Take the Enterprise server OS market for instance, a traditionally strong area for Linux anyway, Canonical (the controlling company of Ubuntu) have rightly seen where they need to position themselves to gain the advantage with Server OS’s and have gone down the Cloud route with Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud. Also - beefing up the support options and the packaging to at least align themselves with the normal market leaders Suse and Red Hat helps to gain further server adoption by to using the momentum of all the other Ubuntu areas and user allegiances.
The personal desktop / netbook area is the next to be tackled. Obviously Ubuntu has been trundling along as the best choice for the tiny personal Linux desktop market for a while but it has needed to really stand-out to do battle with Windows and the latest player (rising on the back of the i[Pod|Phone] wave) Mac OS. Again Canonical have pulled the rabbit out of the hat and pointed Ubuntu desktop in exactly the right direction – Social Networking. With Ubuntu Lucid having fully integrated Social Networking and chat they’ve shown they know how people actually use their computers. 9 times out of 10 someone is turning their computer on to participate in Facebook or make Tweets on Twitter, or for the Old-Skoolers chat on MSN. To make the desktop OS actually part of this is exactly the best way to position it and ensures it’s already ahead of the opposition when they realise they need to do the same thing.
Finally, there’s an area that Ubuntu is very weak on and it’s where efforts need to be concentrated next - The Enterprise Desktop.
Novell have previously tried to leverage that market but did it all wrong. They didn’t understand that there is just one killer feature (just as with integrated desktop social networking) that needs to be in there which is Exchange support. Outlook and to a lesser extent Office keeps Windows XP / 7 firmly planted on the Enterprise desktop purely because of its ability to work perfectly with Exchange. Businesses now (rightly or wrongly) revolve around shared mail, contacts, calendaring and scheduling, and Exchange shows no signs of being supplanted yet as the default choice for this functionaility.
With all this in mind I present my recommendation for Ubuntu: Fork Evolution.
Evolution has some good MAPI functionality but for every step forward, it takes 2 steps back. The functionality is very buggy but at the same time is almost there and some real concerted structured development would see it work very nicely and be a drop in replacement for Outlook.
Also, Evolution needs all of this Social Networking goodness that is present in the me menu in Lucid to be integrated into Evolution too. One place for all messaging/contacts/calendaring with Social Networking in there too and we’re getting very close to a framework that supports the multitude of communication mediums we use today.
So in my mind, Ubuntu and Canonical can move one major step forward by leveraging Evolution. Make it fit the new Ubuntu desktop ethos better and make it work properly with Exchange. Once you do that, world domination for FOSS will follow.
You know all this is possible without forking Evolution right?
ReplyDeleteEvolution is a lost cause, it's been seriously broken for two years, the current version is practically unusable. If scarce resources are to be used on e-mail clients then they would be better spent on Thunderbird. Thunderbird is fast, stable, multi-platform, and it's extensible through it's plugins.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see the major distros switch their default mail clients from Evolution to Thunderbird. It would be helpful if the process of converting from Evolution to Thunderbird were to be automated. It's not very hard to port from one to the other because they both use MBOX format, but it ought to be completely painless.
Any missing functionality can be added with plugins. Making Thunderbird as ubiquitous as Firefox would be helpful to the Linux community because it becomes one more major application that will run on both Linux and Windows.
I'll second the Thunderbird recommendation. I have been using Thunderbird for a while now for my personal email (IMAP) and I love it. And the Lightening add-on for calendaring (or actually Sunbird, which I prefer these days) with the Google Provider work wonderfully. The SyncKollab add-on to keep my contacts in sync, and I have everything I need on the several desktop and laptop systems I use, mostly Ubuntu but also some Windows 7.
ReplyDeleteWhat would truly complete this, and allow me to reduce my use of Windows even further, would be for Thunderbird to support Exchange, and have a calendar provider I could use with both Lightening and Sunbird. Right now Exchange, particularly calendar support, is the single biggest thing that keeps me having to turn on those Windows boxes and use Outlook.
While I know Evolution is supposed to be able to do this, every time I have tried it I find it appallingly slow, prone to regular and frequent crashes, and buggy when it doesn't crash. I have hunted many times across the web for tips, suggestions, etc. and just keep seeing that many if not most other people have the same problem, with no solutions. I think it's time to move away from Evolution and go with Thunderbird, which is much more solid and developed, and easier to use.
