What is Digg?45 Comments
- SpyDerMann, on 09/26/2008, -0/+43Wrong. The more free software available for windows, the less the reluctance to switch to free operating systems. Especially when they include software you ALREADY use.
After all, people don't switch from Windows because of the "cool software in Linux", but because they can't stand Windows anymore.
Think of Windows F/OSS as a "therapy for treating Linux-phobia". - armo, on 09/26/2008, -0/+40Office Suite? I thought it was just a PIM application.
- jayzDigga, on 09/26/2008, -1/+24Wish it happened 5 years ago.
- diggimator, on 09/26/2008, -0/+16Windows only, or Linux, OS X, and Windows only? Also, I didn't know it was an office suite. Wikipedia says it's a PIM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_(software) Not having the office suite apps in the office suite tends to make it a non-office suite for me.
- Fritzed, on 09/27/2008, -0/+14Openoffice.org is an office suite. Evolution is an outlook replacement. Kevin Purdy is a clueless blogger.
- Spr0k3t, on 09/26/2008, -1/+11The more free software available that people are used to using, the less likely they are willing to pay for something they can get for free. However, I see your point.
- JonForTheWin, on 09/27/2008, -3/+12As a System Administrator, this is a dream come ***** true, I can finally kick people the ***** off Outlook yet they can still use their ***** "collaboration" stuff via Zimbra etc. This'll make it MUCH easier politically to switch to GNU+Linux (which we're doing no matter what) down the road.
- Hindu_Wardrobe, on 09/27/2008, -0/+8It's been available for Windows for quite some time now...
- MacSuxWindozSux, on 09/27/2008, -2/+10Microsoft Office costs nearly 200$
- mysql101, on 09/27/2008, -1/+9yep... end users who use firefox, gmail, etc for daily activities, can easily swap to fedora and not notice a damn thing different.
the problem is getting them to install something "magical" on a computer when they aren't even used to installing windows unless it's on a restore CD. - Ragingcnu, on 09/27/2008, -0/+7Ahh, a systems administrator generously using the word "*****" to convey frustration while describing their insufferable network and users.
That pretty much sums up the profession. - jshabad00, on 09/26/2008, -1/+8Well, it did happen over 2 years ago.
- badassninja, on 09/27/2008, -0/+6IT was easier for me. Fell in love with firefox on windows and so it made the switch that much easier. I now use Ubuntu only.
- roebeet, on 09/27/2008, -2/+7It has it's +'s and -'s. Good in that switching is much easier, if all your software is cross platform. Bad in that there's no "killer app" just for Linux. It's a no-win scenario.
- TheZorch, on 09/27/2008, -3/+8No Evolution is NOT an Office Suite, its an email and PIM application and a damn good one that has been the default on Ubuntu for a while now. It makes MS Outlook look obsolete with all of its features. Its about damn time.
- nickbyfleet, on 09/27/2008, -4/+8evolution is a lie - burn the witch!
- tHeSiD, on 09/27/2008, -0/+4isnt evolution a mail client?
- QsheiK, on 09/27/2008, -0/+2Guess I should have read the article. Thanks for the info :-
- bajr2004, on 09/27/2008, -0/+2It stops running on my machine when I attempt to connect to my Exchange account. It'd be nice to be able to use Exchange without having to use VPN since our exchange server doesn't accept the "Outlook Anywhere" connections. It should work for Evolution since we're able to set up Entourage on the macs for exchange.
- mm3guy, on 09/26/2008, -12/+13Kind of sad, they're no longer Linux exclusive, meaning Windows users have less reason to switch.
- YodaJones, on 09/27/2008, -0/+1A pirate walked into this bar....
- kurupttek, on 09/26/2008, -3/+4Wow cool I was trying to this the other day
- inactive, on 09/27/2008, -4/+5Killer App? Of course there is - it's Linux itself!
No more malware, instabilities, insecurity...
