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Sure, but if you took the same box that you were using for Exchange and ran Linux with all the service needed to mimic Exchange (I'd recommend Horde) AND you added to that, Samba with PDC functionality, WINS, file and print sharing, a DHCP server, and DNS, you'd probably see that the Linux box performs just as well as the Windows box while running more tasks. Especially if you can the GUI. That's the one thing MS needs to get to; offer a way of completely disabling the GUI to increase performance. Then, maybe they will catch up to the performance that Linux has.

All you need is broadband a box running Linux. Horde has pretty much everything you'd need, and there's plenty of free stuff out there to make up for any shortcomings.

I'm running Horde off my cable connection - they block port 80 but I don't care because I do everything via SSL anyway.

And in the process you'll learn a hell of a lot about networking and Linux.

For the "Screen Savers" crowd (and I watch, so I don't mean that to sound condescending), most of these suggestions aren't gonna cut it. You're talking about people who are (A) primarily Windows users, (B) not sysadmins for a living, and (C) are generally of the "weekend techie" variety. Sure, they have Palm Pilots, they may crank out some HTML for their personal web page, and they may even hack together a little "My Grateful Dead Tapes" database in Access or FileMakerPro. But Mastering Regular Expressions? Linux Admin Black Book? Show them only the CLI? I think Chris is smarter than that.

These aren't all people who are going to compile their own kernel or debate the merits of different file systems over their beer (though some are in that crowd)... taking the usual l33tist attitude of "You don't need no steenkin' GUI, just build from source using the command line" approach is going to turn people off and drive them away -- defeating the purpose of "spreading the word".

In terms of books to recommend, take a look at Linux for Windows Addicts or Add Red Hat Linux to Your Windows Desktop In A Weekend. I've not looked over the latter in person, but the "Addicts" book is one that I read through myself a year or so ago when I wanted to start doing Linux development (after developing Win32 software for several years). It's great for taking general desktop/workstation concepts and tasks you know from the Windows world and explaining how they work or are dealt with in the Linux world. For me, it took me past the initial hurdle after installing Red Hat, firing up Gnome, and thinking "Where to next?".

As for OSS, in general... find some useful apps or utilities, ones that would "show well" on television, and highlight them. Evolution (an Outlook clone) is an easy choice. Churn through SourceForge for others... some that come to mind are the Horde project (web-based PIM, mail client, and more), or dotProject (web-based project management and collaboration tool). There's no shortage of these types of things that could be set up inside of an hour or two, show well visually, and show the useful and usable stuff that's out there in the OSS world.

It's a software, not a service but just in case you would be interested in running your own server, I would mention that IMP have PGP/GPG support (at least, the CVS HEAD does).

Indeed...

I implemented a Web Mail system where I work this year for students - downloaded for free from horde.org. Its a very powerful system and is currently serving 30,000 student accounts on a mid priced Dell server.

But back onto the topic, I have tried quite a few email applications in my time - the college where I work has recently just phased out out old POP3 Linux mail server in favour of an Exchange 2000 server. To be fair, it has been pretty good so far.

But Pine has to be one of my very favourite email apps - small, quick, and very easy to use. I even found that Windows users with no experience of *nix could get to grips with Pine pretty quickly, which is no mean feat.

I'll make sure I download this version :)

Isn't part of the way Bayesian filtering works is that you have to supply it with "what is spam" to teach the filter what it should filter out?

True. The webmail program we use (www.horde.org/imp) has a "report as spam" button that could be used for this. But your point about people abusing that is well taken. Sigh.... :-(

But then again, I get so much spam just by myself that I could keep it well fed. Like, my e-mail address above is slashdot@weaverling.org and I only use that addy here and you wouldn't believe how much spam THAT gets. Just redirecting that to the bayesian filter should do it (it's not like any /. readers would ever have anything useful to e-mail me anyway... :) But seriously, some well placed spam trap addresses on web pages and in usenet alt.test posts should provide loads of food for it.

Anyway, thanks for the reply.

Horde. The only hole they have for your project is for IRC, but I'm bet it could be integrated from Jabber readily.

Don't duplicate work, check out the horde project. They have an excellent file manager for web use, coded in php.

