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It's pretty damn good. Almost a drop in replacement. Take a look for yourself.

There has been ALOT of discussion on Calendars, and EXCHANGE. There was a comment made that EXCHANGE is the clear choice (and something only choice) for corporate informational exchange. Well, the company I worked for refused Exchange. What they are using is OpenXchange. http://mirror.open-xchange.org/ox/EN/community// Which is a open sourced version of novells Version http://www.novell.com/products/openexchange/screen shots.html/ For those who need a "Calendar" or "Email" Server without sticking your stuff into google.

The Open Sourced version is a little hectic to setup as it does not contain an administrative backend, so most of of the work is done through the command line... which is a small price to pay if you compare what is costs for MS Exchange. A Demo could be located here http://www.openexchange.com/EN/product/onlinedemo. html/ and here http://mirror.open-xchange.org/ox/EN/community/onl ine.htm/
Plugins for OUTLOOK are available, seamless intergration.

This is more fud in a way, there are several choices in linux; Kontact, Evolution and Thunderbird all offer much better email functionality than Outlook. Where there is a difference is in providing exchange functionality and that too exists on several fronts, Kolab, OpenExchange and Zimbra all provide Exchange functionality and Horde/Kolab and Zimbra both provide compelling web interfaces that are equal to what is provided by Exchange in terms of shared calendars and shared addressbooks. I think the only thing not provided yet is the ability for mail rules to be seamlessly migrated from the mailclient to the server so you don't have to setup your mailrules/filters twice. Thunderbird needs solid calendaring, this is true. This is probably the biggest problem out there because in doing windows to linux migrations you ALWAYS want to migrate them in a staged format by getting them onto the apps they will be using in linux while still having them on windows and thunderbird is the only one that is crossplatform. Unless you migrate them to web based solutions like Horde/Kolab or Zimbra. Personally i use Horde/Kontact and love it although i will admit Zimbra is pretty sweet looking having been done in AJAX. http://kolab.org/ http://zimbra.com/ http://www.openexchange.com/

http://www.openexchange.com/

An Exchange-killer.

Have you tried Open Exchange? Not that exchange is appropraite to a discussion on the Desktop market.


A definitely legal method of playing encrypted DVDs.

Try xine! (btw Xine is an awesome app!)


For 3rd-party companies (Intuit, Adobe, Autodesk, etc etc ad nauseum) to release either Linux or Wine-friendly versions of their apps.

If you can't find an alternative application in Linux you could always run Windows through VMWare - you can also disable network support for the VM so that you always have a nice clean copy of Windows instead of one riddled with ad/spyware! Further you'd be surprised how fast this can be, I run an AMD 1600+ with 1GB and Windows runs very fast in VMWare.


For companies like Cisco to make it easy to run the VPN Client.

Cisco VPN client for Linux!


A perfect VT220 emulator. There are many in the Windows world.

xterm & gnome-terminal can be used to emulate VT220, for the latter it's as simple as adding a line to your xresources file.


Better wireless support, both thru more drivers from "industry", and better "management" front-ends.

I think you'll find that Wireless support in terms of drivers is just as good in Linux as it is in Windows - just install ndiswrapper and use the windows drivers!


Better looking fonts. Sure, fonts are 100x better looking than they were in 1999, but they are still better looking in Windows.

If font's are so important to you, why not just use the Windows true type fonts in linux??


In my opinion the reason people don't migrate to Linux is because they either think it'll be too hard to use or, like the parent poster, they believe that Linux won't be able to do what Windows can - and don't bother to do any research as to whether they're correct or not.

Haydn.

There's Novell-backed OpenExchange

There's Germany-backed Kolab

There's RedHat-backed eGroupWare

There's all-open OpenGroupware

And that's just the tip of it. There are also commercial products.

Seriously - if you think there are not alternatives to Exchange out there, then either you have not done your homework or are seriously misinformed, or both.

Oh, I think you referred to either Open-Xchange http://www.openexchange.com/ or Openexchange http://www.novell.com/products/openexchange/

And is still available as a free (Beta) download here.

Don't know how long that will last and I image its not part of the OSS suite.

I haven't used it but would like to do some testing with it at work. For more general directory type support (domain controller, etc) I'd look at Suse LINUX Enterprise Server with their Novell Open Enterprise (sorry thats a PDF). It uses Samba and LDAP, but its the closest thing to a usable AD "killer" I've seen so far.

It's a standards based (LDAP) mail/groupware app which supports standard SMTP/IMAP clients as well as Outlook/Palm clients (for an additional fee).

Seems competitively priced to Exchange and there's also a free pure OSS version available (although if you want offical support and a nice installer, you need to pay for it).

http://www.openexchange.com/

I haven't personally used it, but I've been looking at it as an Exchange alternative (I really really hate exchange) for the small company where I work.

http://www.openexchange.com/

Pity they completely overlooked Open-Xchange and its free open source cousin.

Open-xchange is a great product. Reliable, fast and intuitive interface. It was easy to roll out, easy to maintain. Comes with Spam filters and all kinds of goodies. Best of all, it looks like an MS Exchange server to an Outlook client with shared public folders, calendars, contacts, notes, etc...

I agree with Martin Taylor that transitioning software on a Linux platform can be difficult. I also believe transitioning software on ANY platform is difficult. If it wasn't, none of us would have jobs.

I also agree with Martin Taylor that going to a Linux platform may prove more costly than first expected. I also know from experience that Microsoft roll-outs have additional cost.

For Example: MS Exchange server compared to SuSE OpenExchange (now Netline OpenExchange). Similar Products. Exchange is cheaper out of the box until you add Spam Control, Virus Control, etc... Also, Exchange counts licenses by CAL connection, OpenExchange is Licensed by concurrent connections - much cheaper. If you want you can even download the Netline Open-Xchange for free with no license restrictions.

Martin Taylor is correct on many points. Unfortunately his logic breaks down because those points are universal and not specific to OSS.

OpenExchange?