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Ximian

Ximian Evolution User Experiences? 69

Posted by Cliff from the how-well-does-it-work-for-you dept.
An Anonymous Crawdad asks: "My workplace is a mixture of Windows and Linux users, but we use Exchange as our email server for the groupware features. For the Linux users this makes it necessary to have a second Windows box just for email. I'm curious as to how well the Ximian's Evolution and Connector works with the Exchange server since it has been out for a little while and reviews on the net are a little lacking. I don't think there is a "try before you buy" option. My general belief is that 1.0 releases are never worth buying, but how much hope should I have for the future?"
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Ximian Evolution User Experiences? More

Ximian Evolution User Experiences?

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  • Fabulous. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Mordant ( 138460 )
    Works very well; calendaring supported. IMAP support is good, too. GnuPG integration works (basic, signing, verifying, no real key management); LDAP directory lookups work well, smart .sig based upon selected sending account, Palm sync works.

    It's a damned good mailer.
  • I'd be interested in hearing other people's stability experiences. I'm running Gentoo and I can't keep Evolution 1.0.7 running more then 30 seconds without a crash. I can sort of use 1.0.5, but it's still fairly fragile.

    It's so unstable for me that I figure it's got to be some sort of config problem (gentoo can make things a little TOO up to date sometimes), and I'd like to hear how Evolution does on other, more conservative, distros, especially Red Hat. Can you actually use Evolution, or is it a lot of pretty pictures followed by a segfault?

    (Please specify distributions as appropriate; I think it may matter here.)

    • Re:Stability? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Aparthy ( 7792 )
      I have Evolution 1.0.7 running on my Gentoo box for about 14 hours staight each day. I've don't remember having any problems with it crashing since I updated to this version. It could be your config files. Mine were copied over from an older installation an another computer.

      Other then email, I don't really use evolutions features. They were something that I thought I would try out in the beginning, but they aren't something that's very usefull to me at this time.

      Robbie
      • Interesting, thanks. AFAIK I had no previous config files but I'll try wiping the dir out. I also found the 'killev' command can be useful. I can't guarentee I tried wiping the evolution dir and killev at the same time...

        It's a pity, because I think I'd like to use Evolution as my real mail client...

        • Re:Stability? (Score:3, Informative)

          by blazerw11 ( 68928 )
          emerge evolution --emptytree

          Sure, it'll take a day and a half, but your Evolution install will likely improve. I'm having no problems on my Gentoo box with Evolution 1.0.7

    • Red Hat 7.3 KDE 3.0

      Hasn't crashed at all!
    • If I could get someone to pay me for constantly tinkering with my boxen, sure, I'd run Genoo - assuming I didn't have any -other- work I needed to get done. ;>

      I'm running Evolution 1.0.7 on Slackware 8.1, and it's rock-solid.
    • No problem here also. Evolution 1.0.7 on RH 7.3 (hand-compiled based on whatever SRPM which came with 7.3 originally). Mail only, I don't use the other features. It may be the accompanying libs. What's your gal, gtkhtml and bonobo-conf versions?

      Just noticed that 1.0.8 was released yesterday, so I'll download it, compile it, try it and get back here.

      Only things I dislike in 1.0.7 is that when I try to search the messages in a folder, sometimes it skips messages which I know contain the string. And when I Alt-tab to a message window, the keyboard focus is nowhere. I have to click before being able to type something.
      • First impressions (from a 30 seconds try): no change. And reading the ChangeLog confirms it: only 1-2 bugfixes went in from 1.0.7 to 1.0.8. So it looks like it'll be as stable as the previous one was for me.
    • I have Evolution 1.0.7 running perfectly on Gentoo. Several machines, in fact. Had a problem with 1.0.0 or somewhere around then, but it was minor and hasn't happened since. Works like a charm. Snappier than Outlook ever was.

      I'm using gcc-3, too - no problems. What are your C/XXFLAGS? Overoptimization can be killer. Have you tried the Gentoo Forums? They're a big help.
      • The optimization may have been it. It's only been running for a bit now, but I haven't been able to crash it and that's been an improvement.

