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Will Evolution Exchange Microsoft?
Anonymous Howard writes "Infoanarchy has a comprehensive review of Ximian Evolution. The reviewer claims that the Windows/Outlook combination is inherently inferior in terms of security, because users have too many privileges on the host system. Also, Evolution's indexing appears to be quite well scalable."
Yet a much more important issue is the other direction - open and freely accessible groupware protocols implemented by a free-as-in-speech server solution, with Outlook connectivity provided by a Windoze plugin. For example, the Bill Workgroup Server takes this approach.
Microsoft Exchange is not the only major proprietary groupware solution - Lotus Notes is here to stay, to be even more proprietary - it's quite impossible to read or write Lotus NSF files with anything but Lotus software. Free groupware standards exist and should be used by anyone. The user should have free choice between PHPgroupware, Evolution, Outlook and Lotus Notes, similar to IMAP providing choice between lots of different email clients.
I've been using Evolution 1.03 built from sources using Gentoo and I have been extremely happy with it. Evolution will even underline your spelling errors which my Outlook98 would not do. I imported six years worth of email which was an 800MB Outlook PST file and have some folders with over 6,000 messages. The filter functions are very powerful and I'm able to filter out spam very easily. There still is the odd bug that I encounter but none have been show stoppers that prevent its use. I'm sure those will be fixed soon. Evolution was the program that allowed me to use Linux as my primary computer. I only boot Windows to run my tax program and accounting programs now. I might try Plex86 to see if I can run my Windows legacy applications within Linux. Goodbye Outlook. /g
And, of course, cost aside, this also implies that a shop with microsoft-free aspirations currently has to buckle under and purchase at least one Windows server/exchange combo, plus hire or contract the skill to administer the beast. This is exactly what happened to my small company recently. We were going to go Linux (and in fact our Web site and time tracking server were Linux-based), but being a "virtual" company, with everyone working out of our homes, we required strong group collaboration. So, reluctantly, in came the W2K Server box running nothing but Exchange. If only there were a Linux-based option (even if it weren't OSS!). And yes, we looked at Notes, but I don't even want to go there... Of course there used to be OpenMail by HP (I think) but that's been sold off, is unavailable, and we can only wait and see where that goes (and, regardless, it won't be OSS).
Now that a polished, capable client exists, it would be fantastic to complete the offering with a server.
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"Am I the only person that wonders why MS hasn't sued the crap out of Ximian yet?"
Sort of. I don't know why MS hasn't sued them, but I'm more curious as to why Miguel/Ximian insists on copying *everything* MS does. I have a strong dislike of Outlook's UI, and so there's no chance I'm going to use Evolution - it looks exactly the same as it's non-free competitor. Yiick!
Gnumeric of course was the first such example. Use a windows-like GTK theme and you'll have trouble telling the difference between it and Excel. Doesn't Gnumeric also use a VB-like scripting language? I know the function library is very similar.
Then there's the whole Mono/.NET thing. C#, the intermediate format, the runtime - it's all a Java clone, but dancing to MS's tune rather than Sun's. Given how the majority of the Free Software / OSS community has shun Java, why are these guys jumping on what is essentially the same bandwagon, albeit one that's shiny new and pink, rather than a more mature one?
ObJavaFreeSoftwareDisclosure: I *am* a free software Java developer, so I guess I am biased here.. but honestly, what gives?
Anyone taking bets on Ximian's next product? An IE clone based on Gecko? A shoddy OS based on Linux? Sendmail with GUI just like Exchange's?
Mike.
-- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
Though many Linux apps suffer from clone ripoff syndrome - Evolution was designed like this on purpose.
A guy came by my desk yesterday, and I was running Evolution on my linux box. He sat there and stared at it for a moment. He thought it was Outlook. I told him it wasn't. He wasn't even aware that something like Evolution existed for *nix. So, I let him play with it for a while - he picked it up EASY.
I've also been doing some user tests with Openoffice and KOffice. By far, Evolution is the easiest for the typical office users to learn. They even call it Outlook.
I'm not a fan of the Outlook-esque UI, but if that means that Joe Blow can easily switch to Free Software, then I'm all for it.
I use Outlook at work... because I have to. Ok, so I could get a job at a place that doesn't use Windows, but I'm trying to get the ignorant to open their eyes and migrate. I'll save that story for another time...
But I've been using Outlook at work for years, including all of its "advanced" features like custom forms. I've been using Evolution at home for maybe 6 months. I deal with up to 100 emails a day at work and I have to say Outlook's scalability absolutely sucks. To keep it running at any reasonable speed, I let it "auto-archive". When my local mail box was about 85mb, the client was just too slow. Searches could take 3 or 4 minutes (on a fast machine). And the custom forms are horrible. I'll never use them again. We also tried importing a few thousand contacts through Outlook (to Exchange), but beyond maybe 100 for a single Outlook user, it grinds to a screeching hault.
It may sound silly, but my favorite feature of Evolution that's not in Outlook (97 at least) is the discussion threaded e-mail view. On a mailing list, for example, I can see a tree of the conversation and read it in conversation order rather than date. It's such a little thing, but that's really handy. With that, it's nice, easy configuration, it's speed, and all the other great features others are posting about, overall I prefer Evolution.
One other thing about it that relates to every Windows and KDE/GNOME app: Linux desktops are multi-threaded properly so windows will never freeze with an app and the desktop won't freeze unless the destop app itself has a problem. If Outlook freezes, well I've got to see that frozen windows until if and when I can "end task" and all of the other apps run slowly around it, when the desktop doesn't feel like freezing also. When connected to a big e-mail server, proper multi-threading is a great feature for the client to have.
Developers: We can use your help.
...is its lovely behavior of permanently saving every email as a file in your directory, even if you're using something like an IMAP server where the whole point is *not* to save messages locally. This leads to two problems:
1. My quota gets eaten twice. I lose the mail quota for having mail stored on the server, plus I lose disk quota for the local copies.
2. The directory is created with your default permissions, which for most shared systems include readability by others in the organization. I have been able to wander through other Evolution users' home directories and read their email. Joe User is not going to have a *clue* that this could be happening.
OK, sure, local caching is good, but use some compression or encryption or *something*. (And yes, I still use it, because it's the nicest client out there. But security is not *that* hard.)