Aaah now were getting to the core of the problem, its A) Marketing and B) Microsoft (Powerpoint) /. now understands the question and will spring forth an answer shortly

Answer

Kill the marketing people, replace powerpoint with OpenOffice Impress.

Seriously though, 5mb should be plenty for the users. The ISP I work for has a hard cap of 5MB/email, with 10MB mailboxes and it works fairly well for our 30,000 customers. The horde project has a good PHP framework that includes a file upload interface in addition to their fine webmail and cal systems

I've seen a calender tool too but i'm not sure where it is. If you get QMail, Horde, IMP and Courier (IMAP for Horde/IMP) running you should have no problem finding the calender stuff.

Qmail is here
Horde/IMP is here You need horde to run IMP (and PHP).

I highly suggest buying QMail Handbook it saved my sanity.

OU 31 CU 24 (ABC 2:30pm CST this saturday, I'll be there!)

Gotta agree with the LDAP thing. I use to spend hours trying to sync and keep everything in check. Now I have an LDAP database which I can access from the web (via www.horde.org) which integrates with my email (horde again) and also any other imap4 clients I use, like my Mac or PC, or even my Psion now they've finally bought out network drivers for it.
I wrote a coupla noddy data entry screens as well for the ldap server so I can add anybodies email / phone number via a few web pages, I can dump it out as a text format for easy backup (it's human readable too). The only thing I haven't done it figure out how to write WAP pages in a syncML kinda way to replicate back to my mobile - if anyones's done that, I'd appreciate some links.

Bottom line: Go LDAP / IMAP4 for all your email and address and weblink needs. It's a real existing support protocol that just about all clients have to support. I grant you setting it up is a bit of a bitch, but when it's working you'll never figure out why you had so many other disparate data stores again. Promise !!

This is a great thing, but the problem I'm really seeing here is that there was nothing in the contract that suggested UI research be done. The truth is, the UIs of these programs they're going to be using (including the back-ends) are really pretty horrific.

KMail, etc. really need some interface overhauls, and Kolab could really benefit from a central "component-type" (see Horde) administration interface. What would make more sense? Having to use a bunch of different open terminals, web admin tools, and configuration scripts? Or a single management interface that would let administrators install Kolab and manage Kolab as Kolab. Not as Cyrus+Sendmail+ProFTPd+OpenLDAP+etc.

If I have time I'll write a formal HOWTO and maybe submit it to /. In the meantime, here's a synopsis:

You need a Linux machine with a static IP address. If you can't have a static IP I suppose you can play games with dynamic IP addresses to access the server. Get a DNS entry to make it easier to access.

Set up fetchmail . Fetchmail is a simple program (written by ESR) which downloads mail via POP or IMAP. You configure it with your mail server, username, and password, and it downloads mail to the local machine. Actually, it re-delivers your mail locally. Your remote email might be chris2912@earthlink.net, and your username on your Linux server might be ces; fetchmail delivers the mail it downloads to ces@localhost.

At this point, you can use pine or mutt to read your mail. By default, they read mail from your local spool. Note that your "inbox" is /var/spool/mail/username, but other mail folders are usually under your home directory. Configure pine or mutt to put your mail folders in ~/mail.

Install procmail. Procmail allows you to set up filters for handling mail. It will let you move mail to a folder based on sender (something like various mail client's rules) and more importantly, it will let you run SpamAssassin (or junkfilter, but I recommend SpamAssassin). Set up procmail to run SpamAssassin on each email, and then either delete the spam or move it to a certain folder. The SpamAssassin documentation is pretty clear on how to do this. Make sure procmail is configured to use the folders in ~/mail.

Install an IMAP server. I use the standard UW server; there are others. The UW server runs via [x]inetd. I recommend setting up the SSL support (imaps).

What IMAP does is allow you to access your email remotely, without downloading it like POP. Mail is kept on the server, in folders. Through an IMAP client, you "subscribe" to a certain set of folders; these are the only folders IMAP clients will see. You want to configure your IMAP clients to use ~/mail as your root folder; otherwise you will see any other folders in your home directory (IMAP isn't limited to email).

