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Aethera 1.0

gatch writes "theKompany.com released version 1.0 of their cross-platform PIM suite Aethera. KOrganizer is included as a calendar and todo list component. Check out these screenshots. According to Shawn Gordon, theKompany president, 'Actually we are about 2 weeks away from having Aethera work with Kolab [groupware server] - at least that is our sense of it at the moment.' Interesting discussion at KDE.news."

20 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. alternatives.. by njan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ..this is looking like a viable alternative to evolution, which aside from raising the level of development for this sort of software, should be beneficial to the desktop linux market; having a viable alternative to outlook is one thing, but having a community in which more than one are being actively developed to compete or provide more choice for companies migrating to different operating systems is excellent. :)

    The interface certainly doesn't look as pretty as evolution (although it's hard to tell; after 5 posts, the server is treacley already), but I'm not really into KDE interfaces. *shrug*.. it'll be interesting to see how much of a userbase it builds..

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  2. Move from Outlook... by nother_nix_hacker · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...excellent, I hope it's buggy so I can migrate from Outlook easily.

    1. Re:Move from Outlook... by arcanumas · · Score: 4, Funny

      I am afraid Bug-Compliance (TM) will be available in version 2. Along with a MS-Virus (TM) emulation for allowing you to run Windows based viruses.

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  3. Brought to you by the letter K by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's so Kool dude. Let's Klap our hands in Komplete celebration.

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    "Sufferin' succotash."
    1. Re:Brought to you by the letter K by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      That's "kelebration."

  4. PIM? Groupware? Exchange servers? by Dark+Lord+Seth · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think I'm lost in the world of IT about what PIM, groupware and all that actually do, what applications they got in this world (both in professional and personal use) and how these technologies improve our current situation?

    1. Re:PIM? Groupware? Exchange servers? by jester · · Score: 3, Funny

      Groupware ... thats where they bundle so many things into a single 'app' that it takes up large chunks of your memory even if you don't really want to use half of it.

      I hope they will make the 'components' available as individual apps, or are we just talking KMail, KOrganiser, etc ?

    2. Re:PIM? Groupware? Exchange servers? by panurge · · Score: 4, Informative
      Well, in theory they allow efficient cooperation between users within the corporate environment by providing access to shared data and resources, by providing group access to diaries, and by providing an effective means to sort and categorise information.
      BEGIN cynicism:
      In practice, often the only feature that really gets used is email (which could just as easily be handled with plain old SMTP) but at least Exchange keeps MCSEs employed.END cynicism

      I guess groupware has a bell function: the people who most need it are too disorganised to use it, the people best qualified to use it are in the jobs where they don't need it, or make their own arrangements.

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  5. Re:Looks too much like XP by zog+karndon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So why don't people apply the same insight to Microsoft? There's got to be a thousand people who say that "Microsoft doesn't innovate - every single one of their products was based on .

    I think the parent has a point. Open Source has to be held to exactly the same standard as everybody else.

  6. Advantages over Kontact? by brunes69 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Could someone in the know explain to me the advantages this have over Kontact, the KDE PIM solution? Since it is already using KAddressbook and KOrganizer, that juts leaves ToDo and email.... KMail is already a highly capable email client, I doubt they could improve on that much?

  7. Re:Looks too much like XP by kfg · · Score: 3, Informative

    You are neglecting the fact that AT&T UNIX was at one time open source. That's how Berkeley got ahold of the code in the first place.It was even free as in beer.

    BSD UNIX is not a clone of AT&T UNIX. Through the efforts of Bill Joy and others BSD evolved directly from it.In an open manner. And they gave it away.

    That's why AT&T sued BSDI for selling it. . . and lost, because the code was already open source.

    KFG

  8. Okay, here is the Linux compatible equivalent. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 4, Funny

    Until they can build in compatibility with Microsoft vulnerabilities, you are welcome to use the Linux virus. It works on the honor system:

    Make annoying changes to your files. Then send this Linux honor system virus to everyone you know.
  9. Torrent for the screenshots by McDutchie · · Score: 3, Informative

    The server is slow and may be totally slashdotted soon, so here is a torrent I made which contains all the 11 screenshots in .png format. Please use this instead of the main webserver. (Read about BitTorrent if you're not familiar with it.)

