Well. Hmm.

Evolution is now managed by Novell. Ring up and ask them. Can't be too hard.

I guess it's cheaper to try posting and asking Slashdot though.

When the guy at Novell tells you you have to tap in byte code using morse by touching your tongue on a soundcard connection come back and let us know that Linux isn't ready.

From what I can tell though they (Novell) prefer the use of mailing lists to use of a public folder.

I don't think it's fair to blame Linux or Evolution for being unable to use a proprietary mail server like exchange. MS doesn't even publish the specs of how to connect to exchange.

Your beef is with MS not Linux in this case. Vendor lock is a bitch and you are now owned by MS. No other mail client will connect to exchange except outlook. MS designed it that way.

Point is, you can't do anything without plugging into Microsoft. And since Microsoft shuns industry standards like the plaque, it has to be a customized fit.

The problem is that all this time Windows is getting better as well. I gave up even trying to use Linux, let alone trying to get other people to use it, when windows 2000 became stable.

You may be interested in reading about my experience, very similar to yours, about running Ubuntu on my corporate laptop and the amounts of trouble I had to go through. I finally gave up.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=323792

Alas this is just square peg, round hole syndrome. Linux doesn't need to inter-operate with Exchange/etc, but people blindly think that it does. If you or your boss have a real need to use Exchange, forget about the daydream that Linux will inter-operate with it.

After all, Microsoft isn't stupid, they will keep their products one step ahead so that no one else will be able to emulate them. The question is, does the competition need to emulate it? I sincerely doubt it.

Unless you or your boss(es) unwisely decided to integrate some MS-centric software, or some third-party stuff relying exclusively on Outlook+Exchange, at which point you really didn't need to blog about this at all, since Linux was consciously undercut in favor of another product - why even try to hammer that square peg into your round hole when you don't want to?

Bear in mind that I don't know your situation; don't take this as accusation. It's just me sharing the little gems I've had to deal with myself.

Evolution blows chunks. I had it working on my Ubuntu in doing simple things with my Exchange Server, but then it did extremely funky things with my calendar like "double appointments" that, when you deleted one, would delete both appointments!!!

Evolution also didn't permit me to access my mail remotely over VPN, SSH with the -x option to my office workstation, and load up evolution. I mean, I could get it to load to check my office mail from home, but I got Kerberos errors on sending and receiving. It was also far more slower than me just doing a TS connection to my second office workstation and loading up Outlook.

The way Evolution works with Exchange is a bit of a kludge. They basically consider Microsoft's shifty OWA as a kind of web service that it interacts with. Trouble is, OWA is not a standard and can be changed at any time, even with a patch.

Now, granted, the real culprit is Exchange Server. Why companies use this proprietary mess of a product that only has one vendor for technical support -- I'll never know. ISPs certainly don't use it. Most ISPs use POP, SMTP, NNTP, LDAP, and various spam protection and antivirus packages, and perhaps a webmail link such as SquirrelMail or EdgeDesk or something else. (And a private NNTP server can be used much like a public folder location in an office.) By doing this, ISPs can go to multiple vendors for tech support and can implement it on Linux clusters in order to have fewer mail outages. I've been on Verizon DSL and my mail *NEVER* goes down.

And as far as a client goes, if you combine Thunderbird with the Lightning Calendar extension, it's just as good as Outlook, minus notes and tasks. (I can do notes and tasks in a text file just fine.)

I wish more offices would wake up to the fact that all these ISPs can't be wrong with their approach to handling mail, and that private NNTP or perhaps a PHP Nuke intranet portal certainly makes a fantastic public folder service in an office.

If you need to use Exchange, your company has hitched its wagon to MSFT. That brings with it ramifications like: all your computers will need to use MSFT products. When some users or customers upgrade, all will have to upgrade. Etc.

But, if you simply need to send and receive email, use internet standards SMTP and POP3 or IMAP.

Has nobody ever heard of Scalix before? www.scalix.com

Just out of curiosity, if you hit the checkbox next to the public folder and hit "Close", does it do the subscription for you?

[ No, unfortunately -- Ed. ]

They're right, you know. Your problem is with MS, not Linux.

Exchange will *only* connect, integrate and operate fully with Outlook.

