[ale] ximian evolution on slack

[Jonathan Rickman]

On Wed, 26 Jun 2002, Jonathan Rickman wrote:

> Anyone had any luck with it? I'm about 2 seconds from giving up and
> never looking at a ximian package again. The fact that they don't support
> Slackware is bad enough, but I digress...I want it.

In reply to my own post let me say that I spent the last 2 days in
seclusion, playing with evolution on several distros. Allow me to save you
alot of needless headaches. If you don't have the need to connect to an
Exchange server, look elsewhere. If your preferred distro is not
supported, look elsewhere. However, if you run a supported OS and you need
to connect to Exchange, this application is a winner. It is easily the
most full featured mail client available for Linux. I suppose I should
have expected problems building it on Slackware, and had I bothered to
look at the README file (who reads those anyway? README files are for
wussies) I would have seen this line, "Building evolution is HARD...".
I would like to submit this line as a candidate for the Understatement of
the Year award. Nevertheless, the difficulties I encountered forced me to
"go under the hood" and peek at how things work. I am very impressed with
this application. I can envision at least one scenario where this becomes
the killer app that Linux has been waiting for. An organization that uses
Exchange for mail and has invested heavily in the system could eliminate
the inherent risks of running Outlook by using Evolution published from a
Citrix Metaframe server to access their existing Exchange servers. Linux
might not be able to dislodge Windows from the desktop, but when you
combine it with Citrix products it can certainly sneak in through the
backdoor. Now, for the first time, there is a full blown replacement for
the formidable MS Office suite. Combine Evolution, Open Office, and MySql,
and voila...goodbye MS Office. Throw the Citrix server into the mix, and
the client's OS is irrelevant. Evolution has been the first open source
app that excited me in quite some time. Personally, I'll stick to Pine as
I have no need to connect to Exchange and do all my admittedly simple
scheduling on my cell phone. However, if the need ever arises...I'm
confident that the package from the folks at Ximian will fit the bill.

-- 
Jonathan Rickman
X Corps Security
http://www.xcorps.net


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