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Evolution 1.0 Released
jdavidb writes: "I pulled up the Ximian redcarpet updater this morning and discovered that Evolution 1.0 is finally available! Now Outlook can start facing some serious competition, although there's still a long way to go. (Evolution does not yet emulate all the Outlook viruses, of course, nor does it integrate with Exchange Server.)" Here's Ximian's full announcement. Update: 12/03 14:59 GMT by T : Nat Friedman of Ximian points out that they're offering a software extension which does allow integration with Exchange 2000. There's good story on the new iteration of Evolution at NewsForge, too.
By Microsoft, natch.
See press release at Ximian's site. Available early next at $69 a pop.
>Now Outlook can start facing some serious >competition, although there's still a long way to >go. (Evolution does not yet emulate all the >Outlook viruses, of course, nor does it integrate >with Exchange Server.)
A better way of putting this is "does not COMPLETELY integrate with Exchange Server". I'm running it with my company's Exchange servers, via IMAP, LDAP, and SMTP, and the only thing not working is Calendar and shared TODO.
Otherwise, download the binaries or source code.
I'd figure that Lotus Notes would be a *no brainer* for Linux considering their backing of the platform. Does anyone know what is holding them back? Are they just trying to shoot themselves in the foot or what?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Evolution is actually a very nice app and I use it at home, mainly because of the nice conduits avaliable for Palm synching.
I hope it's finaly a stable program now, cause it had lot's of nasty bugs.
Ciryon
Full compatability with MS Exchange Is coming
I like Evolution... really, I do. Except, I can't use it. We use Exchange at work, and there's nothing I can do to make Evolution work.
I think Ev v1 was roadmapped to integrate with Exchange -- since it doesn't it's not a viable option for corporates who primarily use Windows, but have people using Unix.
But, Exchange is not the be-all and end-all, tight integration with Lotus Domino would be excellent. Lots of big corporations use Notes heavily, and require a Windows client (Domino web services aren't great)
Perhaps an open standard for groupware (discussion, IM, calendar, to-do etc.) could be adopted, and through that Exchange/Notes -> new standard could be employed, aloowing other people to bring integration with whatever groupware server they want to Evolution and other clients?
Could be a very bad idea, but it's just off the top of my head!
Dave
Not until it runs on Windows and Mac...
Much as I love Linux, I don't think it quite has the same prevalence on the desktop.
This sounds like the true Exchange solution many of us are looking for - It is proprietary and closed though.
Before the flamage on Ximian begins, let me just say, that the businesses that this product is for have already invested in closed source software, so I think its a great idea to finance Evolution this way.
Great job guys, keep it up!
Until it fully supports Exchange Server, it'll never be a serious competitor to Outlook.
Sorry, but face reality. In the corporate world it either has to be 100% compatible otherwise they just won't use it. Price is generally immaterial.
Plus any company who can afford Exchange Server will no doubt be able to afford licences for Outlook so the whole "but its free" doesn't really offset the fact that its not fully compatible.
However, in spite of all this, lets not knock them for a fine product. Always some work to do, but its definately on the right roads ...
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I'm using Evolution and Mutt as my primary mail clients now (I used to only use Mutt, but I forced myself into Evo so I could help with testing and bug reports). Evo is a very impressive application and I hope people who need such a tool will like it.
However, I don't need or want such a tool. I just want a mail client that logs into my IMAP server, reads and sends mail. That's it. Integrated {contact manager,calendar,task manager,whatever} is cool, but I don't want it. I need something that does a thing, and it does it well, and I hope that other mail(-only) clients will raise to the standard set by Evolution (so far only Mulberry was good enough but it's neither free or open source, and there are a couple things I don't like about it either).
Petru
Its nice, but I can't figure where they say its groupware. Currently, its a PIM. But, for some odd reason, there not intrested in intergrating it into a groupware application via XML-RPC or SOAP. If that where true, then they could start plugging into phpGroupWare. I have about 20 people a week asking me if I could ask them to do it, so I simply tell them to email there developers instead. Needless to say, nothing has come about.
Also, we actually have a client side application for Linux and Windows that is working. (Buggy, but works) Its still under heavy development, but it pretty easy to plug into. A more portable version is in the works.
