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Hmmmm, I wonder if TrollTech would take issue with that claim. I don't think throwing another computer industry has-been (VisiCalc? Will that even run on Win98?) on the board is going to give Gnome any edge over KDE.

If only there were people who could somehow package applications for typical users. They could distribute precompiled binaries!

Ahh, a man can dream...

Ximian Evolution (www.ximian.com) has a pretty good Outlook Today type feature called Summary.

Also and as an alternative for those of us in mixed *ix/MS environments, I'm told that Insight (www.bynari.com) can interact with MS Exchange for the purpose of calendar booking/sharing, etc.

Check Ximian.com.

Outlook-like apps for Linux were discussed on Slashdot a few years ago http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/98/10/02/1729257.s html, and that discussion may have some (dated) info that might help.

It's not free or OSS, but HP has OpenMail http://www.openmail.com/cyc/om/00/index.html "...a UNIX and Linux based messaging and collaboration solution, currently used by 60% of global 1000 companies..." which also support LookOut calendaring.

A google search for "open source" "exchange replacement" turned up "The Exchange Server Replacement HOWTO" and Nick Petreley's commentary on why HP is dumping OpenMail, in which he comments "that HP OpenMail [is] a better Exchange than Microsoft Exchange".

An earlier slashdot story talked about an up-and-coming replacement for Exchange from Ximian , but I can't find anything on their site.

Bynari (www.bynari.net) makes a product called Insight Server which, while not free, less costly than Exchange and runs on Linux. Again, no experience with it. Links on their site point to something called tradeclient (http://sourceforge.net/projects/tradeclient or http://tradeclient.sourceforge.net/) that is a Linux client for their Insight server (don't know/can't tell if it'll do Exchange server as well), and something called TradeServer shows up on their site, which is unfortunately difficult to find stuff on.

Ximian is coming out with Evolution, which is essentially an open source Outlook replacement. It's still in beta but should be reaching 1.0 before the end of the year (I think).

So far, Evolution's main shortcoming is it doesn't understand Exchange protocols, so Linux clients can't use it to talk to Exchange for shared calendaring. I realize that is one of the main points you need. I believe it is a fatal flaw for evolution, but Ximian apparently doesn't think it's such a big deal, saying that such support will come "eventually, but not high priority". Nonetheless, it can do IMAP, POP, LDAP, and a bunch of other open protocols.

Ximian is coming out with Evolution, which is essentially an open source Outlook replacement. It's still in beta but should be reaching 1.0 before the end of the year (I think).

So far, Evolution's main shortcoming is it doesn't understand Exchange protocols, so Linux clients can't use it to talk to Exchange for shared calendaring. I realize that is one of the main points you need. I believe it is a fatal flaw for evolution, but Ximian apparently doesn't think it's such a big deal, saying that such support will come "eventually, but not high priority". Nonetheless, it can do IMAP, POP, LDAP, and a bunch of other open protocols.

Sorry, I just haven't met the creationist that I can take seriously (of course, the universe is only 30 seconds old, so maybe there's time...).

I've lost my entire debian system twice due to using the unstable version.

By upgrading to the latest unstable software on a daily basis, my system was completely trashed.

First it was a glibc problem (I don't remember what), then it was an overwritten file that caused me to not be able to log in. I had to re-install the whole system, and I've used Debian Stable ever since.

There are some ways you can make Debian Stable a lot more modern than you might think...

kde.debian.net gives you the latest KDE...

Ximian offers the latest gnome for Debian potato (stable)...

and gnulpr offers a printing system (easily set up) that can be installed through apt with debian stable.

redhat uses it. So does Ximian.

Get ready for Ximian Evolution! A very nice outlook clone. It should work with standard pop/imap servers and does full groupware type stuff.

Evolution is a free Outlook clone for *nix. Still beta but it's very close to a 1.0 release.

Evolution supports most of the Exchange/Outlook groupware features (and it's always getting better).

I'm not sure what constitutes some of these relationships; I thought Gnucash had been cut loose, but maybe I'm wrong. Does anyone have information about these corporate sponsorships, or what Xandros's acquisition of Corel means for them?

FREEDOM.

Freedom is the reason you should check out OpenOffice, K Office, Evolution, Gnumeric etc.. Remember: Sun has GPL'd Star Office's source code. That means that everyone can peek at it and change it -- that means you don't have to worry that the next version of the product will fuck with you because if it will, enough developers will be pissed off enough to fork and fix it. You don't have to worry about Passport, .NET, talking paperclips, proprietary file formats or "Smart Tags", or whatever Microsoft's current strategy of becoming Big Brother is.