When you set up an IMAP client (Outlook will work, though Outlook 2000 has an annoying bug, always reporting "server dropped connection", I use Mozilla mail) you provide the IP address of your server, and your username and password on that server.

IMAP is strange about deleting. Many IMAP clients by default want to move deleted messages into a folder. That's okay if you want to do that, I prefer to actually delete them. Even if you actually delete a message, it is only marked as deleted; it's still there until you purge it. Pine asks if you want to purge messages when you leave a folder; other clients do similar things.

Finally, install a web email package. IMP is the best, but it can be very hard to set up. I resorted to another package called squirrelmail before I finally got IMP set up. Squirrelmail is perfectly fine. Configure the package to use IMAP, using localhost as the server.

That's the basic points. Email me at ceswiedler@mindspring.com if you want any further help.

Why do you need it?
Become your own webmail provider.

I use fetchmail to grab mail from remote sites. I also point the primary MX for my own domain to my home box. This consolidates most everything into one email address.

At that point, you can use imap(s) and horde/IMP to create your own webmail service... or just SSH in and start up your favorite mail program remotely. (I've even done it with Netscape/mozilla .. It's slow, but it works).

20MB max?? HA! how big is your /var partition?

The biggest problem I currently have is that, with Mozilla, the SSL Certs for my web server and imaps server collide. If I save the cert for one, the other claims that it's invalid.

My company has been running/deploying/migrating several installations of Qmail+Courier-IMAP+IMP into Windows client/server networks for two years with much success. Our clients are pleased not only with the savings of money and licensing, but with the functionally and performance.

Recently we've found Twiggi as a Groupware solution for Linux. It provides webbased mail, contacts, scheduling, notes, todo and integrates with HylaFAX for faxing.

So far our clients love it.

Question?
Has anyone experienced MS Outlook and Outlook Express in a IMAP setup, duplicate mail if you change your hostname/IP of your IMAP server?

ie, Setup an IMAP account for mail.somedomain.fake and then later on change the hostname or give it an IP that points to the same mail server and have Outlook duplicate all your mail.

It's really frustrating to find Outlook setups pointing directly to the IP and then need to change it to use a hostname for say, SSL certificate reasons and then have users mail duplicate.

Hehehe, some companies, though few and between, are already moving to other OS'es. Microsoft seems to be charging too much to middle sized and small companies for their upgrades to WinXP and licenses.

I'm happy to say that I've been charged with the task of looking for a viable desktop alternative to Microsofts infamous Windows, as long as some of the functionality remains available.

My first instinct was to grab my debian CD and start installing, but to be honest Mac OS X is a tad more userfriendly than Gnome or KDE is (IMHO).

The great thing about it all is that most of these companies want to migrate away from Microsoft products completely, including Outlook and Exchange. Most of the customers I've talked to are happy with the horde demonstration I give them (though it is still lacking certain features), but thanks to fink promoting Evolution shouldn't be too much of a problem, once the gnome tree is updated to 2.0.

My advice: let it kill itself. If the smaller companies decide that this is a good move, perhaps the larger ones will follow trend. Many people are mad about the outrageous licensing prices, and they're looking for alternatives with great intrest. Steering them in the right direction and continuing development on open source projects will eventually show them that there are very viable alternatives.

That's why things like WHUPS are being developed.

If your software(anything) is well designed from the beginning, the design should help you organise the development, testing etc... into hieratical chunks, giving you a clear communications and management path.

A quick example,
Company X want's to produce a text editor.
The initial design process is set up, at this point all the design includes is a text editor project and a couple of managers and a design consultant.

The text editor project is broken down into different points of discovery so that they can find out what the text editor has to do.

Each sub-section can be micro-managed and reported back to the root project manager.

The process can be repeated right down to the function implenentation level.

Of corse all kinds of other information can be tacked onto the tree, documentation, time management, ETA's, bugs, code reviews,configuration management, test harnises etc...

The system also provides all the matrices you could ever want on things like :-
What are the dependancies of a node,
What's holding a node up,
Where did we go wrong,
Where didn't we go wrong,
What's the ETA for the whole project,
Who produces fast but buggy code,
Who produces clean code,
Who's the king of the bug fixers,
Who's great at reviewing code and locating bugs, who's good at design.

