Is There a Linux Client Solution for Exchange 2007?

CrazedSanity writes "I have been working at my state job for about 7 months now, using the Exchange plugin for Evolution to check my email. Very recently the higher-ups decided to migrate to Exchange 2007, which effectively destroyed my ability to check my email through any method other than webmail (which means I have to constantly refresh/reload the webmail window). I'm sure somebody else has encountered the problem, but I'm wondering if anybody has come up with a working solution?" Note: CrazedSanity's looking for a client that will work with Exchange in a situation where replacing the Exchange install with an open-source equivalent isn't an option.

Comments

evolution branch

[rufus t firefly]

Did you try the work they were doing here? They did mention that it's supposed to work with Exchange 2007.

Re:evolution branch

[rufus t firefly]

I've spent considerable time trying to get this work and it is still nowhere near being mature enough to be usable.

Don't get me wrong, it's better than it was a few months ago. It will allow Evolution to make a connection and even download most of the folder information. For us, it has trouble deciphering email addresses in the headers, doesn't display some messages at all and, most annoyingly, continues to consume all available memory until it crashes.

Yeah, that sounds like early stage Evolution. It was ridiculously unstable for a long time, and still gives me occasional problems and, at the least, UI issues when connecting to a large mailbox.

It's more one of those instances where either some company has to put a few dollars in to help out with development, or just wait it out and hope someone else does it first.

What I did...

[ivan256]

I just waited until the same higher-ups that forced the upgrade got so fed up with the poor performance of Exchange 2007 that they forced us to switch back.

Took about 3 weeks.

Re:What I did...

[Meorah]

anecdotal exchange 2007 failures are excuses that uneducated people use to declare their mental supremacy. unified messaging is recommended to be on a separate OSE from your mailbox server specifically because of the extra horsepower it needs, and the separate IO it needs when you install an Office Communication Server with Exchange in tandem.

$50k hardware is overkill for a simple fail-over cluster for 1000 or fewer mailboxes, but $20k sounds about right for 2 separate physical servers running with 6+ spindles in each one.

quite frankly, exchange 2007 is probably the nicest MS product ever produced for a linux admin, web programmer, xml scripter, and/or CLI guru. But since it only runs on windows server and requires windows clients for full functionality, you just bring the same old whiny arguments about how OWA lite sucks and there aren't any good non-windows clients (duh?)

Re:Yes. Zimbra.

[LWATCDR]

Zimbra looks nice right up until it comes time to pay for it.
Zimbra mobile and blackberry support are only available for the pay versions.
Outlook/Mapi sync and ISync are only available in the professional version.
I don't mind paying and frankly the price is very good but I really don't like the idea of "Renting" software. You must pay by the seat and by the year for standard and Professional version. What A PAIN.
Every time you hire somebody are you going to to have to go through a bunch of stuff to add a seat?

The price to be honest is great but I wonder about the hassle of adding a seat here and a seat there.
I guess I am spoiled by FOSS when it comes to things like servers. What a pain for a small to medium sized company.

Re:Quick and dirty

[Etrias]

Not a great solution. Yeah you could do this, but then you have to get the VM up and running (VirtualBox is good for this), make sure you have some sort of Windows license, install Outlook (again, with a license that works), join the VM to the domain (if you want seamless access) and set up your profile. Hey, now that's done, every day when you boot up, you boot up your VM, log in (if you joined it to the domain), fire up Outlook and watch as your VM chews up a good chunk of your processing power running a VM to run one app.

There's not a silver bullet here unfortunately. A VM, while handy and possible, isn't an elegant solution and it sounds like he's been working off of Evolution, so we're pretty much looking at just getting mail running. Easiest way: ask the local techs to make sure IMAP is running and install Thunderbird. Like I said, not ideal, but that's when you get when Microsoft decides not to play nicely with others.

Re:Quick and dirty

[catmistake]

Outlook 2003 works under WINE.

But the poster's ask brings to the front a question I've been asking for years: Linux has virtuously duplicated nearly every Windows functionity... it's almost like that is Linux's purpose, a free alternative to anything available from Microsoft. Why isn't there an OSS integrated mail/cal client that duplicates Outlook's functionality, from push to public folders to scheduling and invites to calendar publishing?? It is due. Heck, I'd even be happy with a non-OSS alternative.