Anyway, so people would stop asking me about it, please, email there development team and ask them to talk to the phpGroupWare guys about creating an XML-RPC or SOAP interface. I think these 2 projects would go hand and hand nicely.
So, for those complaining about the lack of an "exchange server" enviroment, something is there, just not being used.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Well, now I need to figure out how to migrate my email from Outlook 2002 (not Outlook Express), to Evolution. I _think_ I've got a way, but not sure. Has this feature been added to a recent version of Evolution?
The previous way I figured out how I could do this was to fire up Eudora, as it could open Outlook 2000 email files (not sure about Outlook 2002) - then once you've got your email in Eudora's format (related to mbox format, as I recall - could be wrong), then it was easy to convert to a UNIX way of things. If Evolution doesn't do this automatically, it certainly should. That's one of the big challenges of moving people from MS software to anything else - converting those file formats with ease, and doing so _perfectly_, every time.
An exchange connector is a library with a familiar interface that will handle all connections with the exchange server. Now, this Exchange connector for Evolution is not GPL-ed software but proprietry closed source software. Because afaik in memory linking is also prohibited, how is Ximian going to solve any GPL conflicts? Or is the GPL not able to force its license on the connector?
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
For those of you who just want the Evolution 1.0 binaries, and not the whole Ximian desktop, go to ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/ximian-gnome/ and get the following packages:
* evolution
* libgnome-pilot0
* libgtkhtml20
* libnss3
Note, I installed under Debian, so other systems may be slightly different, however, this should be a very good place to start
...it's not necessarily a busy mirror problem. I think it's real-carpet that's dying. I've had massive problems with it just hanging (and having to do kill -9's as root to get rid of it). I'm not the only one who has experienced this problem either; I've talked to others on IRC who have also had problems. The trick seems to be to remove everything out of /var/cache/redcarpet and then running it again.
:p But it was a Red Hat 7.2 system upgraded to the latest Helix Gnome only about a month and a bit ago).
;-)
By the way, I just connected and it seems there is an "Urgent Update" for red-carpet, which brings it up to version 1.1.4-ximian.8. (Sorry, I can't tell you what my previous version was, 'cuz I already upgraded.
Gnome is looking hella good these days. I'm sure Evolution is just as good, but I have no reason to give up Pine anytime soon.
I use PINE for my Exchange integration Email work. Works perfectly - apparently PINE is as much integrated with Exchange as Evolution is, until they start selling their component that'll connect to the calendar.
The calendar is the only reason I keep Outlook around, really.
My real problem with Evolution is, it looks like Outlook. I cannot use Outlook for Email. I find the interface to be completely horrible, unintuitive and hard to keep organized. The whole "Rules" thing just does not work. With PINE, if you want to save a message to a different mailbox, you hit "S <ENTER>". With Outlook you have to Drag'n'Drop. Imagine that for 200 messages.
Maybe it's because I've been using PINE for god-knows how long, but GUI mail clients just don't work for me.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Hey, anyone know of any other projects based on the evolution code-base? I kinda like evolution from what I have seen of the pre-release versions. It looks like a real progression. However, I am sure there are alot of people like myself who like the advanced email features that arent really present in other linux-based mail programs. However, I really do not want a calender, schedules, task lists etc.
In the same way that the Mozilla code base has been hacked - in a generally reductionist way - to produce the much-improved Galeon and promising K-Meleon, I feel that Evolution could benefit from the same process.
Offers, anyone? Im a little busy right now.....
I'm not trying to troll here, but I have strong doubts that Ximian will survive. But, before I continue, let me congratulate them on Evolution, as it is a very high quality product, and my preferred mail client.
From the newsforge article, quotes from Nat Friedman, vice president of product development:
"We expect less than we would have expected awhile ago. I think that people understand that businesses have to survive. And the people know that the bloody carcasses of Open Source companies line the horizon right now."
and
"It is proprietary is because they (Ximian) intend to make money from it."
Effectively what I see here is an admission that open source software just isn't getting the bills paid (at least for Ximian, and Eazel RIP), and that they need to sell proprietry software in order to keep afloat.