I recon you could manage a project with a few thousand people this way, with little overheads.

I just wish Linus would do this better with the Kernel.

[Leave it to MS to never miss an opportunity to turn a great concept on its head to leverage the rest of their product line:) The folks at MS who actually implemented the web access feature in Project must have had the breath knocked out of them at the "IE specialization".]

Nevertheless, the concept of web based project management is still a really good one. Not only for read-access to view what's going on, but also to help formulate project plans.

I prefer to spend my time programming, but have had brushes with project planning exercises and noted the dearth of good open source alternatives to MS Project (which, practically, seems to require some training in order to learn the quirks of how to use it.)

The most intriguing development I've seen is out of the Horde Project (a PHP framework for web applications).

They mention something called Nag that came out 1.0 on June 11 of this year, but I don't know what it's really like.

But I can see where having an XML database for projects that is accessed via PHP would be a good thing. That, and having some SVG enabled browsers (and server code) to create and view Gantt charts on the fly.

Since I'm throwing buzzwords and wishlists about, I may as well suggest that WebDAV would be a great part of such a tool because it would offer a good means for collaborative authoring of project plans, which is really how the best ones get done. (The worst ones are guesses and dictats that make everyone mad.)

[Leave it to MS to never miss an opportunity to turn a great concept on its head to leverage the rest of their product line:) The folks at MS who actually implemented the web access feature in Project must have had the breath knocked out of them at the "IE specialization".]

Nevertheless, the concept of web based project management is still a really good one. Not only for read-access to view what's going on, but also to help formulate project plans.

I prefer to spend my time programming, but have had brushes with project planning exercises and noted the dearth of good open source alternatives to MS Project (which, practically, seems to require some training in order to learn the quirks of how to use it.)

The most intriguing development I've seen is out of the Horde Project (a PHP framework for web applications).

They mention something called Nag that came out 1.0 on June 11 of this year, but I don't know what it's really like.

But I can see where having an XML database for projects that is accessed via PHP would be a good thing. That, and having some SVG enabled browsers (and server code) to create and view Gantt charts on the fly.

Since I'm throwing buzzwords and wishlists about, I may as well suggest that WebDAV would be a great part of such a tool because it would offer a good means for collaborative authoring of project plans, which is really how the best ones get done. (The worst ones are guesses and dictats that make everyone mad.)

Check out the Horde project. I've used their webmail & address book - both very good. They have projects for many of the other things you mention, as well.

Check out IMP. Works pretty nice. Watch out for the Debian packages, I've had them obliterate my MySQL user/pword databases, but that's the maintainer's fault. Nice packages. Needs IMAP. Very good.

--Dan

I've been able to get to my mac.com mail using IMP for a while now, but its nice to see an Apple supported webmail thats part of the iTools site.

In fact, I wouldnt be suprised if Apple based their wemail stuff on IMP, since it was one of the iTools engineers who pointed me to it at last years Mackworld NY in the first place :)

Now comes the important part. in a month, I'm switching over to a completely linux system, and I'm gonna need a replacement for Office. so who's it gonna be?:)

OpenOffice looks good, but when I tried it several times during 2001 it was slow and crashed all the flaming time. I'm sure it's improving but I got bored waiting. Therefore:

To replace Word: KWord looks cool, but I couldn't get equations to work properly. LyX is really nice if you take the time to understand the concepts behind LaTeX and WYMIWYG. LyX especially rocks for editing equations, but it'll do everything else you could want too, and the output is beautiful. Abiword isn't there yet (tables etc.) but might be one day.

To replace Excel: Gnumeric.

To replace Outlook: I actually use IMP, a webmail application. I retrieve pop3 email with fetchmail, make it available via IMAP (one of Debian's IMAP packages) and access it with IMP, on apache-ssl for security, from home and anywhere else with an internet connection. Best thing about IMP is it's the fastest email client I've used! I have folders with hundreds, some with thousands, of emails and the likes of Balsa or Evolution can take forever to access them (if they don't crash). IMP takes seconds, and it never crashes! (I use Galeon for my web browsing/ IMP access). The HORDE project of which IMP is a part is actually an entire groupware suite, but I've only used IMP.

