Aethera Beta 1 Released

StupiDiot writes: "Aethra is a open source mail client which follows in the steps of LookOut, and is being developed by the Kompany. In case you haven't been following, Aethera is theKompany's fork of the greatly hyped/anticipated Magellan project. Beta 1 of Aethera sports POP3, SMTP, HTML, DnD, a contacts interface, sticky notes, and more. IMAP, Calendar support, etc., are promised for the next beta. There is no mention of the license although source is available from the Web site -- most of the source files seem to be under the BSD license. " So, I downloaded it and tried playing with is last night - it's a very cool, very slick program - the competition between this and the Gnome-equivalent Evolution will be interesting, as always. Regardless of which wins, the race to produce an Outlook-killer is on.

Comments

Re:Why do people do this?

[Ian Schmidt]

Because companies for better or worse have spent *billions* training people on Outlook and other MS applications. It's in the community's best interest to have replacements for common MS apps that will require minimal retraining to help grease the skids for Linux on the desktop.

Interface biting

[romi]

Hey, I'd like to see a strong mail client on Linux as much as the next guy - I hate outlook's instability (especially Outlook 2000!). *BUT* without meaning to rain on the parade, I'd like to point out that, while Outlook may have its faults, it appears that nobody has qualms with its interface:

Evolution Inbox screenshot

Evolution Compose message screenshot

Considering the bashing Microsoft takes around these parts, isn't it surprising that the interface here has been pretty blatantly jacked from Outlook? Now it might be the case that this really *is* the best interface style to use for an E-mail client, and that's fine. But give credit where credit is due for the design, or bash and don't bite.

I'm writing an Outlook killer myself

[kyz]

Features include:

• Sends emails to your friends in a totally proprietary format, also encoded with CSS to protect it from the evil hackers who broke TNEF.
• In an email reply, it takes all your new text from where it should be (directly under the part replied to) and automatically moves it above the original message. This is to deliberately make you look like a newbie and thus make you more attractive to your preferred soulmate gender.
• Posts to newsgroups in Microsoft's extended RTF format. That'll teach them to complain about HTML.
• Automatically opens any executable attachments and runs them. You obviously wanted to do that, so this saves your valuable time.
• Includes a built in copy of Solitaire and Minesweeper for you to play while it sends and retrieves your mail.
• Sends me, err, 'performance data' of any *.jpg or *.mpg attachments you recieve.

What do you think? Am I on to a winner?

Outlook killer? How about Exchange Server killer?

[Faulty Dreamer]

Look, we all want to see an Outlook killer on Linux. But let's face it. The reason people bitch about not having Outlook on Linux in the corporate world is mostly because of the calendaring/scheduling and collaboration type things they can do with Exchange server in the background. So, while I like the idea of having the Outlook Killer clients, when is someone going to really, really focus on the back end?

I want to see an Exchange killer in the back hooked up to one of these Outlook killer clients. Plus, I'd like to see it a little more sane/easier to administer. I'm not asking for more clickable items, I'm asking for sane permission structures (so I can keep Dave from resetting Betty's calendar without her permission), realistically tied together scheduling and a nicely followable format for the whole configuration.

I realize there are some albeit very, very small efforts under way to complete some projects along these lines. But there seems to be so much focus on the front end that no one really says squat about the server side requirements/code.

Until I hear that one of these packages is fully ready to tackle the Exchange/Outlook combo punch, I'll just keep plugging away with what I've got. Seperate server based calendaring, seperate e-mail, seperate collaboration, all a pain in the ass to accomplish, but usable. And constantly listening to my users bitch and moan because at that other company, "We used Outlook."

We get by with what we've got (and the boss liked the price tag, probably the only reason we are using Linux), but it sure would be nice to give the users something focused on their needs.