        My optimization settings are a relatively conservative "-O2 -mcpu686 -pipe" (still 2.95), and this is the first problem I've had with them on this system. Thanks for the suggestion, as I had plum forgot about that.

        I've been looking around on mailing lists and such and was just about to mail gentoo or evolution, but I wanted to nail down which was really responsible first. (Neither, as it turns out.) Since I am also evaluating Evolution for use in an office it seemed an opportune forum to ask my question. (This is a metareply to a couple of the other comments in this thread as well.)
        • My optimizations aren't exactly conservative, but don't break stuff either (-march=i686 -pipe -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -mmmx -msse -mfpmath=sse) - you might want to give some of those a run (mine is a P3; yours might not have mmx or sse).

          Definitly check the forums (forums.gentoo.org) - they're much more helpful than the mailing lists in my opinion.
    • i got 1.0.3 to crash yesterday.

      just one part seg faulted. the mail viewer i guess. the rest was still up. :-)

      damn, i can't remember what i did. i had a compose window open.

      i also have trouble with it when i select everything in a window. if i drag the cursor way out of the window. it jumps up and down on the last page of text until i put the cursor back in the window. then i can select the whole text.

      i also had trouble when i first "imported" my mbox files from mozilla. everything that was in a subfolder remained there. but i got another copy of it in the parent.
      now my mbox files are like that permanently. no it's not a vfolder thing.

      -eric

  • Which groupware features do you need? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by robkill ( 259732 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @06:08PM (#3860468)
    How many people use the groupware features? Which ones do they use? If you're mainly using them as top-down push (e.g. putting a meeting on everyone's calendar, which sends them an email), why not just have the Linux clients use Exchange as an IMAP server?
    • The scheduling features (seeing other's Free/Busy time) when creating an appointment is a requirement. You can't get that using Mozilla as an IMAP client. I haven't used the Evolution connector myself, but this requirement is paramount in our organization.

  • exchange versions (Score:2, Informative)

    by aakin ( 126692 )
    As a note, it only works with Exchange 2000. Check what version you are running... if you are using an older version of exchange, then it won't do you any good. We talked to them a few months ago, and they said they weren't planning on doing ports to older versions of exchange, so...

  • My thoughts. (Score:5, Informative)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @06:18PM (#3860542)
    I currently use Evolution 1.0.7 in an Exchange 2000 environment but, without the connector. I user POP & SMTP to talk with Exchange. Comparing it to Outlook 2000 I would say that it is very good overall. But there are a few "rough edges".

    Speed is the first issue. Performing the various daily functions is noticably slower than with Outlook on the same machine. Opening a message or sending a message all take a moment longer than Outlook, which seems to snap right to it. The sluggishness is livable but, it is noticable too.

    The second is probably a matter of taste. I use Evolution with KDE 3 and the Evolution colors are all gray washouts. This isn't too bad at first but, it does cause the interface to lack contrast which I find tiring after a while. I haven't found a way to change the colors but, it is probably possible. Perhaps, through the GDM configuration but, that's more trouble than it's worth.

    The only other possible issue I have is with an over abundance of menu options that don't seem to offer any real value. I still haven't figured out what the difference is between "Empty Trash" and "Expunge". Are they both necessary?

    Other than that, I think Evolution is VERY comparable to Outlook. I love some of the features that it has that Outlook lacks. For instance the ability to view HTML formatted mail but not download embedded images off the net. This means no more dot clear images tracking the message and no auto-run scripts doing dirty deeds.

    VFolders, a method of storing searches in a folder view format, are very nice. I must confess though, I don't use it much. I only have 5 VFolders configured.

    Calendaring and contact management is great too, though I can't speak for Exchange interoperability with the Calendar, I feel confident based on Evolution that the connector would be good too.

    As a whole I strongly recommend Evolution. It is an Outlook killer. Unfortunately though, it doesn't forward Melissa, Code-Red, Anna Kourikova, I Love You..... ;)
    • I could be mistaken on the little details, but I believe that "Expunge" is used with IMAP accounts. With IMAP, you can mark messages as deleted, but they won't actually be deleted from the folder until they are expunged.