PowerPoint: MagicPoint looks pretty good but I've never used it.

Access: Postgresql or mysql should more than meet your needs. There are nice GUI tools available for both.

Best of luck.

Now comes the important part. in a month, I'm switching over to a completely linux system, and I'm gonna need a replacement for Office. so who's it gonna be?:)

OpenOffice looks good, but when I tried it several times during 2001 it was slow and crashed all the flaming time. I'm sure it's improving but I got bored waiting. Therefore:

To replace Word: KWord looks cool, but I couldn't get equations to work properly. LyX is really nice if you take the time to understand the concepts behind LaTeX and WYMIWYG. LyX especially rocks for editing equations, but it'll do everything else you could want too, and the output is beautiful. Abiword isn't there yet (tables etc.) but might be one day.

To replace Excel: Gnumeric.

To replace Outlook: I actually use IMP, a webmail application. I retrieve pop3 email with fetchmail, make it available via IMAP (one of Debian's IMAP packages) and access it with IMP, on apache-ssl for security, from home and anywhere else with an internet connection. Best thing about IMP is it's the fastest email client I've used! I have folders with hundreds, some with thousands, of emails and the likes of Balsa or Evolution can take forever to access them (if they don't crash). IMP takes seconds, and it never crashes! (I use Galeon for my web browsing/ IMP access). The HORDE project of which IMP is a part is actually an entire groupware suite, but I've only used IMP.

PowerPoint: MagicPoint looks pretty good but I've never used it.

Access: Postgresql or mysql should more than meet your needs. There are nice GUI tools available for both.

Best of luck.

So here it goes...
What is your favorite revision system and why?
What is the URL?
Is it open source or proprietary?

I use Evolution along with IMAP, it's the best IMAP client I've seen so far, along with Netscape 4.74. Don't laugh.

Anyway, with IMAP I can read my mail with Evo on my PC, and thanks to IMP anywhere with a web browser.

I used to use Pine for the same purpose, but you just can't expect to find SSH clients anywhere. And you just can't always install one.

We need the coordination ability of Outlook. I haven't seen anything for UNIX that compares.

Okay, this doesn't completely compare to Outlook (yet), but keep an eye on the Horde Project. We've used IMP as our primary email system at my company for two years now. The horde project provides the framework for a system with integrated e-mail, a calendar, contacts management, and much more. Only a couple of modules are in active development, but the framework is pretty nice.. Should you want to lend a hand it's pretty easy to get involved.

I'm not affiliated with them in anyway, I just enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Shayne

We need the coordination ability of Outlook. I haven't seen anything for UNIX that compares.

Okay, this doesn't completely compare to Outlook (yet), but keep an eye on the Horde Project. We've used IMP as our primary email system at my company for two years now. The horde project provides the framework for a system with integrated e-mail, a calendar, contacts management, and much more. Only a couple of modules are in active development, but the framework is pretty nice.. Should you want to lend a hand it's pretty easy to get involved.

I'm not affiliated with them in anyway, I just enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Shayne

• 
  SquirrelMail.
• NeoMail
• Horde IMP

I found horde to be one of the best at this (I really like their discussion lists)... even the developers are really busy, they take the time to reply to every little comment/problem/suggestion, and often they incorporate patches/suggestions in the main development code... I really like to thank the Horde development team for that.

I found horde to be one of the best at this (I really like their discussion lists)... even the developers are really busy, they take the time to reply to every little comment/problem/suggestion, and often they incorporate patches/suggestions in the main development code... I really like to thank the Horde development team for that.

There are several projects in this direction. I will mention the ones with web-based interface. The one with (apparently) higher number of features is indeed PhPGroupware. Most of the modules are usable (e.g. Calendar, Address book, Trouble Ticket system, File Management, Chat, ToDo, etc.). Some of the modules are quite advanced but show some problems (e.g. Project Management, Inventory).With a little custom setup this looks the best choice at the moment. There is also Twig that is also quite mature but does not have as many modules as phpgroupware. Another project that claims to be Production/Stable is PhProjekt. The modules are much simpler than the ones in phpgroupware, it looks more like a viewer. But it has time cards, calendar, chat, e-mail and others. Another project is the Horde project, quite at the beginning. These are only the php - sql projects, you may find other approaches too.

