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Ximian Evolution User Experiences?
An Anonymous Crawdad asks: "My workplace is a mixture of Windows and Linux users, but we use Exchange as our email server for the groupware features. For the Linux users this makes it necessary to have a second Windows box just for email. I'm curious as to how well the Ximian's Evolution and Connector works with the Exchange server since it has been out for a little while and reviews on the net are a little lacking. I don't think there is a "try before you buy" option. My general belief is that 1.0 releases are never worth buying, but how much hope should I have for the future?"
Works very well; calendaring supported. IMAP support is good, too. GnuPG integration works (basic, signing, verifying, no real key management); LDAP directory lookups work well, smart .sig based upon selected sending account, Palm sync works.
It's a damned good mailer.
I'd be interested in hearing other people's stability experiences. I'm running Gentoo and I can't keep Evolution 1.0.7 running more then 30 seconds without a crash. I can sort of use 1.0.5, but it's still fairly fragile.
It's so unstable for me that I figure it's got to be some sort of config problem (gentoo can make things a little TOO up to date sometimes), and I'd like to hear how Evolution does on other, more conservative, distros, especially Red Hat. Can you actually use Evolution, or is it a lot of pretty pictures followed by a segfault?
(Please specify distributions as appropriate; I think it may matter here.)
How many people use the groupware features? Which ones do they use? If you're mainly using them as top-down push (e.g. putting a meeting on everyone's calendar, which sends them an email), why not just have the Linux clients use Exchange as an IMAP server?
DMCA - Chilling free speech since 1998.
As a note, it only works with Exchange 2000. Check what version you are running... if you are using an older version of exchange, then it won't do you any good. We talked to them a few months ago, and they said they weren't planning on doing ports to older versions of exchange, so...
I currently use Evolution 1.0.7 in an Exchange 2000 environment but, without the connector. I user POP & SMTP to talk with Exchange. Comparing it to Outlook 2000 I would say that it is very good overall. But there are a few "rough edges".
;)
Speed is the first issue. Performing the various daily functions is noticably slower than with Outlook on the same machine. Opening a message or sending a message all take a moment longer than Outlook, which seems to snap right to it. The sluggishness is livable but, it is noticable too.
The second is probably a matter of taste. I use Evolution with KDE 3 and the Evolution colors are all gray washouts. This isn't too bad at first but, it does cause the interface to lack contrast which I find tiring after a while. I haven't found a way to change the colors but, it is probably possible. Perhaps, through the GDM configuration but, that's more trouble than it's worth.
The only other possible issue I have is with an over abundance of menu options that don't seem to offer any real value. I still haven't figured out what the difference is between "Empty Trash" and "Expunge". Are they both necessary?
Other than that, I think Evolution is VERY comparable to Outlook. I love some of the features that it has that Outlook lacks. For instance the ability to view HTML formatted mail but not download embedded images off the net. This means no more dot clear images tracking the message and no auto-run scripts doing dirty deeds.
VFolders, a method of storing searches in a folder view format, are very nice. I must confess though, I don't use it much. I only have 5 VFolders configured.
Calendaring and contact management is great too, though I can't speak for Exchange interoperability with the Calendar, I feel confident based on Evolution that the connector would be good too.
As a whole I strongly recommend Evolution. It is an Outlook killer. Unfortunately though, it doesn't forward Melissa, Code-Red, Anna Kourikova, I Love You.....
If I could get someone to pay me for constantly tinkering with my boxen, sure, I'd run Genoo - assuming I didn't have any -other- work I needed to get done. ;>
I'm running Evolution 1.0.7 on Slackware 8.1, and it's rock-solid.
I have Evolution 1.0.7 running perfectly on Gentoo. Several machines, in fact. Had a problem with 1.0.0 or somewhere around then, but it was minor and hasn't happened since. Works like a charm. Snappier than Outlook ever was.
I'm using gcc-3, too - no problems. What are your C/XXFLAGS? Overoptimization can be killer. Have you tried the Gentoo Forums? They're a big help.
its nice and I played with it for a while but went back to netscape(mozilla 1.0)
why ? because I use that on all platforms and its nice to have the same gui everywhere win32 mac and unix
what would be the killer feature ?
well for me being able to use the command line to read emails via ssh
(yes I know it can do portf/X11 forwarding but I dont want that e.g. i'm on another box and useing putty I just want to check my mails
haveing seperate pine install and config is a pain a simple program that picked up evo's prefs would be good )
regards
john jones
I've been following evolution for a long time now.. Early version pre 1.0 were unstable. However, in true unix fashion the post 1.0 versions have had excellent stability.
