Comments on: Free Outlook Alternative on Ubuntu Linux

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:49:24 +0000

I hope Evolution works out for you, but it was anything but an "Outlook replacement" for me.

While it did sorta connect to Exchange Server, it was so slow downloading email (even more-so than native Outlook) as to be useless. It also doesn't support *all* Outlook features, such as Notes.

I would also say the UI looks nothing like Outlook. The basic layout is similar, but it has a distinctly 2003-era Gnome look and feel, which is no where near as polished as Outlook, or even Thunderbird.

By: 1Earth

1Earth — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 15:17:55 +0000

Good work – glad it helped. In the meantime I've also discovered Zimbra Desktop, which could well be better than Evolution once they work out all the bugs.

Not sure if it can interface with Exchange Servers though, I'm not on an Exchange network anymore, so no more experimenting.

By: Robbie

Robbie — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 10:35:32 +0000

Thank you for this post. It helped me out immensely.

By: leftystrat

leftystrat — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:42:45 +0000

I just became 99% Windows-free and had to navigate this hurdle. I find that Evo works, most of the time. Address List access started out asking for authentication but calmed down and now either works or it doesn't, depending on the day, the weather, and the Dow Jones index.

Aside from the previously mentioned connector, you might want to experiment with different logins to achieve less bothersome usage.

Instead of

lefty

try

lefty@domain

domainlefty

Password doesn't change.

Oddly enough, this isn't an Evo problem – it's totally MS. You have to jump through the same hoops if you're on a different domain but need to access the Exchange server.

My coworker has this working perfectly. I'm ok with mail, but can't write to my own calendar.

I'm also having a blast trying to administer the network (I gave up and use tsclient to hit the servers) and get files to or from my Treo (PalmOS).

What a long strange trip…..

By: 1Earth

1Earth — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 15:42:57 +0000

Thanks Lunatic4ever I just posted how I got Microsoft Network to work with Ubuntu, and I also managed to get Evolution running by just entering the details I took from Microsoft Outlook (and we luckily do have OWA enabled). There's only one bit that doesn't seem to work, and that's the Global Address List - it keeps on asking me to authenticate when I click the To: button, but fails regardless of the server address I put there. Any ideas? Other than that, it works perfectly - thanks for your feedback.

By: lunatic4ever

lunatic4ever — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 15:13:12 +0000

You don't really need to have Active Directory connection to be able to read your exchange mail in evolution.

You can either use IMAP in evolution but that is just for mail, or you can use the Evolution-Exchange plugin.

Then you have enough functionality to replace Outlook (I use it every day)

One condition, OWA need to be enabled for Evolution-Exchange.

to connect, just fillin the name of you front-end server (with OWA installed) just like you would type it in a web-browser (http://OWAFE/exchange)

and give your pre-win2000 username…

Should do the trick…