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If you think 14,000 pages of yesterdays "secrets" delivered by court order are enough to make things work with today's M$ formats, you have been sleeping for the last 25 years.

This whole discussion is crazy because KDE (and desktop) and Gnome both have free groupware stacks. There is no "hole" in the stack, there's just a hole in the submitter's knowledge.

Well, you could point to a feature comparison or something like that. I'm not very fond of that article because it only looks at what features other clients have if Outlook has it and ignores the many excellent features that Kontact has on it's own, but that would be a nice start at rational discussion. Alas, it was eaten by a domain squatter that blocked access to Archive.org like so many other free software sites. That seems to be the M$ way of talking.

Here are some other useful Kontact reviews:

• The KDE Kontact page
• Wikipedia page
• Someone's blog
• Associated Content

There are many other such references because anyone who likes Outlook loves Kontact. The replacement is more sensible than you imagine. You should try it out some time and think of the money your company could save replacing the entire stack of software it takes to make Outlook work. The larger the organization, the more money and heartache you will save.

nearly all your software won't work, including your accounting software won't run on it at all, period.

Wine is getting better all the time. Which accounting software is this, specifically?

Or the minefield of setting up dual screens

Currently a minefield anywhere but OS X, in my experience. It may "just work" on Ubuntu very soon, though.

or wifi

Again, improving all the time. And on my laptop -- just a random Toshiba one, on which lots of other things gave me grief (the VT instructions are disabled by the BIOS, for some reason) -- on this laptop, wifi just worked, out of the box, even during the install. With WPA. And unlike on Windows, it turned off the wifi by default when I plugged in a cable, rather than bugging me every few minutes with "Wireless network detected! Just in case your gigabit ethernet to a fiber Internet connection wasn't enough!" Yes, I can turn off the wireless by flipping a hardware switch, or by pressing some fn-combination, but that is an extra step beyond just plugging it in.

or getting your shiny new blackberry or iphone to sync contacts with

Haven't tried that, specifically. I do know that Amarok seems to notice when I plug in things like iPods, and it's ready to deal with them.

oh wait... no outlook...

Because Outlook is so efficient, and easy to interoperate with, and pretty...

Oh wait, I was thinking of Kontact. Never mind.

Sure ubuntu etc have reached the point where you can build a basic web&email machine very quickly and its pretty simple, but go much beyond that and Linux throws plenty of obstacles into your path.

Contrast that with Vista, where there's a fair chance you won't even make it to a basic web&email machine. The one friend I know who is forced to use it at school (for a Vista class, no less) claims that it bluescreens frequently -- either every couple hours or several times an hour, he didn't say.

I suspect that it is much easier to upgrade the average person to Ubuntu than to Vista. Yes, there's always XP, but that won't last forever -- Ubuntu continues to evolve, and XP doesn't.

.haeger

True. A couple of years ago there was a dearth of open source PIM software out there. Now there's quite a bit. For the AJAX-minded, there's server software like Citadel. For those who want a fat client, there really isn't anything better than Kontact, which really has come into its own with end-to-end PIM and groupware functions. Put the two together and you've really got an end-to-end solution.

And if the lack of a mail program is a real problem, then just package it with Kontact and you have almost an equivalent of outlook too.

1. Evolution
2. Kontact
3. Thunderbird + Sunbird

Or Kontact. http://www.kontact.org/

The answer for me is easy: kontact. I use all the components, including KMail. It syncs the Calendar, TODO list, etc., perfectly with my PDA (a Sony Clie).

your question is widely answered at this link.

to summarize... yes: there are at least two alternatives: opengroupware + cyrus and suse's opengroupware (cyrus + openldap + comfire). for client side: kontact (korganizer) is desktop ready. it is difficult to enable (and has many flaws at my advice) for workgroup environment, but is a very good for everyday scheduling, overall if integrated with palm (via kpilot).

(ONE time fee!) you can get an entire OS and Kontact

I'm thinking that it is probably a good idea to jumpstart this project by stealing code from projects such as Kontact and Evolution. I'm guessing the Mozilla Public License is compatible with the GPL, so I doubt there are legal issues.

Am I glad that there is now Kontact new on the playground.

Even if I ban the use of IE, how do I get firefox to render html email in Outlook?

From kontakt.org

Client side IMAP filtering

In progress

~6 weeks

Allow KMail filters to be used with IMAP servers, for KMail users that can not or will not use server side filters.

Related to Bug:50997, Bug:59685

And if you want really want this feature ASAP you can pay for it and support the developers.

FOr small companies that use Outlook only as an email client perhaps. Thunderbird is no substitute for Outlook when you start talking about company wide contacts sharing, resource scheduling, shared calendars, meeting invites, voting buttons and all the other things organisations are used to using on a day to day basis.

You might argue that an email client isn't the place for such features but no-one's going to drop their client that offers them in favour of Thunderbird when no other app is available to offer the missing feature set.

Like it or loath it, until there's a real Outlook replacement linux lacks the groupware companies are used to and desktop adoption will be restricted.

eGroupware has an excellent XML-RPC and SOAP interface, Kolab already has several Outlook connectors available, but the native clients (Kontact for KDE, which has eGroupware and Kolab support as well as Exchange Server 2000 support) are not out yet. It would be great if someone were to integrate client capabilities for those suites into Mozilla (or something similarly cross-platform).