Unless we see open source companies like ximian generate significantly more revenue from services related to their open source projects, we just aren't gonna have the pleasure of using new products from them for much longer.
Ximian was waiting on the Evolution 1.0 release to release the Mandrake 8.1 version of it. Expect an 8.1 release in the next two weeks.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
S/Mime is slated for 1.1 or 1.2 release. See http://bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1350 for details.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
Once that's done, proceed with your upgrade as if you never had Ximian Gnome installed on your system...
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
Evolution wanted one version of pilot-link, and KDE PIM wanted another...but the packages are mutually exclusive (a rarity, but it happened).
Can this be forced & patched with a simlink?
Personally, I prefer Evolution to KDE PIM, but I'm looking after a few different computers and want to leave the option of what one to choose up to the user. For now, Evolution wins so KDE PIM gets yanked though it would be nice not to have to pick and choose.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I don't see any problem with charging for the Exchange connector. Think of it as encouragement to go open source!
Let's say you're a small company with an Exchange server. You pay for Exchange. You pay for CALs. Then someone installs Evolution and lets some of your people access Exchange without buying into the whole MS-$$-desktop licensing (I'm thinking support people, especially). You're still paying something, though, to make Evolution work with Exchange.
Then someone says, "You know, Evolution would work just as well with Courier/Cyrus/whatever as an IMAP backend, and then we wouldn't have to pay for the Exchange server or the Exchange connectors.
And there's your incentive to go open source.
Also, this puts the onus of supporting Ximian on the corporations, who can afford it. If I want to use Evolution for myself to access my IMAP server, it's free. If I want to use it to get into Exchange at work, I get my boss to spring for a license. I'm happy, he's happy, Ximian stays in business.
Caveat: Exchange still wins in the corporation until Evolution + Open Source server XYZ can provide shared calendaring and scheduling.
Close on the heels of this development, Microsoft announced that its software would be fully in compliance with all laws concerning munitions exports and creationism.
Find free books.
I'm not forgetting - I'm discounting.
Outlook runs on top of Windows, which is not free. It's quite expensive.
Because of the way things are priced, companies usually end up buying Office, and therefore paying even more for Outlook.
If I understood the offer correctly, Microsoft offered to put computers in a lot of schools, where 20% was the hardware cost, and the other 80% of the money was required to put software on them. If you think Outlook is "free," you aren't paying the bills.
Using Evolution with Exchange is going to cost a company more than using Outlook. When deploying Exchange you buy a server license, either standard or enterprise, and then you buy client licenses for each user. Along with that license you also get an Outlook license.
If we wanted to move to Evolution we'd still have to pay the same amount, and then have to pay for the Exchange connector on top of it. The price just went up $70/user to move to Evolution. I can't seem to locate my quote for our Exchange migration here, but a quick check shows a 5 user client access pack for Exchange is about $350...so the price per user just doubled.
I'll pay it... I've been waiting for this since Evolution was first announced. Every LinuxWorld I ask them about Exchange support so it's nice to see it coming soon. But, it will be harder for someone else to do a mass migration.
Something to consider.... I hope it works for them. I see Ximian as a company that needs to stick around for the Linux desktop to really take off.
This is only going to work on PC's Loaded with Linux Running XIMIAN/GNOME
;-) (Current storage capacity is 2.5 gigs; I desperately need a new hard drive...)
Not true; you only need the required libraries installed in order to run evolution, you don't need gnome to be running. You can quite happily run it on a machine running KDE, or WindowMaker, twm, etc. You may well lose some of the default integration stuff, but that should be fixed just by changing file type associations to point at your chosen apps.
Even if you install Gnome in its entirity, you'll only blow a hundred megs of disk space or so, and even I can afford that
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Basically everyone here (with one stubborn standout; she knows who she is :) has been dogfooding evo since July. That includes Nat, with his >1G mail stores, and a large number of folks whose email load tops 1K messages a day.
IAAL,BIANLY
I repeat it since I have points and the mods aren't bothering to read at 0 today:
The plugin runs as a component, not a library, so the communication is via a CORBA interface. Since no linking occurs (merely CORBA communication) there is no GPL violation, nor any need to re-license.
IAAL,BIANLY