc) to be done client side. This means it is a pain to change clients, and nearly impossible to manage one mail account from two clients (e.g. one at home, one at work).

The main strength of pop3 is that it works.

IMAP is a protocol that allows a client to manipulate a server side data store. All the useful information (what messages are read, which folders they are in etc) is on the server, so if you change IMAP clients, all the data is just read of the server, and away you go.

However, AFAIK IMAP is a rather complex protocol. I have never come across a client that implements it very well, all of them struggle with large numbers of messages, handling of attachments and so on. In addition, it's still possible for a client to implement client-side only add-on features that are then incompatibile with other IMAP clients.

Outlook is the only client I've used that seems to handle server-centric email well, and it probably does with in proprietary extensions. Of course Outlook's handling of SMTP is rather dire, but hey.

Not quite so simple

[JimRay]

Evolution requires a LOT of libraries that haven't been ported to OSX, via Fink or otherwise (to my knowledge). Things like Bonobo, etc. From what I understand, this is more than a trivial recompile to get these kinds of utilites over.

Re:FTP downloading already /.'ed

[RossyB]

That's not the /. effect. The server has been busy for the last week or so. So as usual, Please Use The Mirrors.

Peeps in the UK can go to (ftp|www).mirror.ac.uk, which has a complete and up-to-date mirror of ftp.ximian.com

Yes you can build & run GNOME under Windows.

[Sleepy]

Yes, you could build and run Evolution under Windows, but currently ONLY under Cygwin + an X11 server (this is still local on the Windows box). A Cygwin setup can be accomplished by a newbie. See links below for running GNOME under Cygwin on a Windows box.

Much of GNOME will not build natively, although the libraries themselves are designed to be portable, and GTK is working just fine as Win32 (see GIMP [gimp.org]).

There are two kinds of Windows ports... X11 display based, and true "native" Win32. The former is easy to do; the latter is not yet possible (tho you can help!). It's likely that a "native GNOME for Windows" will be much easier, once GTK 2.0 is released.

Links regarding running GNOME or compiling under a local X11 display:
http://news.gnome.org/976323862/index_html [gnome.org]
http://xfree86.cygwin.com/screenshots/ [cygwin.com]
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley/1596/en/c ygwin.html [geocities.co.jp]

From the GNOME FAQ, regarding native GNOME for M$ Windows:
http://canvas.gnome.org:65348/gnomefaq/html/x359.h tml [gnome.org]

A lot of people want to port GNOME and GTK apps over to Windows. To conquer the enemy they say, you have to enter their territory, then sway them to your culture (OS). ;-)

32MB to install Evolution with debugging symbols

[luge]

Without symbols, I'm told the main binary package is around 6 or 7 MB. This is still bigger than sylpheed, sure, but it also does calendaring, tasks, and addresbook stuff. So... take your pic.

Re:However...

[schon]

when will linux itself be come something that non-technical people can use

Last summer, my step-father, fed up with Windows, asked me what I use on my computers - I told him I use Linux (Slackware) and that I'd be happy to come over and install it, and show him how to use it. In August (without my knowledge), he went out and bought Mandrake 8. He wiped windows from the machine, and installed Mandrake.

He uses his computer every day to chat with friends, surf the web, do email, and maintain his journal. He's VERY non-technical, and had no problems using it at all.

When he used windows, I used to receive at least two "support calls" per month from him. When he installed Mandrake, I got a one call about the UI differences (icons in the "k" menu, instead of on the desktop), but since then, he's had no problems, and I have recieved no calls for support.

Judging from this, I'd say that Linux already is something that non-technical people can use - much more so than Windows.

Re:Farewell to the Unix design philosophy

[Wdomburg]

>Heck, as far as a I know (And I could be really
>wrong here) it's not even like it loads modules
>or something like that. It's just one massive
>700,000 line program.

You're really wrong. Aside from being a mail and groupware client, Evolution has also been one of the primary testbeds for Bonobo.