      • I could be mistaken on the little details, but I believe that "Expunge" is used with IMAP accounts. With IMAP, you can mark messages as deleted, but they won't actually be deleted from the folder until they are expunged.

        This is true for any of Evolution's folders local and IMAP Trash folders are actually vFolders. The difference is "Expunge" removes moved/deleted items from the folder open currently and "Empty Trash" removes moved/deleted items from all folders. (crf. Evolution Help, Chapter 3. Using Evolution for Email, Section Reading Mail, Subsection Deleting Mail.)

      • >I could be mistaken on the little details, but I believe that "Expunge" is used with IMAP accounts. With IMAP, you can mark messages as deleted, but they won't actually be deleted from the folder until they are expunged

        You are semi-mistaken, actually. :-)

        "Expunge" removes the messages marked for deletion from the *current* folder; "Empty Trash" removes *all* messages marked for deletion from *all* folders.

        And it's not just for IMAP, but all types of accounts - POP, mail spool, etc.
    • First, Exchange allows you to use the web to access emails and calendar service? I found it to be faster than Evolution. That said, here is my own experience using Evolution.

      I can second the previous post. I've used it in my work to try it out (I also didn't have Connector so I used IMAP. However, I have 2 issues with it.
      1. As the previous post, SPEED is a BIG problem. Yes, I can work with it. But it is SLOOOOOW!
      2. Since it is a Gnome product, it needs a lot of libraries (rpms) to be installed as dependencies. As my and most of my coworkers' machines are KDE based, it is a big hassle.
      3. Without Connector, the calendar don't work, so I had to revert to
      There is one thing good about Evolution:
      It looks very much alike Outlook, so you are right at home if you've used Outlook before.

    • Re:My thoughts. (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I use Evolution with KDE 3 and the Evolution colors are all gray washouts. This isn't too bad at first but, it does cause the interface to lack contrast which I find tiring after a while. I haven't found a way to change the colors

      kcontrol -> Look and Feel -> Colors -> Apply colors to non-KDE apps *should* do the trick...
    • Hmm. Regarding the colours, that's probably due to the default Gtk/Gnome theme on your machine.

      With some knowledge on how Gtk works you could install a high contrast theme (A3000 is a nice one) to improve it a bit. That requires some .gtkrc hackery though.

      The easier (read: GUI) way is to install the Gnome Control Center and use that to install the theme. Just download, untar, and point the control center to the theme directory (the Control Center looks in ~/.themes by default I believe, so you should untar the theme in there).

      Mart
    • Empty trash vs expunge is mostly historical, but a lot of us like it that way so its stayed for now.

      We didn't used to have a trash folder, and personally i dislike it anyway.

      As for menu options, most are there because users demand more features. Sigh.

    • Oh the speed issue.

      Thats mostly IMAP, which IMHO sucks, but we haven't had the resources to fix it yet (i've been working on an replacement but my boss would have a fit if i did it it work time). Let alone the tree widget scalability issues, which the author doesn't seem to want to recognise.

      Not sure if the tree widget honours themese either, so thats the colour problem.

      FWIW, POP3 and getting local mail is *much* faster with the 1.2 development code (pop3 over slow modem links benefit the most, and indexing is much faster too).
  • I have been using Evolution 1.0.7 on my Debian Unstable system, this being my main workstation here at work. I have so far had to problems using anything from the Mail part of the program to importing my Calendar and Contact information. I am not however using Exchange with it, so I can't comment on the usability of that particular portion.

  • no command line (Score:3, Interesting)

    by johnjones ( 14274 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @07:21PM (#3860965) Homepage Journal
    its nice and I played with it for a while but went back to netscape(mozilla 1.0)

    why ? because I use that on all platforms and its nice to have the same gui everywhere win32 mac and unix

    what would be the killer feature ?

    well for me being able to use the command line to read emails via ssh
    (yes I know it can do portf/X11 forwarding but I dont want that e.g. i'm on another box and useing putty I just want to check my mails
    haveing seperate pine install and config is a pain a simple program that picked up evo's prefs would be good )

    regards

    john jones

    • Evolution can read mbox format. So, just script your mail download via pop3 or imap or whatever just as you would with a command line client. Use Evolution to view it graphically. Use mutt/pine/elm/whatever to get a quick peek at your inbox from the command line.
    • You can setup Evolution to store downloaded mail in mbox format and then you can use pretty much any other command line or not client to read it. I actually have it setup so I can use Mozilla to look in my mail if I really want to.

