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pytigger
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 27 Aug 2003
Posts: 134
Location: Hanover, Germany
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 Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2003 9:58 am Post subject: Best Email/Groupware for Gentoo Linux? |
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I'd like to start a thread about what group or email Software fit's best into Gentoo, what are the supposed ways to install (I couldn't find an ebuild for Kolab...), what are the meanings about the strengths and weaknesses in the comunity?
As I am beginning to switch to Linux permanently I need an email client to satisfy my comunicational needs. Before choosing one on my own I'd like to ask you as a comunity what your experience has been.
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hook
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Joined: 23 Oct 2002
Posts: 1398
Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia
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| Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2003 10:37 am Post subject: |
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i've tried pine, mail, evolution and kmail ...i have to say that i like kmail the best (comes with kdenetwork)
i don't have much experience with groupware apps, but i've read an aritcle in LinuxFormat, saying that Kroupware is ATM the boest groupware package in linux ...AFAIR kolab fits under kroupware
btw: what does a groupware app do? ...no really, i've no idea
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Elm0
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Joined: 24 Nov 2002
Posts: 281
Location: UK
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| Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2003 10:49 am Post subject: |
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By the looks of it KDE 3.2 (to be released in December) is going to have a killer selection of fully integrated groupware apps. KMail, Kontact and Kalendar and a few other bits n bobs have all been integrated fully.
Try Evolution as well, been out for ages now, very stable. |
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pytigger
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 27 Aug 2003
Posts: 134
Location: Hanover, Germany
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| Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2003 10:52 am Post subject: |
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I'm trying out Evolution currently. Luckily I could import my mails from Balsa which I tried before.
What I meant with Groupware is software that allows you to organize timetables and data accross a team of users. Or even Organizing software without group aspects
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hook
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Joined: 23 Oct 2002
Posts: 1398
Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia
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| Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2003 12:39 pm Post subject: |
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if an organiser/scheduler, mail, PIM is all you need (without groups) - the kde's apps: kmail, korganiser and kopete are the best i've seen so far ...well, at least for my needs 
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shm
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Joined: 09 Dec 2002
Posts: 2380
Location: Atlanta, Universe
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| Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2003 2:26 am Post subject: |
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I think of released software, Evolution is the best client groupware solution and kollab (the new name for the kroupware software) is the best software solution.
Kontact hasn't been released yet, but I fully expect it to kick some ass once it does in a lil over a month. I'm using the CVS ebuilds, and it certainly does.
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ozonator
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Joined: 11 Jun 2003
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Location: Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2003 4:02 am Post subject: |
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I've not used the KDE stuff, but for e-mail alone, either Evolution or Mozilla's mail component (or Thunderbird) are excellent. For calendar/appointment stuff, Evolution has a calendar component, and Mozilla does, too, if you compile with "mozcalendar" in your USE flags; each, I think, is iCal compatible. Both also have good addressbooks, and Evolution can sync with a Palm (if you can get gnome-pilot to work).
Personally, though, after trying a lot of programs, my hands-down favorite for e-mail is definitely mutt. Sure, the initial setup of config files can take some time, but to me, it's worth every last bit of effort (we're willing to install Gentoo, after all!). No other e-mail program I've tried has let me be so efficient in handling e-mail. And, with lbdb it can access my Palm databases (otherwise managed with jpilot, which is also my calendar app); with auto-launched external viewers, I can see pretty much any mail content or attachment; with procmail and spamassassin, I have all the filtering I need; with offlineimap, I can use it on my laptop without an internet connection. On top of that, it's configured just the way I like, with easy and very fast access in a terminal or over ssh.
One note: though I have used a lot of mail clients, I've never had the need to use any groupware features in a mail/calendar program, so take my comments accordingly.  |
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zenlunatic
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Joined: 09 Apr 2003
Posts: 312
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| Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2003 4:27 pm Post subject: |
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| One of the IT faculty at my college was sitting next to me using PINE on XP. Does anyone know how PINE, Mutt, Elm, and other text based clients compare? |
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ozonator
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Joined: 11 Jun 2003
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Location: Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2003 6:40 pm Post subject: |
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| zenlunatic wrote: | | One of the IT faculty at my college was sitting next to me using PINE on XP. Does anyone know how PINE, Mutt, Elm, and other text based clients compare? |
E-mail programs tend to generate highly personal preferences -- I suspect that's why there are so many of them; it's also the reason that what follows should be seen as the results of my own experience with them, and my own preferences.
