Linux Desktop Email Key to Success 478
littlepill writes "It looks as though email clients are vital for Linux to succeed in the desktop battle. ZDNet says, "the lack of a powerful email application could hinder the adoption of Linux on the desktop". So, even though Novell's Evolution is one viable and valid product, it seems that there is a clear "message to application vendors to focus on developing a quality email application for the Linux desktop"." I'm unconvinced- I think webmail will soon be replacing client side readers for all but power users.
thunderbird? (Score:5, Informative)
I second the webmail thing. Before I quit my last windows-dominated job (to try my hand at this [rubyonrails.com] full-time), it was common for me to use the IE-based Outlook Web Access client since Outlook itself was often buggier.
OSDL desktop architect meeting blog... (Score:1, Informative)
at the OSDL desktop architects' meeting; see
http://kegel.com/osdl/da05.html [kegel.com]
Now I RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Re:AJAX+Webmail (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Thuderbird Wins...Just Fix The Calendar! (Score:4, Informative)
Even when Evolution is working fine, it's dog-slow against Exchange, contacts are weak, public folder support is weak (if one creates a task folder or calendar folder in public folder, it's not recognized as such), and, well. . . it's the best option one has in Linux for Exchange interoperability, with the possible exception of wine/M$ Office.
With that said, if only Novell would fix Evolution and shove an update to the broken packages (Evolution, the connector, and libsoup) I'll be happy, even with the slow performance and poor public folder support.
Scalix (Score:2, Informative)
50% Of Companies Use Exchange/Outlook (Score:2, Informative)
Ironically, the next version of OWA will be so good that the Outlook rich-client will become more or less optional. As long as your Linux machine has a browser capable of displaying OWA, you've solved your e-mail problems.
The current version of OWA already has decent support for non-IE browsers, and they're apparently going to improve that a great deal in the next release.
See: Exchange 12 Channel 9 Video [msdn.com]
Re:HUH? (Score:4, Informative)
http://tml-blog.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
He speaks of running evolution on windows in the 3rd or 4th blog entry.
Re:An unpopular opinion (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously - if I worked for a company whos IT department might try and force Exchagne on me - I'd quit. Period. Fortunately, we don't run MS operating systems or applications of any kind and actually aren't allowed to outside of certain constrained parameters, so I don't ever have to worry about that.
But hey, if you want a coffee maker that washes your car and makes toast too - go for it. I'd rather have separate tools that make really good coffee and really good toast than a half-assed everything.
Evolution + Exchange-plugin = Exchange connection (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why do we dance around the truth? (Score:3, Informative)
WebSphere, too. For standalone, and for WEB-based apps.
You can say what you want about java being inadequate, but it's the way to make cross-platform apps, and it works.
I don't like standalone apps, I develop web apps, with some ajax-stye interaction, because of ease of deployment, but I honestly believe that java is the way to go if you want cross platform apps.
With SWT and GCJ, you can even build native graphical
Plus you have the best developer environments available, netbeans and eclipse/websphere.
Re:Try outlook web access... (Score:3, Informative)
Check out his post history, they're all "look at this great thing that microsoft makes"
Astroturfing is worse than ads above the pisser
Re:Thuderbird Wins...Just Fix The Calendar! (Score:2, Informative)
I also had a lot of trouble displaying, or manipulating folders with a ton of emails in them (~7000). Sometimes it would hang trying to display. Sometimes I could not shift-click to select multiple emails. Sometimes I couldn't drag and drop. Sometimes I couldn't even select an email (!).
I evetually started using it with my personal email accounts since they are low volume. Thunderbird works great for that since its free and has great built in spam filtering. As a replacement for Outlook at work though... unfortunately it has a ways to go.
I say perfect its primary function (email) first before anything else.
Re:An unpopular opinion (Score:2, Informative)
Well, let's see:
If you still don't "get it" you haven't had to deal with any kind of corporate office where there are non-geeks employed. Microsoft Exchange/Outlook didn't succeed because it sucks, and it didn't succeed because centralizing information flow and collaboration was unnecessary. It met a demand and unfortunately open-source alternatives to Exchange/Outlook (usable ones, that is) are lacking.
Re:Prefer thunderbird (Score:3, Informative)
Huh? This one I just don't understand. Finding unread messages is trivial in Evolution - just look in the "Unread Messages" virtual folder which contains all unread messages, and only unread messages. If for some reason your copy of evolution didn't come configured with such a thing, it's trivial to set up (Tools->Virtual Folder Editor create a new one and set "Status is not read" as the criteria) and it can group all unread mail across all your accounts. You can even have nice categorised vfolders (All unread mail newer than 2 weeks, all unread mail from a sender, or group of senders etc.)
Sorting may well be easier in Thunderbird (I haven't tried it in a very very long time), but I really don't see how "finding unread mail in Evolution is difficult" when all you have to do is click on the folder labelled "Unread Mail" to find it all.
Jedidiah.
Re:E-mail or more? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Calendaring is not e-mail. (Score:1, Informative)
It is however, a mistake to make the integration of calendaring with email make the email software too bloaty.
A lot of non-business desktop users on this thread will fail to see the point of integrating calendaring and email but that's because they don't schedule meetings every day. If email's what you want use thunderbird or one of many apps.
The concern is for the business adoption of linux it'd be good to have something nice for groupware, there's different needs. Generally the bloat of groupware email+calendaring apps frustrate desktop users who just want to get their email and maybe sync their addressbook and calendar with a PDA.
Re:Webmail for everyone but power users? Nah. (Score:2, Informative)