Evolution is an office suite?

jdkchem

Last I checked, Evolution didn't support Exchange 2007. If they've added this, I will be very happy.

yanni85

Nice writeup I've been trying this for a few weeks now for my company as a way of slowly moving away from Windows. One problem I found though (and would love a solution if anyone has it) is the following:

We have users with multiple e-mail boxes they monitor in a single profile (all on exchange) by going to account advanced setting and adding the accounts. Is there a way in Evolution to do this?

CyberCowboy

@jdkchem:

Not an office suite like MSOffice or OpenOffice.org, but a contact manager, email, calendar kind of thing. It is similar to Outlook or Thunderbird with Lightning added.

MBGooner

Nice article. I added the same link to digg yesterday. With Thunderbird 3 adding Lightening I wonder how well Evolution will do in the Windows market.

TechBlazer

I tried this a while back on XP and the UI was ugly and I think it was buggy too. Now I'm just using gmail and gcal so I don't care anymore to find a desktop client. Evolution is great on linux but I fear it is the way of the past.

djnrempel

Doesn't support Exchange 2007, just tried it.

The How-To Geek

Takes forever to startup for me. Uninstalled!

Zerbe

Is it a prereq for free apps to look like crap? I mean come on, why does it have to look like a desktop app from Windows 95? Is a little UI polish out of the question?

I use Ubuntu as my main machine at home, and hate having to use Outlook at work, but at least it's interface is nice. It's the horrible email client part of Outlook that I hate.

Why can't all of the OSS people get together (Thunderbird, Evolution, Chandler) and make a *real* competitor to Outlook, rather than half-ass different parts of it split across multiple applications??

edmicman

I installed it a couple days ago on my home XP machine, and, to my consternation, it seems pretty fragile. In Linux I use Evolution over Thunderbird, and for a while now I've wished that Evolution was available to Windows users. I would ditch Thunderbird quickly for Evolution...but not yet, I guess.

adcaev

Buggy and slow, but it's a start.

spe05081

Yup!
Does not work with Exchange 2007, does not support SSL, and is slow to open. I'm still looking forward to it working tho.

Zero

zerolove

I tried this a while ago, and it didn't support SSL. Does it support SSL now?

Rick Lobrecht

I have a couple of questions. I use gmail and apparently they scan files for viruses. If I start using programs like this, do they still scan the attachments for viruses before they get to my computer? And is it really and advantage to use them instead of just using the web plataform?

Dangger

@Zerbe: That's what I was wondering. Last time I tried it, it was uber slow and the UI was hideous. Guess they still have some things to work out.

combat chuck

Started with Evolution when I switched to Ubuntu (getting to be six months ago), but it was slow and html emails rendered agonizingly slowly.

I'm using Thunderbird and Lightning .9 and - as a single user - I'm happier.

TCWriter

I've just started using Thunderbird with Lightening, and I really like the combo. Granted, I'm not a real power user of these kinds of apps - I'm only a student - but while we may not be able to compete with Outlook 2007 yet, we're on the way there.

And Thunderbird *can* connect to Exchange servers, last I checked. Setup may be slightly complicated, but it's just another IMAP server, right? (I tried to get it going at my school but they're restricted remote access to the server. Grrr.)

samgtaylor

@Dangger: Yes, if it goes to GMail's servers it's scanned for viruses. As for advantageous to use the desktop platform, that's purely personal preference. There's pros and cons to each and it's really just up to how you use your e-mail.

yanni85

BUGGY.

I tried to get this to work with our 2003 server. After finally getting to even talk to the server and bring up some e-mails, it would crashed and burned when I started to type an e-mail address into the send bar. I think it tried to look things up in the contacts... but I never got it to run again.

I wish it worked. Really I do, but it's buggy as hell.

Outlook is sitting there, mocking me, eating up my resources and searching ever so slowly...

gliscameria

Is there any other free applications or plugins that can connect to Microsoft Exchange? I know of WebMail+OWA extension, but that doesn't work on my server.

MePerson

For the curious, this app is not ready for primetime. Work was done by some developers outside of the actual Evolution team just to get a working build up and running for Windows. This should not be considered production ready or even really an official beta test. Nor should you let it reflect on the functionality and stability of official Evolution releases which are *nix only.

John T. Haller

FYI: Evolution works great in the exact right set of circumstances. You have to be running a fairly recent version of Linux, be connecting to a POP/IMAP server, or Exchange 2003 or earlier, and you have to have all the prereqs setup exactly right. If you do that, it's great. If not? Good luck. I even use the RPC over HTTPS for connecting to my Exchange 2003 server from Fedora 9 and love it.

I haven't tried the Windows version, but the Mac version was horrible. I had a lot of hope for it, since Entourage is so bad, and running Parallels or VMWare just for Outlook seems silly. But I think it has the same issue the Windows does. Linux is the only supported platform. The rest are also-rans.

I would be willing to pay money for a good RPC over HTTPS Exchange client on Mac, as would many of the users I support. As much as people bad mouth Exchange, it is the best client based enterprise collaboration server when integrated with things like Sharepoint and Windows Search Services. We have many people that use GMail and Google Apps for things, but as a company, the Microsoft enterprise stack does a lot more for us.

Exchange on Mac is the only component that doesn't work well currently across all our platforms. People (or at least the people I work with) want the power of the full Outlook client they have been using for years, so IMAP/LDAP support or OWA isn't enough. Hopefully Evolution will fill that gap on day soon.

Chris Meredith

@yanni85: Thanks a lot for the reply yanni85!

Dangger

"...some have reported buggy operation in Vista."

Yes, but that's a 'feature' of Vista and is standard across all applications... isn't it?

telecommatt

@Zerbe: Ditto ... It took a few minutes for the config window to come up at first launch and now that I've finished adding in all my account data I've been waiting 5min for it to start! More like (d)Evolution, if you ask me; and not in a good way :(

OriginalGabriel

I've tried running Evolution on Ubuntu for several months. Wasn't terribly happy. Finally switched to Thunderbird which is way faster. I think I'll keep ti.

tusseyd

Still awaiting a Thunderbird extension which connects to MAPI (especially one which included Lightning integration).

I like the idea of Evolution but I haven't bothered setting it up on my Ubuntu machines. Mostly because you left it out of your google calendar synquing article. Maybe it's time to add that in?

JamesIsIn

While its a mail client with add-ons for IM, contacts, etc I don't think you can call it an office suite. MS Office has Outlook AND Word, Excel, Powerpoint. Should the day come that Evolution and OpenOffice merge and integrate, then you'll have an "Office Suite" to rival M$.

TammyDevon

As far as I can remember, the last time I tried Evolution, I found that it doesn't fully support Exchange, only Outlook Web Access (it just screen-scrapes the web interface for Exchange). Unfortunately we don't have OWA enabled on our server, and nor do we have IMAP enabled.

Even if OWA were enabled, there are still many features unsupported in OWA and Evolution which I need, such as shared calendars and delegate inboxes. So I'm stuck with Outlook. =(

jtj

The OWA-based Exchange plugin is no longer supported. A MAPI-based plugin that supports Exchange 2007 is under development.

ShawNiger

@The How-To Geek: <cry>

Michael Campbell

Nice idea poor execution. Evolution on Windows does not appear to keep up with the core. That concerns me, when do bug fixes come in?

tcblack

Exchange 2007 is planned for Evolution 2.26 with the new MAPI plugin.

YeshayaPolyhymnia

Let me guess. You've never used Vista extensively before yet have 'expert' oppinions about it.

PrimaveraHalomitosis