Toby Richards wrote an opinion article for NewsForge, claiming that for him, Linux won't get mainstream until Evolution - or another capable Outlook-like client - gets optimized and offers 100% compatibility with Exchange. In the comments section of Newsforge readers offered more reasons as to why Linux is not mainstream, offering a view on their needs. My take: While for my personal, home usage of Linux my needs are different, I agree with Toby that companies won't switch their desktops if full Exchange compatibility isn't reached and if Evolution stops being the memory beast it currently is.
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Member since:2005-07-06
I agree, kontact and kolab are great applications, that could be potential Outlook/Exchange killers. The problem is that they currently don't run on windows.
At least that is a big problem for kontact. Most companies would like to have a uniform E-mail/Calendaring structure regardless of platform. If you run different tools on different platforms you are bound to get in trouble as upgrades may lead to incompatibilities, as they most likely have different release schedueles if they comes from different venders.
Perhaps the situation will change once KDE4 is out. It will use QT4 that is available for windows under the GPL. This will make it much easier to port KDE apps to windows.
Another problem with Kontact, is that it in most distros doesn't support S/MIME by default. S/MIME is much more common in busines than e.g. gpg, so not having that might be a showstopper.
Member since:
2005-12-15
I think Kontact kicks serious butt!!
The more you use Kontact the more you'll love it!
I rate its far better than Evolution and certainly better than MS Outlook 2003 even!
It doesn't use much memory and is quick and awesome!
The current html support for sending and reply to emails in kontact is far worse than thunderbird,outlook and evolution, but that is a current sacrifice.
I'm sure they'l fix that but otherwise all works awesome!
And kolab seems good for now. Getting better too.
Currently have this setup for a 700 PC network with Kolab server. All awesome!