Elm -- the oldest of the three. Used it in the early 90s for a little while, but then fell back to "mail" (yup, the plain BSD mail program from way back when; it was what I had first used to do e-mail in *nix, and at the time attachments, mime, etc. weren't widely used in mail I got). So, don't know much about it particularly; though surely some people still use it, I get the sense that it has been superceded by pine and mutt, which were inspired by and in some ways based on elm.
Pine -- solid text mail program, both in *nix and Windows (not just cygwin). I think the explanation of the name is that it began as "Pine Is Not Elm", but now they say "Pine Is No-longer Elm." Pine is likely easier for a pbeginner to use than elm or mutt; integrated pico editor is easy to use. Can access a local mail spool or IMAP -- good IMAP implementation (dovetails with the UW IMAP server), but I don't think there's offline IMAP support. Some are bothered by the UW licence -- more restrictive than the GPL (hence the "nano" clone of "pico"). Newer versions have added more features; if you haven't used Pine since v. 2 or earlier, you might find features you didn't expect. The best page about using Pine I know is this one.
Mutt, "the mongrel of mailers" -- as I mentioned above, IMHO mutt is the best mail client I have yet used, period; nothing else comes close. The project's motto sums it up: "All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less." Hugely configurable, all configuration requiring manual editing of a config file (can be split into multiple files), with terrific features ("hooks" for a variety of actions, threading, tagging, macros, etc.) and basic IMAP/POP support (mutt, however, really shines with a local mail spool, mbox or maildir, and/or with something else like offlineimap doing IMAP or getmail doing POP). It also has superb integration with GnuPG. Ultimately follows the philosophy that an e-mail client (Mail User Agent) just needs to handle accessing and sending e-mail well; it's not an editor, mail filter, HTML viewer, image viewer, etc. -- all those things should be handled by other programs that specialize in such things. Documentation and a more thorough introduction are linked on the main mutt site (including a full config reference and config files posted by others, a very useful way to get going with configuration); I can recommend particularly Sven's pages and an excellent introduction called My First Mutt. I tend to see mutt as in some ways analogous to LaTeX -- there are ways to achieve similar results that don't involve such an initial learning curve, but in the end, those ways aren't as satisfying, nor is the end result nearly as good.
Ultimately, the advantage of running any of these on *nix (including OS X, where I also use mutt and offlineimap) is that they're fast (great on old machines), they handle volumes of mail very well, and thanks to ssh, they allow full e-mail functionality over remote connections. I've been tempted by Thunderbird and Evolution, and still try each of them every now and again, but I keep going back to mutt. They're certainly worth taking a look at -- look at the feature lists and screenshots for pine and mutt, see how people use them, try them out. You might end up really liking one of them.  |
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shm
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Joined: 09 Dec 2002
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Location: Atlanta, Universe
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| Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2003 1:36 am Post subject: |
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| zenlunatic wrote: | | One of the IT faculty at my college was sitting next to me using PINE on XP. Does anyone know how PINE, Mutt, Elm, and other text based clients compare? |
Mutt is awesome, but might be hard to use/too much for some people.
Pine is easy to use. Pico/nano evolved from it.
Elm is just old. I don't think anybody ever uses it anymore, except if they've been using it for nine years continously like a friend of mine has =)
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dweigert
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Joined: 04 Oct 2002
Posts: 369
Location: Somerset, NJ USA
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| Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2003 5:17 pm Post subject: |
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I still use Elm for the most part, although mutt (because of encryption) is starting to take over my email habits.
Dan
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psymon101
n00b
Joined: 24 Oct 2003
Posts: 17
Location: Michigan
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| Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 2:01 pm Post subject: |
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I am not sure if these are compatable with Gentoo but here goes..
I use Moregorupware (moregroupware.org) very nice, all web based, and pretty
fast
Also check out opengroupware (http://www.opengroupware.org/) you can connect
to it with pretty much anything, even outlook...
Lastley, check out phprojekt, simple, effective..