This is relevant not only for individuals and for corporations. Choosing OpenOffice now is reasonable long term thinking, something most individuals seem incapable of. Yes, Sun would behave just as badly as Microsoft in Microsoft's shoes, but with OpenOffice under the GPL, there's not really much that can go wrong. The file format is also open, XML-based and documented and can be legally implemented by anyone.

Freedom is not just an ideological point. If you trust all your critical documents to a closed source software corporation, you are dependent on them and on their decisions, which will hurt your bottom line -- and, in the long term, hurt you much more than training your personnel to use an alternative.

The bottom line is that if you care about freedom, you shouldn't have to go to China -- you have to look at the alternatives. If you don't do that, you have no right whatsoever to complain that you have none later.

It would be much better to have functionality like spell checking, etc., split off into separate applications.

You have just put your finger on the core of Miguel de Icaza's essay, "Let's Make UNIX Not Suck". A component model for software is the important part of GNOME, even more than the desktop.

I wanted to include a link to de Icaza's essay, but I cannot find it on the web. (All the search results point to where it was but it isn't there anymore.) I did however find this article, which explains about the GNOME component model.

http://www.ximian.com/devzone/tech/bonobo.html

steveha

http://www.ximian.com/products/ximian_evolution/fe atures.html

Since when is compiling from source the only way to install GNOME? Install Ximian GNOME through Red Carpet or install binary packages for your distribution.

Ximian has supported the use of apt-get for quite a while now. Instructions on where to point to in sources.list, etc can be found at http://www.ximian.com/download/instructions.html?d istribution=debian"

Thank you for illustrating your unique tallent of cutting and pasting. You could have at least fixed your links.

A rudimentary contributor report. This is not exactly the report that will be used for the prizes (this one doesn't adjust by date, dups, or a couple other factors) but it does give a ballpark idea of where people stand. Remember we'll also be giving out some stuff to people who find and mark dups, not just adding new bugs to the DB.

This is the way software works. You build applications on platforms. In this case, Evolution is built on on the GNOME platform which is made up of libraries. It's no different in Windows or any other platform. One of the things that causes you to feel that perhaps it is different, is that free software moves so fast...so in order to get the latest you need more software than just what your distribution shipped with. That's precisely why, by the way, Ximian is selling shrinked-wrapped versions of their software. You get it all on CD's with documentation and support. If you don't want to pay money for it, Red Carpet will happily resolve the dependancies for you. 99% of the problems people had with earlier version of Red Carpet have been resolved in recent builds. If Red Carpet is too slow for you, consider subscribing to Red Carpet Express when it's available.

This is the way software works. You build applications on platforms. In this case, Evolution is built on on the GNOME platform which is made up of libraries. It's no different in Windows or any other platform. One of the things that causes you to feel that perhaps it is different, is that free software moves so fast...so in order to get the latest you need more software than just what your distribution shipped with. That's precisely why, by the way, Ximian is selling shrinked-wrapped versions of their software. You get it all on CD's with documentation and support. If you don't want to pay money for it, Red Carpet will happily resolve the dependancies for you. 99% of the problems people had with earlier version of Red Carpet have been resolved in recent builds. If Red Carpet is too slow for you, consider subscribing to Red Carpet Express when it's available.

Q: If we are a Windows based company with Unix users, can we use Ximian Evolution?

A: If your server uses standard open protocols like LDAP, IMAP, POP, and SMTP, you can use Evolution with it. You can share addresses with vCards and calendar items with iCal appointments. We do not, however, support proprietary protocols at this time.
...

This applies to Exchange. You can use it with exchange if you're using industry-standard open protocols.

Hey! So... I guess I'm going to have a busy day tomorrow :) If you really want to get a good start and be helpful, I'd recommend that you read the Bug Day TODO list before coming by the bug day. We need lots of help- but we also need people who are going to be willing to get their hands dirty in the bugzilla, not just sit in the channel and ask when their pet bug will be fixed.
So... hope to see you all tomorrow, and hope that you'll be willing to help out in a constructive manner!
Luis Villa
Ximian Bugmaster
P.S. I'll be reading responses, so if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Thanks!

Ximian just recently added support for Suse 7.x. I'm not sure what you mean about supporting more than Red Hat. Currently Ximian supports something like 18 different platforms. Mandrake 8 is also now supported. You can get it here.