Dump Evolution and use Kontact/Kmail :)
ReplyDeleteAll you people who talk about replacing Evolution with Thunderbird do not have a frakking idea of what you're talking about.
ReplyDeleteI know I can say this safely: I use Thunderbird for my private email (my own IMAPs/SMTPs server) and Evolution for my work email. Both accounts with a few Gigabytes of email.
Evolution is much more mature but also much less stable.
Thunderbird 3 works quite nicely but it has too much braindeadness. Setting up the email accounts alone was a perfect #fail. Perhaps it works well if you use very basic initial setups, I don't know.
Oh, and claiming you can solve all with extenstions just proves you don't use the necessary features for "company with exchange" integration.
It's fine!
But don't dare claiming it's a whole lot better.
It isn't, and I use both of them.
They're both as bad.
Only reason I prefer Evolution is exchange support..
ReplyDeleteThunderbird isn't any good and doesn't have exchange support...
Who cares about Exchange. It's time to dump Exchange and replace it with an open alternative. Then we would be able to use clients of our choice. The managers are not clever enough to understand the curren lock-in situation...
ReplyDeletei dunno where everyone gets the idea that evolution is buggy. i use it on ubuntu with IMAP and gmail with no problems whatsoever on several desktops and laptops. I had trouble getting Thunderbird to work with IMAP although havn't tried it in awhile, it doesn't integrate into Gnome as well as Evolution does either.
ReplyDeleteAs one of the original Evolution developers (but left the project ~5 years ago):
ReplyDelete1. Ximian (and Novell) have always known that Exchange support was needed for Enterprise users - why do you think one of Ximian's main commercial products was the Exchange Connector? It was Ximian's main business model!
The current Exchange support (via MAP) may be buggy (I don't use Exchange so I don't know), but nothing is stopping Canonical or anyone else from contributing.
That's the main reason that Michael Meeks and I got Novell to release control of Evolution and stop requiring copyright assignments a couple of years ago.
2. The Evolution code base is massive and very complex. So unless Canonical wanted to dedicate ~10 or so of their engineers on hacking on an Evolution fork, it would be insane for them to fork it. Far better use of their time and resources to simply dedicate 1 or 2 of their engineers to working on Evolution along with the dedicated engineers from Red Hat, Novell, and OpenedHand.
I have used Evolution in the past and it is fabulous. It has two serious drawbacks to me:
ReplyDelete1) It lacks something like the WebMail extension for Thunderbird. I use my Yahoo email for a lot of things and since I live in the US, unless I pay for a "free" Yahoo account I can't connect to it with a POP/IMAP client. The WebMail extension for Thunderbird allows me to pull my Yahoo mail without paying for a Yahoo email account.
2) Is there a Google calendar sync for Evolution? There is for Thunderbird's Lightening extension. That means I can sync my Blackberry/Work Calendar/Home Calendar without any effort. I think some kind of extension/plugin/add-on for Evolution to do this would also make it better.
Oh, eagle, Kontact/KMail are for KDE. Ubuntu's desktop is Gnome. You'd have to load the KDE libraries in order for Kontact/KMail to work properly.
I understand it doesn't need to be forked for improvements to happen but it needs someone to take it by the scruff of the neck and beat it into shape. It's such a key part of where personal and enterprise desktop Linux needs to go that no-one can afford to mess about any longer.
ReplyDeleteI hoped that Kmail would pick up some MAPI support as you can be fairly confident the KDE devs would do it right. If you look at the speed of development of the KDE 4 software suite it's become astoundingly feature-rich in a short space of time without being particularly buggy.
Jeffrey - Thanks for the comments, and I'm sure you're right with point 2. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that perhaps Novell are being operated by Microsoft to just make Evolution the major stumbling block for anyone wishing to use Linux with Exchange. It would almost be better for it not to support Exchange in any way, then there may be more impetus for others to do it.