I've been using it exclusively for more than a year and I would never switch back to netscape mail or mozilla mail at this point. Evolution is much faster on my 600Mhz system, and it looks beautiful. It has a rich set of features, an excellent IMAP implementation, innovative stuff like the VFolders, ability to block external images in html mail, palm synchronization, gpg support... I know this is a little too glowing but I can't say enough about how happy I am with this software.
Evolution and Galeon together provide such a good internet experience that I've been been able to get at least 3 people to switch to Linux.on their merits alone. A coworker just bought an iBook and while she loves OSX she complains all the time that the default browser isn't as good as galeon and the default mailer isn't as nice as evolution.
I've been running 1.0.1 on Mandrake 7 for several months now. It does everything I need and does it well. Calendar, contacts, virtual folders, filtering, multiple accounts, etc. are all there. Stability is excellent as well.
I have to say, if you'd join the evo mailing
i on
list, you'd be very up to date on what problems
people are having.
Note that I have no experience with the connector
portion, as I convinced my corporate masters
long ago that Exchange was a tool of the devil
[;)], but the most common issues I see on the
list are:
1) lack of inline pgp/gpg support
2) spell check problems
3) inability to mail calendar items (which may or
may not be solved by Connector).
http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/evolut
In all, I don't think I could *ever* go back to netscape or mozilla for mail. When I finally can ditch windows at the office, I expect the app that lets me get away with it will be Evolution.
i do this very thing at work ... i've got all my messages (over 6000 and growing daily) in one massive mailbox, which makes it easy to scroll through in pine, from wherever i am in the company ... and i have evolution, on my desktop, set up to point to the same IMAP account, and do virtual-folder sorting ... that way all my mail is nice and sorted when i'm in the pretty gui that makes it easy to navigate, and all my mail in a nice single list when i'm in a low-bandwidth text session (ie, pine) ...
i love evolution, and wish there were a windows version so i could switch to it at home, too
09
First, Exchange allows you to use the web to access emails and calendar service? I found it to be faster than Evolution. That said, here is my own experience using Evolution.
:)
Yeah, but have you tried using OWA under Exchange 5.5? It sucks ass. No better than a hotmail account, and slower. Now OWA for Exchange 2000 is nice. It looks and feels just like Outlook. It's better under IE since there are activeX controls for most of it, but using under mozilla is still quite nice. If you have 5.5 though, the web interface is a pig and not worth using except in a dire emergency.
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"For the Linux users this makes it necessary to have a second Windows box just for email."
Do you mean that literally? If yes, I wonder why you aren't using one of the many cheaper options. Off the top of my head:
- Exchange IMAP support
- Outlook through WINE (not sure about Outlook Exchange support under WINE)
- Outlook on a Windows session in VMWare
- Dual booting Windows to run Outlook
We have a few Linux users (and more, all being well) on the desktop ,with Exchange 5.5 as the company's internal mail server. This actually recludes us using Connector, as it's only available for 2000.
;-) (Will be nice when someone writes a free backend calendar server for Evo though - will make it easier for us to propse a wholesale movement away from Exchange)
,and trivial to copy/paste into an appointment in your own calendar.
We have no problems, we use IMAP & SMTP for mail, we can access the directry using LDAP, the only thing we can't access is shared calendaring, but we don't care about that
When we schedule meetings, Outlook users can happily see & use the appointment dobries sent to them in iCal format, although when they do the same to use, Outlook doesn't send them in the right format, so the information just appears as the body of the mail, it's readable though
It even handles mails sent in that annoying TNEF format of Outlook's, provided you have an up-to-date version of WINE or gtnef (See bug #232)
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
I'm in a very similar situation. At work I use Linux on my workstation--one of the few. We use Outlook pretty extensively, and so far Codeweavers Office works pretty well. It's around $50, and you can install Word, Outlook, Excel, and Internet Explorer, if you so desire, which is slightly flakier than normal with the plugin. Our Exchange servers are still running NT 4.0, which prevents me from trying Evolution.
Anyway, here's the link.
I use windows at work, but don't like to use Office, so I use Mozilla for mail, and use outlook web access to get to calendar and other groupware information. Problem solved.
Almost any exchange server will have an imap server. (imap.exchange.xxx)
But the ones I have include a nasty UI bug, in message composition, I HAVE to shift-tab to move from the message box into the address boxes, mouse clicking does not work here. Also it seems to leave a lot of orphan processes when it quits, even if you quit gracefully. Often after exiting Evolution I cannot relaunch without doing killall evolution-mail first.
This is with Evolution 1.0.5 and 1.0.8, as well as 1.0.3 (supported), on RH 7.1 and 7.3 in KDE2 & 3.
I haven't tried Connector because I'm too lazy and cheap, but it works great with IMAP.
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