• CorporateConnect , Red Carpet Express, and Red Carpet partner program
• Partership with Mission Critical Linux
• Other partnerships

• CorporateConnect , Red Carpet Express, and Red Carpet partner program
• Partership with Mission Critical Linux
• Other partnerships

• CorporateConnect , Red Carpet Express, and Red Carpet partner program
• Partership with Mission Critical Linux
• Other partnerships

A contest like this surely states in the rules that ximian employees and/or anyone who has anything whatsoever to do with the project is excluded from participating (or from receiving prizes - i guess they should still let ximian staff submit bugs ;-)

Sure enough, you're right: http://www.ximian.com/devzone/projects/evolution-e ligibility.html

I can't imagine they are in great shape financially.

I think their Stuffed Monkey sales will keep them afloat...

what exactly is their revenue model. I hope it's not just selling this or this...

and I think they dropped the whole services idea.

what exactly is their revenue model. I hope it's not just selling this or this...

and I think they dropped the whole services idea.

Check out JOnAS, which serves as the core for Enhydra. Both are functional, real-world application servers.

Check out Exolab, consisting of OpenEJB, OpenJMS, OpenORB, and more. Again, this is another open-source application server.

For web services, check out Apache SOAP. The wonderful folks at IBM have gifted the open source community with a SOAP/WSDL/UDDI implementation. There was some talk a while back about JBoss integrating Apache SOAP into its offerings, although the mailing list now causes me to doubt this.

Of course, I'm taking Mono and dotGNU.

What does all this add up to? It looks to me that Mono and dotGNU provide migration paths for existing MS customers. J2EE provides a software scalability that is not possible with Microsoft application servers. Between Sun, SGI, and IBM, the MS/Intel hegemony don't stand a chance with respect to hardware scalability. And with JBoss, Microsoft can't compete on price. It seems to me that the Unix camp will do quite well with this whole web services thing.

That said, it's not like one side will win while the other side loses. No matter what happens, MS will have a sizable camp of die-hard devotees. Likewise with the Unix camp. Somewhere in between, web services will support mixed solutions. Throw in non-MS implementations of the CRE, and the current quality of Java under Windows (it's still better than Linux...and, yes, I have tried the IBM VM), and we've got a situation where the underlying platform is really not that important. Finally, I'll get to focus on what I do best (programming), while avoiding all the religious hype surronding MS vs. Unix.

Plus, they will never have to compile that new, sexy app that only seasoned veterans can.

In my haste to put up that ever-so-witty sarcastic retort, I forgot to comment on this. They don't have to compile that new, sexy, app, because the sysadmin can do it once on the server and it's instantly available to everybody. That's the real advantage of thin clients. Only one upgrade, instantly applicable to everyone.

For ease of use and simplicity in getting started, I recommend Red Hat 7.1. While it's true that Red Hat is often called the "Windows 98 of Linux distros", the fact remains that it's a good starter distro.

Also, if you find yourself craving a slightly slicker GUI than the default versions of Gnome and KDE that come with most distros, be sure to check out Ximian Gnome (http://www.ximian.com). In addition to providing a nice interface, they also have a number of nifty "Setup Tools" available [warning: beta versions, but I've found they work pretty well] that are at least as easy to use in admining your box as the Windows equivalents. Plus, there's the Evolution groupware suite on the horizon; be sure to download their beta and check it out!

Huh? Do you even remotely keep a watch of the GNOME community? A couple months ago the GNOME 2.0 schedule was released and things are moving along pretty much as planned. A 2.0 API freeze just occured, activity on the lists and in CVS is dramatically rising. We've had recent releases of the new Control Center, a brand new AbiWord, second Beta of Evolution, new releases of development tools gIDE (screenshot) and DevHelp (screenshot), a new file selection dialog, etc...I could go on. I suggest you at least read the GNOME Summaries or check out Gnotices every now and then.

Huh? Do you even remotely keep a watch of the GNOME community? A couple months ago the GNOME 2.0 schedule was released and things are moving along pretty much as planned. A 2.0 API freeze just occured, activity on the lists and in CVS is dramatically rising. We've had recent releases of the new Control Center, a brand new AbiWord, second Beta of Evolution, new releases of development tools gIDE (screenshot) and DevHelp (screenshot), a new file selection dialog, etc...I could go on. I suggest you at least read the GNOME Summaries or check out Gnotices every now and then.

All I have to say is read the link. Really.

After reading the link, unless you are socially brain-dead, you will see that Martin Coxall (the "banned" member) was being a total ass. No really--read it yourself. Keep going until you get to the end of the thread. You'll see. Unfortunately, the dotGNU people felt they needed to defend themselves on the mono list--and with people like this guy, that is only adding fuel to the fire. He's definitely a Tireless Rebutter.