      Or as someone has mentioned, you can fetchmail your mail to your local machine and then use any client, Evolution or not, to read it. Certainly beats Outlook's pst files.

    • IMAP (Score:4, Interesting)

      by zerOnIne ( 128186 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @11:57PM (#3862267) Homepage
      i do this very thing at work ... i've got all my messages (over 6000 and growing daily) in one massive mailbox, which makes it easy to scroll through in pine, from wherever i am in the company ... and i have evolution, on my desktop, set up to point to the same IMAP account, and do virtual-folder sorting ... that way all my mail is nice and sorted when i'm in the pretty gui that makes it easy to navigate, and all my mail in a nice single list when i'm in a low-bandwidth text session (ie, pine) ...

      i love evolution, and wish there were a windows version so i could switch to it at home, too
      • Ditto; I can access the same mail from Windows, linux through a variety of clients (I've used Mozilla, Outhouse, Kmail and Evolution already) and even from a web browser via Imp. I set up IMAP at my last work, as it allowed the same level of access to a cross-platform environment (Solaris/Windows).
      • I've used/tested Evolution for several months now, and was looking for a way to get it to play nicely with my current mail setup, fetchmail + procmail + mutt.

        What I found worked best is this: make a virtual folder in Evolution for your mail, go to the directory that Evolution created for it (~/Evolution/local/... I think ), delete the mbox file there and replace it with a soft link to your existing Inbox.

        With that setup I can use Evolution when I feel like using the GUI and having the extras it provides, and I can use mutt every other time (for quick messages, ssh connections, etc).

  • Evolution is a "killer app" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Outland Traveller ( 12138 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @07:43PM (#3861103)
    I've been following evolution for a long time now.. Early version pre 1.0 were unstable. However, in true unix fashion the post 1.0 versions have had excellent stability.

    I've been using it exclusively for more than a year and I would never switch back to netscape mail or mozilla mail at this point. Evolution is much faster on my 600Mhz system, and it looks beautiful. It has a rich set of features, an excellent IMAP implementation, innovative stuff like the VFolders, ability to block external images in html mail, palm synchronization, gpg support... I know this is a little too glowing but I can't say enough about how happy I am with this software.

    Evolution and Galeon together provide such a good internet experience that I've been been able to get at least 3 people to switch to Linux.on their merits alone. A coworker just bought an iBook and while she loves OSX she complains all the time that the default browser isn't as good as galeon and the default mailer isn't as nice as evolution.

    • I use OSX, and yeah the default browser (Internet Explorer) pretty much sucks balls. I've somehow "configured" it to crash every time I try to change my preferences.

      Anyway, I use Omni Web. It lacks in the way of Java support, but it has a very slick GUI.

      The only browser I can say I like better is Opera under Linux (I use that at work). Opera for windows and OSX isnt't so good...

      Anyway with fink and XoX you can have Evolution for OSX, but using it requires you to start up XWindows. That's slightly annoying. The OSX mail client is pretty good anyway. For what little email reading I do at home I use it. From reading the Fink list it seems people are using Evolution successfully though.

      I guess this is pretty off topic so I'll put in my 2 cents about Evolution. I've been following it since the pre 0.8 days and using it since the 0.9x days. I love it.

      Before I read my email in Emacs. :) Well, you gotta love RMAIL, but the Evolution GUI sure does beat the snot out of it. I use the contact manager, and the calendar. Both are nice.
      It's been said before, but GPG works well with it, although RMAIL may be better there.

      I've gotten all of the people who have Linux desktops at my office to start using it over other things like Netscape mail, pine, and mutt. If you have a Linux desktop there is no competition.