What more do you need? - robdiggity, on 09/27/2008, -0/+1The original exchange connector is OWA based and will work perfectly well with Exchange 2003. It will not work with Exchange 2007. The roadmap for Exchange 2007+ is to use the libMAPI project, which is in beta at the moment, but shows promise. The evo-libMAPI builds can get mail and folders, but no real GAL or calendar support last I checked. It is a shame that Exchange 2007 was such a huge step backward for evo, but they're working on it.
- thespanielator, on 09/27/2008, -0/+1Agreed, Evolution is a great email client and I'd really like to use it on windows but the last time I tested it (couple of years ago) it refused to authenticate to our Exchange servers. It worked fine under linux though.
- carlosos, on 09/27/2008, -0/+1Is that anything special? Can't you run already most Linux apps on Windows using coLinux/andLinux or the KDE application compiled for Windows?
- wopbobaloobop, on 09/27/2008, -0/+1"I got a Gmail account working in minutes"
Oh boy, imagine that. Good for you! - inactive, on 09/27/2008, -1/+2Apparently he's a "system" administrator. Singular.
He's the admin/user all wrapped up into one clueless package. - merwin, on 09/27/2008, -1/+2God Hates FaEvolution
- aethralis, on 09/28/2008, -0/+1Yes. See -> http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/documentat ...
- Fergy, on 09/29/2008, -0/+1But he sure is purdy
- stealthc, on 09/27/2008, -0/+1Does it sync with Google Calendar?
- polyp2000, on 09/27/2008, -0/+1Oooh this is great news! The only thing that's kept me from switching from Linux to Windows is the lack of support for office software.
N. - drag, on 09/28/2008, -0/+1Just for the record:
Don't Confuse Outlook with Outlook Exchange. They are entirely different protocols. And don't forget that Outlook's sole purpose in life is to talk to a Exchange server and be used in enterprise environments. For things other then that most other email clients.. anything from Gmail to Thunderbird, are vastly superior; in price, ease of use, and functionality.
From bajr2004:
""It stops running on my machine when I attempt to connect to my Exchange account. It'd be nice to be able to use Exchange without having to use VPN since our exchange server doesn't accept the "Outlook Anywhere" connections. It should work for Evolution since we're able to set up Entourage on the macs for exchange.""
The Exchange connector for Evolution (as you pointed out) uses Webdav interface provided for OWA, which is the Webmail interface for Outlook. This is hardly ideal.. the web interface for Outlook is barely functional under ideal situations and isn't designed as a connector for Exchange. I am not 100% sure if that is how it works in Windows, but that is how it works in Linux.
One option you can look at, if your interested, is checking to see if your Exchange server is setup with SMTP and IMAP support. If it's setup then you can use those standard protocols to send and retrieve Email. None of the other features will work, of course, those protocols are Email-specific. Also you will want to talk to your admins about it. Both IMAP and SMTP for Exchange require password authentication for users to send and recieve email, and if your client is not setup correctly then that will mean that you'll be sending your passwords over the network in plain text format. This is to be avoided at all costs. So they should disable all 'Plain' and 'Login' authentications if they want to allow people to use it. With Evolution you can use 'NTLM' protocol for authentication. It has known security flaws and is the same protocol that is used for authentication with PPTP and whatnot. But it's usually good enough. Just be sure to use passwords more then 15 or so characters. This is important with NTLM since how the protocol works it makes it much more secure. (PS. Writing down long passwords to paper is very good idea, just as long as you keep them in your Wallet or other secure location)
Now a much better way to connect to Exchange is being provided by OpenChange:
http://www.openchange.org/ (Not to be confused with Open-xchange, which is a different project and isn't intended to be a drop in replacement)
OpenChange is a project to create a open source Exchange clone. This is not just another 'alternative' like Zimbra.. it's a designed to be a drop in replacement for Exchange that is compatible with Windows and Office. Right now it's in early beta. This development is being done based on the work for Samba4, which is going to provide a drop-in replacement for Active Directory.