Sorin M

I am in charge of a SunRay system for a hotel / conference center. We have a total of 120 SunRay systems which are broken up into ~100 guest rooms and 15 public kiosks plus some for me to play around with :). I have almost no complaints about the interface, which just consists of cde with one button, netscape. And since there is some code running to bring netscape up if it crashes, or is closed, most people don't even need to use that button. We give the guests access to some kde games by using a perl script and a web page. The guest is presented with a short description of the games, and if they would like to play one they click on a link. Pretty straightforward.

The moral is that it doesn't matter what it is running behind the scenes as long as the interface they are presented with is good. If you plan to drop them into a vanilla kde, gnome, window maker, etc.. desktop, then people will be confused. But, people don't need all that stuff on a kiosk, they don't care if you do have a phases of the moon program, or a utility to tell them how the system resources are doing. Just set them up with the bare essentials, which in my experience is netscape and a web based email client and a short explanation of how to use it. (I have found imp (www.horde.org/imp) is an excellent choice. It supports pop3 and imap and can be set up with a stock list of email servers or let the guest enter their own. Make sure to tell them that this is not a supported feature, and if they don't know how to get to their email, then they should contact their technical support, not yours.)

We use WinCvs and Chora to version control both source code and documentation. In fact, it is because we were using Chora as a web interface to our documentation that I uncovered a bug a month or two ago affecting the handling of filenames with spaces (like Marketing Proposal 1.doc) that we often see in documents created by non-programmers. I fixed the bug myself and contributed the fix back into the Chora project, so you shouldn't see this problem in the latest version of Chora). I've packaged recent versions of Chora into zip files - available for download here. (Use Ctrl-F to search for Chora on the page)

I have to admit, though, that while the non-technical people at our company have managed to learn how to use CVS, it was not without a lot of struggle on their part. Maybe SourceSafe or Perforce would have been a better choice. Even so, what we have now works and people have become familiar with it, so I don't think we'll change.

1. PHP generally handles errors better - with PHP I see informative error messages instead of "Internal Server Error" in my edit-debug-run cycles. Of course, you can use CGI::Carp 'fatalsToBrowser' in Perl to get better error handling, but even with that turned on, I still see "Internal Server Error" more often with Perl than with PHP (maybe I'm not using CGI::Carp 'fatalsToBrowser' correctly? The Perl programs I work with call subroutines spread out over many files - does CGI::Carp 'fatalsToBrowser' need to be in each file?)
2. PHP has a standard mechanism for HTML embedding - with Perl, you need to choose between Mason, Embperl, and Active Perl with ASP. (Also, do any books cover Mason or Embperl?)
3. There are some very quality open-source PHP programs available. Some leading examples: Drupal, a Slashdot-like news system, phpShop, an e-commerce system, and Chora, the nicest web interface to CVS I've seen (BTW I've prepared a zip file of Chora so that people can have an easier way to download it than by using cvs checkout. Use Ctrl+F to search for Chora here)
4. cleaner syntax for classes and functions
   

1. Web hosting for PHP and Perl tends to be cheaper than for JSP/servlets. PHP: $8.95 per month with WestHost.com, $7.50 per month with JTLNet.net, free with DataBlocks.net (but with domain name restrictions). JSP: $24.99 with MMAWEB. Contact me if you know of a cheaper JSP/servlet hosting provider.
2. The first time you execute a JSP, you have to wait for the underlying servlet to be compiled. This slows down edit-run-debug cycles, though it shouldn't have much of an effect on the operational performance since recompilation is not needed in subsequent executions.
3. The lack of string interpolation in Java leads to awkward construction of strings with embedded variables. Compare:
   
   PHP:
   $adjective1 = 'quick';
   $animal1 = 'fox';
   $adjective2 = 'lazy';
   $animal2 = 'dog';
   print "The $adjective1 brown $animal1 jumps over the $adjective2 $animal2";
   
   JSP:
   String adjective1 = "quick";
   String animal1 = "fox";
   String adjective2 = "lazy";
   String animal2 = "dog";
   String output = "The " + adjective1 + " brown " + animal1 + " jumps over the " + adjective2 + " " + animal2;
   angle-bracket percent equals output percent angle-bracket

Chora provides an aesthetically pleasing PHP-based web interface for CVS. Here's a zip file for download.

