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Ximian Desktop 2, Evolution Released
An anonymous reader writes "Ximian has released their long awaited Ximian Desktop 2, their popular Gnome-based desktop, and Evolution, their popular email client and calendar program. They can be found on the main Ftp server. You can also check their mirrors."
With all that has been said on the issue of GUI's on Linux, its great to see consistently improved releases across the board. Ximian 2 looks great, and the closely tied integration of OpenOffice is the kind of thing that will probably be appealing to those looking to roll Linux out to corporate desktops. Seems to be the 1.0 branch though, which is a shame since there are a lot of useful enhancements in the 1.1 series.
Since switching away from Windows, I will never again understand the use of graphical email clients... it's like using your TV as a letter opener IMHO ;)
wget -q -O - http://go.ximian.com |sh
I would say it doesn't get much easier than that =). If this version is anything like the last it will automagically detect your distribution and use its default package management system.
Fear trumps hope and ignorance trumps both
Is it easy to de-install and return to a pristine (current distribution level) state yet? The last time I tried this, which is required when performing a distribution update with Redhat, it required a couple of hours dependency resolution. As a result, I never re-installed after the distribution upgrade. Redhat now includes Evolution, and the new "--aid" option on rpm makes automatically pulling in dependencies much easier (I don't need Red-Carpet).
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Well, our press release points out we had roughly a million and a half installations of Ximian GNOME 1.4. And we had... well, we had a whole lot of downloads this morning well before it hit any community news sites, from people sitting and reloading ftp.ximian.com all night. :) So, I guess 'popular' is totally subjective, but I think it's fair to say there is at least some interest out there. :)
IAAL,BIANLY
Anyone have a bittorrent for this one?
Well, to be fair, Japanese support under the English version of Outlook ain't so hot either (see what happens when you receive an ISO-8859-1 message and use Japanese in your reply...).
Still, you do have a point - Evolution is basically unusable as a day-to-day mail client for multi-byte languages. Personally, I use Sylpheed, which is getting closer and closer to that magic 1.0 mark.
There is this thing called checksums. You might have heard of it.
I agree with the parent. If you're running a shell script, as root, straight from a web server, you migh as well run Windows.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
I don't know what the original author was doing but I did have trouble like that. An install with the RH 8.0 ISOs put Mozilla (v0.9 if I recall) in a different default directory than the rpm downloaded from Mozilla for upgrade to the current version. The Gnome shortcuts (installed with RH) would launch the original version of Moz instead of the fresh upgrade. All my preferences and shortcuts were only loading with the old version. And Evolution would use the old version as well. I don't think there is a hard link between Evo and Moz, but if both are present something is there. At the time I did that install, my Linux skills were still rusty or absent (over two years since my last try) and it took me an hour or so to figure it out.
In hindsight, although it was a pain in the ass, it created a valuable and often used learning opportunity - querying an rpm package to figure out where everything went. To RH old timers that's a pretty simple trick but to a newbie quite a challenge. So between fixing shortcuts and creating a few links it wasn't terribly complex to fix. Just one more hassle that leads the non-geek masses to opt for non-free stuff that works pretty well out of the box.
Just keep your mail on your mail server and use IMAP to connect to it. Then you can use Mutt, Evolution, KMail, Netscape/Mozilla or even Outlook ot get at your mail. Best of all, you can access it while you are at work too ;-) I presonally use Kmail when I'm at home, Mozilla if I have to boot Windows for a bit, Pine when I shell in, and Mozilla from work (since Outlook acted all pissy about it for no good reason). IMAP means enjoying your mail no matter where you are.
You can also move all your contacts and stuff into an LDAP server for bonus points. Now I have one address book which I can use wherever I am with all my email clients on any OS. Only downside, I have yet to find a decent client to update that LDAP address book...anyone got some recomendations?
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Well, I expected to be flamed to bits for this post, but am also prepared to back up my claims. I am, however, at work, and that means my replies may not be as comprehensive as I would like them to be.
you asked me to list some reasons as to why KDE consistently comes out on top of the pilots I have lead or been involved with. Well, there are many. Polished, looking good, fit for purpose, easy to configure, easy to manage, sane backend architecture and infrastructure are some of the ones that most frequently come up. On the other hand, GNOME is frequently found to be more robust in the individual components (whereas KDE is found to be more robust overall.) Those are just some of the reasons. I have well over 600 pages of documentation that back up this fact. Some are public domain. Most are not, sadly.
You ask me to list the reasons why XD2 will scare off any serious sysadmin. Here goes a brief list. XD2, as well as GNOME, employ a philosophy that "less is more" however, that concept is, initself, seriously debatable. Less is more may work for a sub-class of your end-user base (task-workers, typically 65% of the linux-deployable desktop users), but there are users where this doesn't work at all (knowledge-workers, about 30% of the linux-deployable users. Typcally, about 80% of a given Fortune 100 company is "linux deployable" on the desktop. These are, of course, generalisations and simplifications, but the point is clear). So at the end of the day, you will end up with a situation where you need a fast, flexible, scalable and manageable approach to administering and customising the desktop environment. different users have different needs, and these needs change form company to company. For Ximian to assume that "they know best for all" is ridiculous.
As th whether or not i use drugs, I don't. My knick is a reference to the Slashdot madness, and my willingness to participate in that. You, on the other hand, do not address the issue of lock in, that most certainly exists.
People buy the Ximian Connector for the same reasons MS is the market leader today: smart marketing, and selective education. I think we can at least both agree that the Linux desktop, in whatever form, is often the better solution to the MS desktop, although I suspect our reasons will probably significantly differ. Nevertheless, MS has the vast majority of market share. Go Figure! why do they buy that?
As to supporting an unix client on exchange: IMAP, SMTP, LDAP, WebDAV. etc. etc. They actually work, you know?
As long as the killscript ships with the default distro it comes with (in this case, redhat) I am working on the asumption it is required.
You can call me many things, but ignorant I am most certainly not. I may not share your opinion, and you may love CORBA while most enterprises don't use it, but still, that does not make me ignorant. CORBA is dying. Your sleigh of hand with mentioning lesser implementations still don't make CORBA much more alive. Moreover, you don't support your assertion that CORBA is alive and kicking. Why don't you search for "CORBA developer" and "J2EE developer" on any jobsite. or "CORBA Architect" and "J2EE Architect". That usually gives you an idea of how wanted a certain technology is in the marketplace.
Regarding the GConf comment, are you saying that binary databases are not used as GConf backends? that they are not possible? Sure XML is used now, but that is only after some seriousl flamewars a few years ago.
Phew, almost there.... Now, with respect to OpenOffice.org saving in MS format, that is just wrong in so many ways, it is an essay on its own (which I am, in fact, writing, and will be presenting as a discussion paper in a conference sometime soon). However, As MS has so successfully shown, Technology can NEVER replace education. when is the last time *you* researched document and information flow within the enterprise? I have, just recently, and found that roughly 65% of the information flow in a typical enterprise is internal, and the
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Good point... this check only makes a potential hacker need to go one step further.
MD5 checksums are verifyable against a trusted source for example against a known public key.
However, you could try the root servers, they are actively maintained and most people would know if they were giving out bogus information.
dig @a.gtld-servers.net ximian.com