Any mail client that connects from another OS is limited to using Outlook Web Access over http as its connection, and that only offers limited functionality.

MS software is locked down, they won't release the code so that it can be integrated into other OSs, so what did you really expect?

For the record, I'm running Kubuntu in a corporate environment with zero issues, as is my colleague next to me, running Suse10 and on the Windows domain that controls our network.

We just don't rely on MS products to centralise things; we have our own in-house systems and developers to do that.

Why limit yourself to one OS? We have users with Macs, quite a few Linux distrows, Win XP, Vista, 2000, 2003 server - all working quite happily side-by-side and on a Windows domain.

IMAP? I guess this was an attempt minus IMAP on Exchange? I've got Exchange 2k3 working with Thunderbird right now over IMAP/SMTP with public folders. I may not be able to use the journal or calendar stuff, but the basics as described (email and public folders) are working fine.

Um... this may just be my guess from glancing around, but I think they removed the explicit subscribe/unsubscribe buttons. You just check the checkboxes now, don't you?

[ Tried that. Didn't work -- Ed.]

Unless there's a departmental or company directive to move to linux on the desktop, you're always going to have problems. As others have posted, M$ isn't interested in your linux machine working with its products, and that's something you'll always have to deal with. Changes need to be made to the backend, and most network admins won't be too sympathetic to your plight when they have thousands of other users to support.

That being said, try again in another year. Maybe the Novell-M$ pact will improve interoperability between linux and M$ products. We'll see.

Why don't just run Outlook in Crossover instead of Evolution?
Also you could run the rest of MS Office that way.

I don't really see what these problems have to do with GNU/Linux as an OS.

You are blaming the wrong people for Linux's problem. You tried to use StarOffice/OpenOffice to read MS Office files and you converted back and forth. Even back then you should have known that OpenOffice was available for Windows, and, had your Windows users started using it, then you would have had no issues.

Same deal with Exchange. It's a proprietary server written by Microsoft that is designed to work with Outlook. If you wanted access to public folders, have the Exchange admin turn on NNTP access to public folders and get to them that way.

What is comes down to in the end is not that Linux is not Enterprise friendly. It's that your corporate environment is not Linux friendly.

You would have had the same issues getting a Macintosh working in that environment.

For years, I've tried to get Windows to nfsmount my server drives. Every new version of Windows comes out and I try it, but it just doesn't work. My conclusion: Windows isn't ready for the Enterprise.

Your story should really read:
"
I've tried for years to avoid vendor lock.

Every time I try to avoid vendor lock in, something doesn't work.

I've given up again on trying to avoid vendor lock in.
"

Yes, vendor lock in sucks. However, you have your VENDOR to thank for that and no one else.

Evolution isn't the only client connecting to Exchange that has problems. Entourage Microsoft's Mac Email client doesn't do much of a better job either. No folders, no global address book.

that's funny, because I'm running a Linux (CentOS 4.4) laptop in a Windows Enterprise environment right at this moment. It works fine. My solution to the Exchange problem (and it is an Exchange problem , not a Linux problem) is to use IMAP for email, and the Exchange Web UI for the calendaring features. And the rest, I simply don't use, and I don't miss them either. The solution to the ;problem' of running Linux i the enterprise is to get rd of all the Windows boxes. Unfortunately, Bill Gates had it right; Windows shops are like heroin users; they know it is killing them,but they just can't stop using it.

Silly question, but doesn't the subscribe button in the first picture look redundant anyway? why not check the box and hit close to subscribe, uncheck it to unsubscibe?

Maybe that's why the button isn't needed...It's too obvious to be overlooked, so I'm sure you've already tried.

I do geeky stuff for an oh-my-my-god-I-had-no-idea-a-company-could-be-so-big shop and I, as well as most of my counterparts, have recognized that the suits simply eat the pablum that's put in front of them. Using MS "solutions" for all of the administrative gobbledeegook the most companies thrive on takes no thought, isn't risky, and IMHO, is inconsequential except for the cost of all of the required security addons and incident responses.

I and my team laugh, in a loving sort of way, at the corporate MS-centric requirements and those that are so proud of them, then go on doing the real work (that which makes money for the company) on our Linux laptops, Linux workstations, Linux servers, Linux clusters, Linux firewalls, etc.