So as you may know, Microsoft uses bastardized versions of Kerberos and LDAP as important parts of Active Directory. (of course AD is much more then just those two protocols). Kerberos provides very very very very strong network security. Now both of these things originate from Unix-land, but Microsoft changed them enough to be fairly incompatible with everything else. The protocol used for Exchange is called MAPI. It ties into AD, of course.
Well Openchange provides client software that is designed for Linux interopability with Exchange, whether it's Microsoft's Exchange or Openchange.
I've been playing around with Openchangeclient, which is a command line interface for interacting with Exchange. I've been able to pull all my email and put it into a mbox format for easy consumption by numerous other programs. I am able to pull address book stuff, contact information, calendering information, pull attatchments into a directory. So it works very well.
Another piece of client software that they are working on is a Exchange Plugin for full compatibility with the MAPI protocol. This way Evolution can talk directly to Exchange using Outlook native protocols and not require any special setup or configuration on the server anymore. Unfortunately it's still early beta and probably won't work.
From Carlos:
"Is that anything special? Can't you run already most Linux apps on Windows using coLinux/andLinux or the KDE application compiled for Windows?"
Sorta. It's awkward and not good practice.
The main purpose, through educated guesswork, behind having Windows compatibility for Exchange is for companies that are migrating away from Windows. Even for very Linux oriented enterprises you will almost certainly need to have legacy Windows systems for supporting specific devices or specific software. Also any transition is not going to happen overnight so your going to see a great deal of time gradually moving windows systems to Linux systems.
It's important for support and training and for user's sanity to try to standardize around certain software. So if you have a mixture of Windows and Linux systems then your going to want to make sure that both of those systems support the same set of core applications that people need to have to get their work done. Life is much more difficult for end users if you have to use Outlook and MS Office on one of your machines, but then have to switch to Evolution and OpenOffice.org on others. So you want, if you can, to simply run Evolution and OO.org on everything.
The nice thing about OO.org and Evolution is that they are purposely designed to be similar behaving and looking to Microsoft's software. So that makes the transition much easier. Other things from KDE and other email clients are not so thoughtfully designed.
Of course once users migrate to using OSS software and OpenStandards, then having them use software that best suit's their personal tastes and sensibilities is much much easier. - AstronomyDomine, on 09/27/2008, -0/+0Just like the cake???!!! IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN!!!
- gaptag, on 09/27/2008, -1/+1Not sad, Glad! Just got a Dell 530 w/ MS Vista HP SP1 and added Ubuntu Studio 8.0.4.1. 7 years ago I ran Evolution on Linux and had to write a program to port my Outlook data.
With Evolution running on Vista should be easier to port my data to Linux.
Joy! Joy! - Giga, on 09/27/2008, -0/+0"As a System Administrator, this is a dream come ***** true, I can finally kick people the ***** off Outlook"
This software has been around for ages. It takes a digg headline to change your system at work? Jesus, what has the profession come to?
Or more importantly, why are there so many people on digg that feel they need to lie about their profession to try to sound cool? - inactive, on 09/27/2008, -1/+1I didn't walk on the moon just so I could sit here and read this nonsense.
- oobuntu, on 09/27/2008, -2/+1Except for this sysadmin who has the profanity filter enabled...dugg grandparent down for giving sysadmins a bad name,
- fauxliage, on 09/27/2008, -3/+1Windows Live Mail is a great outlook replacement for windows user
- QsheiK, on 09/27/2008, -4/+2How does this compare to Openoffice.org?
- duggdowncatisad, on 09/27/2008, -6/+3I'm guessing Westboro Baptist Church doesn't use GNOME.
- inactive, on 09/27/2008, -5/+2Well.....
- miajade20, on 09/27/2008, -9/+0i think it was not good
http://quickpersonalloans.cn - unabonger, on 09/26/2008, -15/+4Why would I want the Linux Office Suite in Windows? I want the MS Office Suite in Linux...
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