Check out webmail.com for one example. Major sites like Hotmail and Yahoo Mail will also offer to collect your mail as well.

My user population (over 10,000) is CONSTANTLY doing this even though we provide our own secure web-based mail page if they want to use it.

Why do I have a problem with this? Think about it. You're entering your id and password into some other site's web page and they go log in on your behalf, usually in cleartext. Even if I tcp_wrapper reject these places, the damage is done. The user has already entered in their ID and password.

So what we do is, we notice a logon from hotmail, yahoo, webmail.com, etc, we immediately lock their account under the part of our AUP that forbids revealing your ID and password to a third party.

Anyone can set up a web-mail page like IMP and change it to STORE the system names, IDs, and passwords that they collect and use them later.

So, when looking for a web-based mail site, don't be tempted to let them collect your other account's e-mail as well. You're trusting them with your ID and password. Not good, IMO....

I forgot up some href's ... so here they are:

Horde
IMP
IMAP
PostgreSQL

I forgot up some href's ... so here they are:

Horde
IMP
IMAP
PostgreSQL

• qmail My favorite MTA. Altough the license can't officially be called 'free', you are free to modify the sources.
• Apache-SSL The most extensible webserver with good security features.
• PHP A very popular domain language for the web, with lots of extra modules.
• Horde I recently 'discovered' this ASP platform for PHP code, and began to like PHP because of it.
• IMP I've just hooked up an Apache-ssl/IMP webmail setup to my qmail/IMAP system (residing on another host), and it was very easy to do (thanks to the great Debian maintainers!). The functionality of the webmail client is pretty good compared to some others, altough the calender system is not integrated yet (help out if you can ;). And it even has a multi-language spellings checker.
• IMAP Used with qmails Maildir format makes a very scalable, robust and maintainable email system.
• PostgreSQL My favorite RDBMS, and getting better all the time.
• LDAP IMP has a nice lookup interface for multiple LDAP servers, it allows for easy point-and-click "to" and "bcc" selections.
• Kronolith The calendar component used in Horde, It uses the MCAL and supports multiple users accessing the same calendar.
• MCAL This is a flexible C library for accessing calendars. Altough I've not used it (yet).

• 64k/256k ADSL with static IP
• Redhat 6.2 with ipchains for basic security only exposing SMTP and HTTP. I set it up based on the linux firewall HOWTO
• Sendmail for MTA. Standard RH setup.
• UW IMAP, Apache, mod_ssl and IMP to provide secure remote access.

If you're going to take the DIY approach, you should either be an experienced UNIX admin, or get yourself up to speed as fast as you can. The Aileen Frisch book Essential UNIX Administration (or Esential System Administration) is a good place to start. For running a mail server, also check out sendmail.org and Claus Assman's useful site on configuring sendmail.

I had similar paranoid security concerns, so I set up OpenBSD. It was a fairly painless install, provided you read the directions. I set up sendmail, UW-IMAP, IMP, and access it via secure http. UW-IMAP has some serious security concerns, but it's much easier to compile than Cyrus, my preferred IMAP server.

If you're new to UNIX admin though, try looking at FreeBSD. This is hands down the simplest UNIX installation I have ever done. It was almost as simple as starting the installation, walking away, and coming back when it was done. It also doesn't hurt that FreeBSD has excellent network performance.

TinyEgo

You'll need to install MySQL, Apache-SSL (if you want to be secure and encrypted :) and horde as well, but the dependencies will take care of that. (I just LOVE apt! :)

If you choose to install it, my recommendation from personal experience is to install MySQL first (by itself), set the MySQL root password, then install imp/horde/apache-ssl.

Requires a bit of tweaking of the Apache files, but hey if I can figure it out, anyone can. :)

Cheers....