      -craig

    • Has she tried Mozilla, Opera, or Omniweb? theses are all excellent browsers available for OSX. theres also iCab and a few others that i am not too familiar with.

      as for the mail client, is she using Mail? i love it. actually, up until i had OSX and Mail,i refused to use the various applicans, they never seemed to work correctly. im speaking of outlook and entourage on wintel pc as well as OS9 and OSX. something about Mail drew me in. but thats just my opinion.

  • I've been running 1.0.1 on Mandrake 7 for several months now. It does everything I need and does it well. Calendar, contacts, virtual folders, filtering, multiple accounts, etc. are all there. Stability is excellent as well.

  • Join the Evo list (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SLot ( 82781 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2002 @09:08PM (#3861563) Homepage Journal
    I have to say, if you'd join the evo mailing
    list, you'd be very up to date on what problems
    people are having.

    Note that I have no experience with the connector
    portion, as I convinced my corporate masters
    long ago that Exchange was a tool of the devil
    [;)], but the most common issues I see on the
    list are:

    1) lack of inline pgp/gpg support
    2) spell check problems
    3) inability to mail calendar items (which may or
    may not be solved by Connector).

    http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/evoluti on

    In all, I don't think I could *ever* go back to netscape or mozilla for mail. When I finally can ditch windows at the office, I expect the app that lets me get away with it will be Evolution.

  • "For the Linux users this makes it necessary to have a second Windows box just for email."

    Do you mean that literally? If yes, I wonder why you aren't using one of the many cheaper options. Off the top of my head:

    - Exchange IMAP support
    - Outlook through WINE (not sure about Outlook Exchange support under WINE)
    - Outlook on a Windows session in VMWare
    - Dual booting Windows to run Outlook
    • Forgot to add:
      - Outlook session on remote machine through Citrix (no idea about the costs)
      • Outlook session on remote machine through Citrix (no idea about the costs)

        If you have a Windows 2000 server set up as a Terminal server, you can use the remote frame-buffer package to connect using RDP. Mandrake includes rfbdrake, a GUI front-end for the program. Best part is, it lets you connect as a "Windows 2000" PC, using a Windows CAL. Saves paying for a Citrix Server.
    • The disadvantages of the methods you list are:

      Exchange IMAP doesn't do any of the groupware features...

      Outlook thru WINE is slow and unreliable

      VMWare works but is slow and expensive (not as expensive as a second PC, but still expensive)

      Dual-booting means rebooting to check mail, and you still need the Windows and Office licenses.

      You may be surprised, but a lot of companies with UNIX workstations end up with their engineers having at least two boxen per desk:
      A Windows system for Office tasks
      A UNIX (often Solaris) system for CAD and other engineering tasks
      often a second Solaris or Linux box for a server/devel/testing environment.

      It sounds absurd, but first the executives require the Windows box for the office tasks, then they try to get rid of the Solaris boxes because there are too many computers, and the Solaris ones are more expensive....

      It's not a pretty sight.
      • >Exchange IMAP doesn't do any of the groupware features...

        Okay,

        >Outlook thru WINE is slow and unreliable

        okay,

        >Dual-booting means rebooting to check mail, and you still need the Windows and Office licenses.

        Windows licensing, sure; Exchange seat licenses include Outlook licensing (AFAIK; MS might have changed this for the newest Exchange release). And it's not like you would buy an Office license just to use Outlook.

        >VMWare works but is slow and expensive (not as expensive as a second PC, but still expensive)

        VMWare & co. are slower than native, but not overwhelmingly so in my experience. (Although my experience with VMWare is primarily with going the other way, running non-UI-intensive linux servery stuff on Windows boxen). Anyway, I'd imagine that the average primary PC for someone running a linux desktop is a bit more speedy than what you'd give out as a secondary system intended only for e-mail use to begin with; the speed impact may not matter that much. However, if the e-mail systems are all repurposed legacy desktop POSes, there could be a cost savings over VMWare (although that would depend on the cost of everything from maintenance to power and real estate).

  • We use it (Score:2, Informative)

    by riggwelter ( 84180 )
    We have a few Linux users (and more, all being well) on the desktop ,with Exchange 5.5 as the company's internal mail server. This actually recludes us using Connector, as it's only available for 2000.