  10. Re:Looks too much like XP by Dot.Com.CEO · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Mozilla with an LDAP server runs rings about Micro$oft's closed-source ass. You obviously have no idea what the hell Exchange is and what it is designed to do. Also, I find it ridiculous you make fun of the NAME of "Outlook" while juxtaposing it to "Mozilla". Please... I mean, I have never heard of anyone resorting to namecalling a piece of software in order to win an argument... It takes all kinds, I guess...

    "I don't recall ever having to install "CRITICAL SECURITY UPDATES" for Mozilla because of some worm going around." Please give me your IP addy. Check this out: one, two, three. I can go on if you want...

    Access sucks. So spake the wise Seth. Why? Please grace us with your obviously paramount knowledge of everything software related. And what, pray tell, is the Open Source alternative? Text files indexed through a bunch of perl scripts outputting LaTEX? Sure.

    But you go on, saying Honestly, LaTeX has been superior to that piece of closed-source crapware for 15 years. It appears to me that, frankly, you have no clue what Word is since you insist on comparing it to Latex.

    Finally, please grow up and stop writing "Micro$oft". It is idiotic. Trust me on that.

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  11. Adds to the confusion by JarekC · · Score: 3, Interesting
    It seems that recently we witness a constant stream of KDE-based solutions for Outlook/Exchange replacements. Yes, I know it's all about having a choice and each of them makes me happy we have another alternative, but at the same time it makes me even more confused.

    We have the set of standard KDE apps: KMail, Korganizer, KAddressBook and so on, we have Kroupware project that produced Kolab Server and Kolab Client, we have Kontact (which according to its FAQ is supposed to replace Kolab Client) and now we have Aethera.

    At my company I'm lobbying for approving a Linux/KDE-based workstation an an alternative for MS Windows-based setup. However, the requires picking up and recommending a single, unified PIM solution that would be used by employees with Linux/KDE setups. With all those competing solutions appearing one by one it's starting to be quite a difficult task.

    1. Re:Adds to the confusion by Rhone · · Score: 3, Informative

      Well, to be fair to Aethera, it has been in development for a long time--it didn't just pop up out of nowhere. If I recall correctly, it began as a KDE-based Outlook-clone called Magellan. I think development of Magellan started back around the time development of Evolution started, if not earlier. Aethera was theKompany's fork of Magellan (I don't know for sure, but I think they forked it because they had an interest in Magellan and were sick of it being developed at a snail's pace). Of course, work on Aethera didn't seem to happen much faster... do a search for "Aethera" on Slashdot and you'll see "Aethera Beta 1 Released" back in January... 2001. Maybe changing from KDE to just QT slowed them down a bit.

  12. Re:I don't mean to be a troll.. by Phil+John · · Score: 3, Informative

    Worked fine for me, I'm running a nightly though!

    Is it that they are transparent with no background texture and therefore hard to read? The problem is you didn't wait for the menu background image to load, it took >1 minute for me, probably because they're being slashdotted.

    --
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  13. Competition by Synn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is normal in the open source community and actually fairly healthy. What happens is that the community in general sees a need and then you'll have several solid solutions developed in response.

    For example, 4 years ago Linux wasn't "Enterprise" enough because it didn't have a journaling filesystem. Today we have several: ext3, reiserfs, jfs, xfs and probably others.

    Before that we needed a decent GUI toolset to replace Motif(which was commercial-only). Several sprung up and today we have 2 really solid and widely used ones, GTK and QT.

    So while it's confusing today to have so many choices, typically a couple will dominate the "market" once everything settles down.

  14. Re:Good news for KDE users... by ThyTurkeyIsDone · · Score: 5, Funny

    On a related note, where did this K-ism thing come from? It really bugs me, quite honestly.

    Some names you can use if you don't want the KDE folks to make a KDE port of your app: Rap, Rud, Ringeworthy, Rotch, Ock, Litoris, Unt...

  15. It's GPL by Rhone · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yeah, I found it kind of strange that theKompany's web site doesn't make Aethera's license entirely clear. On the other hand, when you click on a download link and get sent to Sourceforge without having to buy it, it becomes pretty obvious that it's at least free-as-in-beer.

    And if you download and untar the source code (as I did, because I was curious about this as well), you'll see from the COPYING and COPYING.GPL files that it's apparently licensed under the GPL.

    Yay.