Good luck! |
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taskara
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Joined: 10 Apr 2002
Posts: 3763
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2003 11:25 am Post subject: |
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what about this?
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charlieg
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Joined: 30 Jul 2002
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Location: Manchester UK
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| Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2003 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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| taskara wrote: | | what about [egroupware]? |
Unimpressive, like phpGroupware, moregroupware, and the 100 other half-baked web groupware packs out there.
One day people will learn that PHP is for creating pretty web pages, not for writing server-side software.
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taskara
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| Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2003 9:57 pm Post subject: |
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| so is there an alternative charlieg? |
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shm
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Location: Atlanta, Universe
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| Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2003 1:04 am Post subject: |
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| charlieg wrote: | | taskara wrote: | | what about [egroupware]? |
Unimpressive, like phpGroupware, moregroupware, and the 100 other half-baked web groupware packs out there.
One day people will learn that PHP is for creating pretty web pages, not for writing server-side software. |
Er, eGroupWare is quite mature, and unlike phpGroupWare, has been deployed in a lot of environments. I've been playing with the new eGroupWare stuff in kontact.. and it is quite impressive (the next kontact release, 1.1 in KDE_3_2_RELEASE_DATE+2 Months, will get support for phpGroupWare as well)
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charlieg
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| Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2003 1:38 am Post subject: |
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| taskara wrote: | | so is there an alternative charlieg? |
Yes, proper groupware projects like OpenGroupware.org or the Exchange copycats like Exchange4Linux.
There was another good one but I forgot it. 
If you're just doing your own stuff, simply use Evolution. Lots of groupware features.
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taskara
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| Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2003 1:47 am Post subject: |
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the reviews I've read on opengroupware.org have not been very exciting.. haven't heard about exchange4linux, I'll check it out.
I haven't used evolution much.. what sort of groupware features can I use with it?
cheers |
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jaingaurav
n00b
Joined: 10 Dec 2003
Posts: 62
Location: Guelph, Canada
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| Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2003 11:36 pm Post subject: |
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I use communigate pro. Its pretty damn good, check out http://www.stalker.com.
It's highly configurable, but it takes a little getting used to |
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charlieg
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Location: Manchester UK
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| Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2003 12:16 am Post subject: |
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| taskara wrote: | | the reviews I've read on opengroupware.org have not been very exciting.. |
Nor should they be. Groupware should be very unexciting. It should just sit quietly in the background. OpenGroupware.org is a 7 year old codebase and very mature.
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taskara
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Location: Australia
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| Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2003 1:56 am Post subject: |
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| charlieg wrote: | | taskara wrote: | | the reviews I've read on opengroupware.org have not been very exciting.. |
Nor should they be. Groupware should be very unexciting. It should just sit quietly in the background. OpenGroupware.org is a 7 year old codebase and very mature. |
what I mean by "not very exciting" is actually "crap". ie doesn't work properly, features not implemented, doesn't work well, etc etc..
but hey.. that's just some people's opinion. |
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regeya
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Joined: 28 Jul 2002
Posts: 270
Location: Desoto, IL, USA
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| Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2004 2:59 am Post subject: |
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| charlieg wrote: | | taskara wrote: | | the reviews I've read on opengroupware.org have not been very exciting.. |
Nor should they be. Groupware should be very unexciting. It should just sit quietly in the background. OpenGroupware.org is a 7 year old codebase and very mature. |
I'm looking into this; trying to keep the boss from asking for Exchange, since an office of 24 doesn't really need Exchange.
I've looked at OpenGroupware.org, and it's impressively large. As far as I can tell, the server will run on a whopping two platforms! And despite being based on Objective-C and GNUstep, won't run on OS X! EDIT: before someone flames me: Yes, it will build/run on OS X. It's not nearly complete yet, though. Strange that of all platforms to have trouble with, OS X the direct descendent of *Step!
I'll probably end up going with OpenGroupWare.org if I can get approval to build/buy an additional machine running Linux, but since I'll probably be stuck with making an OS X box double as an app server, I'll probably go with either phpGroupWare or eGroupWare. And hell, who knows? Maybe someone will make a nice dotGNU front end for the darn thing.  Right now, my big disappointment is that eGroupWare can't allow for ical-based writes.  That's about it, though; we'll see what I think when I do the real deployment. |
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AlterEgo
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