Note of clarification: he was put on manual moderation after stiring up trouble on the dotGNU list. Not banned, moderated. Now before you cry "Oppression!", remember that this is exactly what moderation is for. If you don't understand what I am talking about, read the thread and imagine a constant onslaught of email coming from Martin Coxall sniping and being a jerk--as a developer, it would make you pretty upset.

Moderation is in place on lists to keep flame wars to a minimum. Martin Coxall was just sounding off and got moderated--that's internet life, kids.

Lemme amend my post about Bollow and Coxall and just say Read the thread (search forward for "dotGNU banning"). This guy has some serious anger issues.

It won't work out because of things like this. Everyone wants their piece of the glory of being the next 'big thing' by being able to replace .NET, but because they are greedy, they lose sight of the real purpose and try to twist is to their personal gain instead of trying to write code that will actually help users and developers

You click a button in [your favorite mail application, any platform] ; that in turns sends a simple text message, with the crc or checksum and if they match (either the client software, or the server, you choose) they show as matching, moved to a cleared folder, application dependant.

Applications can compete on how they use the results. One good idea could be to filter out non matching results, or to send them to a junk folder - or simply showing a certain icon.

The real key to the system is this: if spammers are creating a crc which is being used over and over to send to multiple clients via redirecters and other cleaver tricks, hit a button and simply vote it spam. Use a weighted system to eventually filter out the same message. But running the headers throught the checksum would stop most spammers since the TO: field would most likely change.

Simple text messaging that can be used by any programmer, and there are many non GPL, examples of how to compare two checksums.

Guessing the server would carry all the checksums, a good idea would be to add an revokation date which can be set client side either defaulted or user configurable.

Really the whole thing is simple. Just block people from mass e-mailing. Test the system for a while then add the spam blocking to see which crc's where voted spam, cross that with the volume of e-mails by that person. Although the system suddenly became huge, but off site computers could do the computing, not the servers.

E-mail is a huge thing. Linux sends e-mails to my wireless phone without any user interaction. The system better be ready for people who use e-mail like an instant message.

Now it comes to mind - if my pop server software (and maybe all isp's) would just check the crc against the server that would save everyone.

Even MS could get into the game with Hotmail and their own MS CRC server...

This is my manifesto:

Get your free hotmail address - Now with hailstorm and E-mail signing - Free (biometrics required)

----checksumurl--http://checksig.msn.com:7235----
ka;dddjdppwo3as-e34-44444uv2-84urrhpwerrupw34gdgh
4-0394uvm-03485umt5jt-5ut059u-02-95uy05u25uy5fdgh
442i0934it-09utury]==-04904g2-5t8528-b09-2ururt45
----email--checksum:--0x485ksro842---------------

Here's photos, photos, and more photos.

debian potato debs here

[*] GNOME is planned to be used in Mono, but that does not make Mono part of the GNOME project.

Oh it isn't consuming resources over there at Ximian, keepers of the flame for Gnome...

From the mono contact page:
You can contact the Mono Team by sending e-mail to `mailto:mono-hackers@ximian.com'.

You can contact the general forum of discussion by sending e-mail to mono-list@ximian.com

You can contact me (Miguel de Icaza) by sending e-mail to miguel@ximian.com. My web page is http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel"

You can also reach Ximian.

Looks like it's going to consume some would-otherwise-be-working-on-Gnome resources to me.

correct link

Tip: if Evolution seems to load up really slowly then you probably need to restart your oaf server. Just run killev followed by oaf-slay and Presto. Or else follow the windows approach and wait for your next reboot :)

Screenshot: check out the funky new (and configurable) summary page!

Are you guys gonna start allowing directory listings again on spidermonkey? I'd personally much rather use APT to handle this stuff (right now at least) verses red-carpet which is still a tad buggy.

"404 File Not Found"

This is a major feature Evolution? Sounds vaguely Microsoftian to me;}

Here's the link after its Slashdot-ectomy.

--

You can also read an functional overview of Evolution and what it has to offer.

Since Evolution is not feature frozen, we are polishing the GUI and killing all bugs that we have reported so far, you can help by going to the developers page and learn about how to report bugs on Evolution or how to send your favorite patch and improvement.

You can get Evolution using Red Carpet (that is how I installed it myself a few minutes ago). Select the `Ximian Preview' channel and then select Evolution, all the required software will be installed for you.

Finally, now that I am pasting URLs, I would like to say that on the preview channel you can also find the latest two great contributions of Ximian to GNOME (plug, plug). The Ximian Setup Tools is there for people to test (ie, unified System Administration across Unix systems, with a nice and friendly GNOME UI). The technology behind it is extremely nice. And we are also previewing the Metatheme selector, which allows you to change all the theme setting across the board in your desktop.

Love,
Miguel.