    We have no problems, we use IMAP & SMTP for mail, we can access the directry using LDAP, the only thing we can't access is shared calendaring, but we don't care about that ;-) (Will be nice when someone writes a free backend calendar server for Evo though - will make it easier for us to propse a wholesale movement away from Exchange)

    When we schedule meetings, Outlook users can happily see & use the appointment dobries sent to them in iCal format, although when they do the same to use, Outlook doesn't send them in the right format, so the information just appears as the body of the mail, it's readable though ,and trivial to copy/paste into an appointment in your own calendar.

    It even handles mails sent in that annoying TNEF format of Outlook's, provided you have an up-to-date version of WINE or gtnef (See bug #232 [ximian.com])
    • actually, with outlok you can "forward as iCalendar". Look under the Action menu. It's just not the default (which is sad, really).
  • My experience with the 'evolution' software has been uneven.

    When it works, it's slick-looking but annoyingly slow even on fast (1.7GHz pentium) machine. The slowness seems mainly to involve email folders. I have many folders, into which I file quite a few of my incoming messages. For years I've used the 'pine' software, which is very fast; it displays the list of available folders in as long as it takes to fill up an xterm window with ascii text. By contrast, 'evolution' is sluggish. I think it may take several seconds to do what 'pine' does in a flash.

    I had to say "I think" in the last sentence because it's been a while since I've used 'evolution'. That's because 'evolution' is broken on my box. I'm not entirely sure, but I think the problem occured when I upgraded from redhat 7.2 to redhat 7.3, with evolution-1.0.5-4. When I try to launch 'evolution' I get

    Cannot initialize the Ximian Evolution shell: Configuration Database not found
    which is a phrase I've searched for on the web, and indeed other folks have the same problem. I've not seen, in my searches, any remedy that works for me.

    By the way, that error message phrase is not locatable in the ximian "knowledge" database, so although it's a known problem. If I had found 'evolution' to have been a wonderful programme, and if I had time to invest in maintaining it across redhat upgrades that have proven stable for other software, I'd spend time navigating the ximian site, to see if there is a bug related to it, or I'd try installing an older redhat on one of my boxes to test if my theory about 'evolution' breaking upon upgrade. But not and not, so not and not.

    Still, if a gui-loving user finds that it works at all, then (s)he might find it rather agreeable to use.

  • I've been using Evolution since last August during the beta. I run version 1.08 under RH 7.2 without any problems at all. The last crash I had with it was several months ago (in an earlier version) when some thoughtful soul sent a message to the evolution list saying "this message crashes evolution."

    I don't use it with Exchange, but I do use it with POP/SMTP and encryption to read mail from 4 different accounts.

    The filters meet my needs, but there are a few things I'd like to see. I can't see how to set the priority of an email or to get delivery notification, but otherwise, its pretty good.

  • I've been using sylpheed-claws for some time now. How does evolution compare in terms of features, speed, stability and memory footprint?

  • I'm in a very similar situation. At work I use Linux on my workstation--one of the few. We use Outlook pretty extensively, and so far Codeweavers Office works pretty well. It's around $50, and you can install Word, Outlook, Excel, and Internet Explorer, if you so desire, which is slightly flakier than normal with the plugin. Our Exchange servers are still running NT 4.0, which prevents me from trying Evolution.

    Anyway, here's [codeweavers.com] the link.

  • I use windows at work, but don't like to use Office, so I use Mozilla for mail, and use outlook web access to get to calendar and other groupware information. Problem solved.

    Almost any exchange server will have an imap server. (imap.exchange.xxx)
  • But the ones I have include a nasty UI bug, in message composition, I HAVE to shift-tab to move from the message box into the address boxes, mouse clicking does not work here. Also it seems to leave a lot of orphan processes when it quits, even if you quit gracefully. Often after exiting Evolution I cannot relaunch without doing killall evolution-mail first.

    This is with Evolution 1.0.5 and 1.0.8, as well as 1.0.3 (supported), on RH 7.1 and 7.3 in KDE2 & 3.

    I haven't tried Connector because I'm too lazy and cheap, but it works great with IMAP.

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