The actual program itself is just a shell that loads components to do all the dirty work:

/usr/bin/evolution
/usr/bin/evolution-addressbook
/usr/bin/evolution-addressbook-clean
/usr/bin/evolution-addressbook-export
/usr/bin/evolution-addressbook-import
/usr/bin/evolution-alarm-notify
/usr/bin/evolution-calendar
/usr/bin/evolution-calendar-importer
/usr/bin/evolution-elm-importer
/usr/bin/evolution-executive-summary
/usr/bin/evolution-gnomecard-importer
/usr/bin/evolution-ldif-importer
/usr/bin/evolution-mail
/usr/bin/evolution-move-tasks
/usr/bin/evolution-netscape-importer
/usr/bin/evolution-pine-importer
/usr/bin/evolution-vcard-importer

Re:general problem with Gnome/Kde apps?

[dangermouse]

I asked around, and KDE seems to have the same problem.

I can't really comment on GNOME, as I don't use it regularly... but I routinely run KMail, Konsole, and Konqueror across an ssh forward with no problems.

Re:Good, but why in C?

[Junta]

First just a comment saying that C and OO approaches are not mutually exclusive. You can have an OO approach in C (as gtk does). It is ugly as hell, and really doesn't make things that much easier to maintain than traditional C code, but it is possible. Not really defending this, just saying OO can be implemented in practically any language, just some can do it better than others..

As to why it is still in C++, I'll guess to make it consistent with the rst of Gnome (obvious) Why was Gnome done in C? Probably partially out of language bigotry. But some somehwat more valid reasons:
1) Give programmers maximum choice. It is easier to call C libraries from C++ apps than vice-version. If it had been based in C++, the C wrappers would be needed for any functionality, while C++ can call native C code without problems (usually)
2) A belief that C++ cannot be as fast as C. There is a little bit of overhead in C++, somewhat blown out of proportion by anti-C++ people, and therefore people think C++ is inefficient. Not really enough of a performance problem to justify this, but it is an explanation.
3) To this day g++ has been wishy-washy with how C++ code should be compiled. With gcc-3, hopefully we are coming to the end of those days. libstdc++ has changed so many times in terms of ABI, that programs compiled for one distro have little hope of making it on another. For maximum binary and source portability, C code was, especially at the beginning of gnome, the only choice.

There may be others, but these occur to me right off..

Re:Trial Installs...

[mydigitalself]

Because VNC establishes a screen session with the client whereby Citrix allows you to create a virtual session on the server.

This means that with Citrix you can have 10 people all running MsWord on the same Windows box whereas with VNC its 1:1.

Re:Farewell to the Unix design philosophy

[Panaflex]

Apparently you've never read or even touched evolution.

Suppose Evolution split its calender and email (and whatever else it does) features into seperate smaller, efficient programs. Programs that "do one thing and do it well". Evolution Mail, Evolution Calendar, Evolution Addressbook, and so on could still totally interface with each other using, e.g., Unix pipes.

Evolution IS made up of many smaller programs that communicate through CORBA. I'm not sure how "splitable" they are, but from my work on the calendaring component, it's not impossible. (I've been working on Calendar printing).

Pan

option to share mbox with other mail applications

[fetta]

One of the nicer options in Evolution is the ability to share Mbox's with other mail applications such as Mutt (you have to specifically configure it this way -it's not the default). Then you can use "the right tool for the right job." A nice slick gui when you work locally, a clean text based interface for when you SSH in over a slow link.

It's a kernel issue and it's fixed by RH

[/dev/zero]

I only had the NFS locking problem when the server was running RH's kernel 2.4.9-6, which has a bug in the NFS locking code. Upgrading the kernel to 2.4.9-12 solves this (as well as some scurity issues).

See kernel (RHSA-2001-142) [redhat.com] for RH 7.1 You'll see links to download kernels for all supported RH versions.

Gordon.

Re:bloat

[IntlHarvester]

Actually, the calendering bit is only an edge case of groupware, and then only when you get into the Invite/Accept/Reschedule bit. Groupware is discussion groups, project tracking applicaitons, document repositories, workflow approval apps, and so on and was around for decades before calendaring got integrated.

A groupware platform like Notes or Outlook enables this stuff by providing a RAD forms environment with an integrated database backend and integrated security and email integration.

The idea is that it's cheaper/easier to build client-server collaborative apps with such a platform than with VB+RDBMS, desktop DBs like Access, or web applications. YMMV. The downside is that hard stuff is harder or impossible and you are tied to the platform.

So, I don't know what exactly makes Evo "groupware" other than it looks like Outlook. Does it even do NNTP?