I have played with 5 or 6 web based email
packages that I found on the net. Some writen
in Perl and some php3/4. They only one I considered to put on my companys intranet is IMP.
It has a great interfance IMHO and is very easy
to customize. Its been rock solid so far. I have over 1000 people using it on a casual basis (most just use pop). It uses imap as the access agent
which provides for a great "check email.. if you
dont delete then you can pop it down later for storage environment".

I would definatly reccomend you check it out
at http://www.horde.org

Malice95

Someone already mentioned IMP and Horde but didn't mention why they used it so I'll give my 2 cents.

The IMP suite emulates the look and feel of most of the webmail sites out there - the login page is simple, the pages are simple and elegant - the one thing I miss though is a trash can but that doesn't bother anyone around here.

My users are pains in the arse when it comes to ease of use - just as a side note, in 80 computers there are 4 types of email clients in use other than my webmail system - access through IMP is used by 20 users (ranking number 2 after Netscape Mail). So far the only complaint I've heard from them is that I mangle file attachments (nothing to do with IMP but they blame it anyway) - a number much lower than the 5 complaints a day for Netscape Mail.

Something else I like about IMP is that it's incredibly easy to setup. Untar, rename directories, cp old config, restart apache (optional) a wham-o. BTW, they've had a recent run with some nasty exploits - it would be wise to get the most recent version if you intend on using it.

Oh, it has POP3 and IMAP support (I firewall my IMAP ports except for the tunnel I have between the webmail server and my mail server so it doesn't hurt security too much). Something that's VERY useful for me is that it's already multilingual!

Someone already mentioned IMP and Horde but didn't mention why they used it so I'll give my 2 cents.

The IMP suite emulates the look and feel of most of the webmail sites out there - the login page is simple, the pages are simple and elegant - the one thing I miss though is a trash can but that doesn't bother anyone around here.

My users are pains in the arse when it comes to ease of use - just as a side note, in 80 computers there are 4 types of email clients in use other than my webmail system - access through IMP is used by 20 users (ranking number 2 after Netscape Mail). So far the only complaint I've heard from them is that I mangle file attachments (nothing to do with IMP but they blame it anyway) - a number much lower than the 5 complaints a day for Netscape Mail.

Something else I like about IMP is that it's incredibly easy to setup. Untar, rename directories, cp old config, restart apache (optional) a wham-o. BTW, they've had a recent run with some nasty exploits - it would be wise to get the most recent version if you intend on using it.

Oh, it has POP3 and IMAP support (I firewall my IMAP ports except for the tunnel I have between the webmail server and my mail server so it doesn't hurt security too much). Something that's VERY useful for me is that it's already multilingual!

The Horde Project; their IMP program looks pretty good.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

The Horde Project; their IMP program looks pretty good.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Encrypting the sendmail connection only protects one link in the chain.

What if your external SMTP server gets it encrypted, but has to shuttle it over to the abominable Exchange server in plain text? That can get sniffed. If you use IMAP or POP without SSL/TLS, they can sniff that instead. It will be in plain text as it is downloaded to your mail client. Some software (notably Eudora) have no SSL support, which makes these folks particularly vulnerable.

If e-mail travels over the wire encrypted, but is stored in plain text in your mailbox, it's not safe. They can get a subpeona for your mailbox just as easily as they can get the wiretap order. Wrapping all the e-mail related connections is the only way to completely prevent Carnivore-style sniffing. Even if you do that they could get the the ISP to hand over the contents of your mailbox, and you'd never know.

Antivore uses SSL/TLS on all connections that send your e-mail unencrypted. It also keeps your encrypted email encrypted in your mailbox. Even if they subpoena your mailbox, they can't decrypt it without your passphrase for your private key. It also tries to (but, of course, cannot actually) prevent you from storing all your email unencrypted anywhere. There's even a (coming soon) interface through the Web Horde's IMP web mail interface.

Antivore is not the 100% perfect solution, but it gets encryption into the hands of the average person easily and painlessly. We use it here, and have no fears about our ISP, even if the did install Carnivore

I'm in the process of implementing CMU's Cyrus IMAP solution. Partner it with a PAM enabled backend, and something like IMP and you've got a webmail interface that does have LDAP abilities for shared address books.

Cyrus also has support for shared IMAP folders, NNTP->IMAP gateways, server-side filtering through sieve.. very cool stuff.