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Is There a Linux Client Solution for Exchange 2007?

Posted by timothy on from the switch-to-postcards dept.

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.

10 of 385 comments (clear)

  1. Quick and dirty by cixelsyd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Virtualize a Windows box with Outlook.

    --
    Take a dollar, divide it by 100, take two and call me in the morning.
    1. Re:Quick and dirty by c_g_hills · · Score: 5, Informative

      Try and get your hands on a copy of TinyXP Rev05. It is the smallest XP re-spin I have found. It uses no more than 45MB RAM after boot-up, leaving plenty of space for your applications.

  2. Duh by IceCreamGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just telnet in and use SMTP commands.

    1. Re:Duh by Culture20 · · Score: 5, Informative

      # man uuencode
      uuencode(1)
      NAME
                    uuencode, uudecode - encode a binary file, or decode its representation
      SYNOPSIS
                    uuencode [-m] [ file ] name

                    uudecode [-o outfile] [ file ]...

      DESCRIPTION
                    Uuencode and uudecode are used to transmit binary files over transmission mediums that do not support other than
                    simple ASCII data. ...

    2. Re:Duh by geminidomino · · Score: 5, Funny

      Do you mean to tell me you have not written and debugged a sendmail.cf file?

      Anyone who has knows that Sendmail should be boycotted for not properly crediting Lovecraft in the design of sendmail.cf

    3. Re:Duh by nabsltd · · Score: 5, Informative

      Why? Does the mail server you are trying to connect to not support the latest SMTP RFC?

      Using "EHLO" can give you extended information that tells you the capabilities of the mail server, and when you're trying to diagnose a problem, that's a good thing. Many times I have figured out a mail server is misconfigured from only the response to "EHLO".

  3. Re:what am I missing here... by timster · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, Exchange does support IMAP, but usually Exchange admins disable it for the explicit purpose of preventing people from using clients other than Outlook.

    --
    I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
  4. Re:what am I missing here... by bonkeydcow · · Score: 5, Funny

    Upgrade to thundercougerfalconbird!

  5. OpenChange by KatTran · · Score: 5, Informative

    OpenChange is an open source MAPI client that supports all versions of Exchange up to and including 2007, it is native MAPI and thus does everything you would expect an Exchange client to do, and it does it a reasonable speed.

    http://www.openchange.org/

    There is already an Evolution plug-in that will be mainlined into GNOME 2.24. However, you can currently get it for Fedora 10 and other platforms.

    The current Evolution plug-in uses OWA web page scrapping and is really lame, and it most likely broke from web interface changes in 2007.

  6. Re:evolution branch by pinballer · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.