Most organizations I know are tied to Windows because of Outlook, not because of Office (most can't even tell the difference between OpenOffice and MS Office).

At least the outlook (no pun intended, really) is better than it was a year ago.

The way policies are displayed and edited is terrible - it's just one step up from the the registry. I know because I use them at work, and I get frustrated every time I have to go in there and find some setting.

I agree, Linux could do with some more GUI management tools. These are the sorts of things I believe you'll see coming out of Novell and others within the next year or so. However, "the masses" are not interested in these management tools - as long as they can change a few settings on their own home/office desktop, and they can find things in there easily, then they'll be happy. It's the administrators who need these tools.

Database frontend: for KDE, it's coming, and it's called Kexi. It looks pretty good so far. For groupware, there's Kontact.

Yup, there are plenty of people using KDE and Evolution. Perhaps the upcoming release of KDE 3.2 along with Kontact will change that for some people. However, other people, like myself, will probably stick with Evolution for the following features:

1. Exchange 2000 support
2. Client side IMAP filtering

But.. I'd probably switch to using kmail/kontact partially if it had HTML editing =)

Just visit the screenshot pages of the major/new applications: Kontact (2, 3, 4), JuK, Kgpg, KAddressbook, KBruch, Kig, Kopete, KVim, KCacheGrind, Umbrello, KDevelop, Plasktik,

Just visit the screenshot pages of the major/new applications: Kontact (2, 3, 4), JuK, Kgpg, KAddressbook, KBruch, Kig, Kopete, KVim, KCacheGrind, Umbrello, KDevelop, Plasktik,

Just visit the screenshot pages of the major/new applications: Kontact (2, 3, 4), JuK, Kgpg, KAddressbook, KBruch, Kig, Kopete, KVim, KCacheGrind, Umbrello, KDevelop, Plasktik,

Just visit the screenshot pages of the major/new applications: Kontact (2, 3, 4), JuK, Kgpg, KAddressbook, KBruch, Kig, Kopete, KVim, KCacheGrind, Umbrello, KDevelop, Plasktik,

Kolab, the server :
Architecture paper :
Kontact, the KDE client
Bynari insight connector (not free)LA
Kolab server download :

Well, I was just looking at the Kontact Homepage Very impressive I must say .. I personally use kmail, but I like the integration in this package ..

As mentioned elsewhere, outlook integration is provided via the (commercial) binari connector. The KDE client will eventually have it's functionality integrated with the new KDE Kontact integrated Mail/Organizer, though whether this will make the KDE 3.2 release is uncertain.

As also mentioned elsewhere, one of the major achievements of the project has been to develop open standards (including several RFCs) for groupware interoperation. The documentation can be found here.

It seems like the server is pretty stable and complete (mostly consists of integration of several other projects). The KDE client seems like an interim solution until Kontact is completed, or until functionality can be added to cross-platform projects like Mozilla Mail. There is also a Web client interface under development.

Just as the roadmap talks about embedding Minotaur into Phoenix, the way forward for the calendar could be as an embedded extension for Minotaur.

Some people like a standalone mail/news client that isn't your jack-of-all-trades Outlook/Evolution replacement. That's going to be Minotaur.

But Minotaur could also be an Outlook replacement for those who are looking for that sort of solution. Allow the calendar to be installed as an extension (like Phoenix's extensions) and you've got three of the main features of a PIM (mail, address book, calendar). Develop some sort of stickynote-style scratchpad extension and you've mostly got the whole thing.

Evolution at the moment is only available for Linux and friends, and it seems as if there are no plans for a Windows port any time soon. This would provide a lever for those on Windows to abandon MS Office entirely. I mean, OpenOffice.org replaces much of the rest of MS Office bar Outlook; a Minotaur that can be extended to be that Outlook replacement would finish the job.

Not to mention having a further competitor to Evolution on Unix and Linux, particularly once Kontact gets going.

Going the extension route makes far more sense than adding the Calendar to the monolithic Mozilla suite, slowing everybody down.

And anyway, does a stand-alone calendar really make sense? A stand-alone Composer perhaps. But a calendar naturally fits into a PIM environment - surely this is the way forward?

Thexder.

I don't use KDE, so let me ask: are Korganizer and Kmail integrated so they can work together- within a same interface? Like that of Outlook?

That name is just the project name, the server is called Kolab and the client has been named Kontact. Unless I've misunderstood something :)

Kontact is KDE's Evolution. Check the Kontact site which have more info, including screenshots.

KMail is not a replacement for Evolution proper.

Kontact will be, but Kontact won't be released until 3.2 (at the earliest.) KMail is, on the other hand, a damned good email client, but it's not a full PIM suite.

Konqueror is really starting to come into its own now, and 3.1 even includes a slew of bugfixes from the Safari team for the HTML renderer. It's getting faster, and it's only going to get better. The Apple guys have brought KHTML up to speed and they keep on making improvements. In 3.2, I'm quite sure that Konqueror will be an even better browser than Mozilla (let alone Galeon) for anyone interested in Linux web browsing.

But you have to take my opinion with a grain of salt; I'm a KDE developer. :)