I have been working in corporate environment (Exchange 2003 server) with both Linux and Windows (VM) on my desktop for many years. Every 6months I try out the new evolution that come with the Ubuntu update thinking finally I can be rid of Outlook. Nope every-time it falls on its face. My account has dozen or so gigabytes of emails that bring Evolution to it's knees. Client hangs and crashes randomly then the Database process drives up the CPU usage to the point I have to kill it. I generally like the interface but just don't trust it to schedule or accept my meetings correctly. I just don't think it is tested in real world applications.
ReplyDeleteWhat I like about Firefox and Openoffice they can deploy cross-platform and share file and configurations. Thunderbird with Lightening is only really missing proper well behaved Exchange client (not IMAP native client). This would include proper Calendar integration. That would also provide my windows only colleagues a path to Linux just like OpenOffice has (about 2% of our corporate documents are OpenOffice, up from zero over the past few years).
Bottomline I would agree with sentiments above to ditch efforts on Evolution. It is a dead branch on the tree of life. Thunderbird has got much better prospects and leverages a much larger audience.
Thunderbird is nicely forked : look at spicebird.com
ReplyDeleteHowever too much buggy despite the interesting goals.
There's no conspiracy theory. Why do people have these insane conspiracy theories? I just don't get it.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to hazard a guess as to why the Exchange support is buggy (and afaik, Novell aren't the only ones working on that component), it'd be because it's not a trivial task. If it were, then every mail client out there would have it by now, but they don't.
I'm not sure the suggestion is serious enough to give it air-time, but I wrote a reply over on my web diary:
ReplyDeletehttp://a-hackers-craic.blogspot.com/2010/03/forkn-evolution.html
I worked on evolution (mail) pretty much from the start in December 1999 until I left it and Novell 4-5 years ago. I probably worked on it more in any single stretch (nearly 6 years continuously) than anyone else had up until that time (IIRC - memory isn't great at 5am).
I don't really have any opinion on the merits of using evolution vs alternatives (I use gmail now, although it's starting to be a pain now), but the idea of forking it is nonsensical.
Best is to invest developer power in akonadi, mail, calendar, contacts backend. Then, any front-end can use it.
ReplyDeleteNo point duplicating effort all the time. If there is one thing to learn from KDE4 is the idea of common back-ends. This is, frankly, where GTK-based apps have failed so far. They are too monolithic although stuff like pidgin and empathy are doing better now.
@KenP: for your information, Evolution *is* splitted in backend(s) and frontend.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the writer of this blogpost should first understand how open source works. Nothing is stopping him or Canonical from contributing to Evolution or become part of the developer team.
ReplyDeleteHmm. I like Exchange and Outlook. It works fine. I don't know why something that works fine would be dissed so badly. Especially considering that on the Open side of things, nothing seems to work, at all.
ReplyDeleteFor those who want Thunderbird to work with Exchange:
ReplyDelete_IF_ you also use Winblows and outlook, install the Google Sync tool. It syncs your Outlook/Exchange Calendar with a google calendar. Then get the Thunderbird add-ins for google calendars.
Viola! Thunderbird "syncs" with Exchange.
@KenP: like madbob said, evolution-data-server (EDS) does exactly what you suggest. The design and implementation might not be optimal, but it does allow multiple clients. See the Pimlico suite, GNOME panel clock, Moblin UI shell or Syncevolution for examples of EDS use outside of Evolution.
ReplyDelete@wasabi: Outlook is the one PIM application that has both been the reason for serious dataloss for me and was almost impossible to get out from (at least at the time the export options were only there for the illusion: they didn't actually work in any way).
I am also a long time user of evolution for work mail (for my private mails I still prefer gnus). It seems like it is not evolution itself which is unstable, but the exchange plugin(the one which is using webdav to "talk" to outlook webaccess)
ReplyDeleteThe webaccess method is a hack at best, but I think there is hope with the evolution mapi plugin(the native api). I tried it 1 year ago...at that time it was unstable and was missing features(the webdav plugin also misses features...like seeing a colleges calendar etc.)
I don't think it is fair to say evolution is unstable, when it is actually the evolution exchange which is unstable - which I would also believe it would be taking into consideration how it works
I have a Droid phone, running the Google Android operating system. My phone connects and syncs with Exchange all day long (calendar and email). This is not "windows mobile". If my phone can do it, why has it taken so long for someone to make an email client for Linux that does the same thing?
ReplyDelete