No, I can't read my silly little S/MIME exchange mail folders on my workhorses, but then again, I don't want to. That would require all kinds of "compatibility" layers to try to interoperate with a decidedly un-interoperable behemoth's software/protocols/APIs/idiosyncracies. I love the performance benefits of remaining unemcumbered by the strains of interoperability. I prefer Gentoo, as do many other engineers here, as we can choose what is installed and what is not.

Please don't hamper my productivity by forcing me to use a "corporate edition" Linux that has all of the gobbledeegook capabilities.

Eloi be with you, Novell, for all your efforts, but until Redmond decides to open up its specs the "corporate desktop" will always be at least one step behind. The latest and fattest version of Exchange will always have a component that eludes the reverse engineering capacities of the open source community.

Are you expecting compatibility from FOSS with a software vendor that doesn't want compatibility from this group?

Heck, In my modest environment, MS solutions are not very compatible because it is not built on their solutions. So I've given up on Microsoft's products. But, of course, your case is very much different.

Many of these comments reflect the attitude of the Linux "geek" community in general. Indeed, all Linux distros are superior to anything Microsoft produces for sale, but there are glitches in all operating systems that need to be addressed. Linux can do most anything Windows can, but sometimes with great difficulty, and requiring significant talent to perform. But instead of the community helping to correct these problems, and make Linux more enterprise friendly, many have the arrogance to presume that if you don't have the intellegence to operate Linux, then you shouldn't be in "our house". Linux CAN be developed and improved to integrate with anything that MS can produce, but the community needs to get off of their high-horse and help develop the system, not chastise those who want to, but cant.

I have set up 3 companies with linux over the past 5 years, 2 of them being switch overs. I have run into problems both large and small in doing from scratch setups and microsoft to foss switch overs. A little stubbornness on my part paid off in all cases. You seem to be blaming linux for a failure with one particular program in your last attempt. A deeper look seems to show that the problem is with the fact that exchange server is proprietary and the creator of that software, microsoft, does not want others to connect to their server with anything not "approved" by them. I find that open standards create far fewer problems for me and allows me a wider choice of applications. Microsoft and it's products do still have a place and linux still has a long ways to go before it is ready for the unwashed masses. But, given that, linux has a lot of potential. I've been microsoft free in my business for 6 years now and can see no reason to ever go back.

Just my $0.02 worth

Ray Moore

Get Moose and Squirrel!

I never used Evolution with Exchange, but have you tried just checkmarking the public folders? May be that would subscribe you to them without confirming using buttons? Anybody, exposed to MacOS, would have tried that.

This dude is a tool.

Do you try to run Betamax tapes in a VHS drive, or run a diesel truck on gasoline? Microsoft uses their own closed standards, and they aren't even compatible with *themselves* from one version to the next. Technical issues are virtually insignificant (though I'll admit, my own experience with Linux was unsatisfactory) when compared to trying to dislodge the established de-facto standard with huge market saturation. Even with standards it takes time - IPV6 still hasn't overtaken IPV4, and the Internet is still ASCII.

Come on, the subscription buttons are no longer required.
Try checking the togglebuttons of each of the folders!

This article is misleading in that it says "I cant get Linux to work in the Enterprise," which should say you can't get "desktop" Linux to work in the enterprise. Desktop Linux is just not there, but as we know server linux works perfectly in the enterprise. I've used it in everything from small offices to huge web farms. It works period. So make sure to write more clearly next time.

Fedora has a separate package called 'evolution-connector' which provides the necessary libraries for Evolution to connect to an Exchange 2000/2003 server. I'm assuming you've installed the necessary packages for Ubuntu but I just wanted to confirm.

The latest version available in Fedora Core 6 is 2.8.2-2.fc6.

I'm assuming that you have a corporate license of Windows products.
1) Put VMware on the box and load a virtual version of windows under linux to run the 2 applications that seem to be causing the problem.
2) push for open standards for internal documentation like odf for documents
3) evaluate openexchange or zimbra as alternatives to Exchange, Alfresco instead of Sharepoint, etc.

The longer your company is stuck in proprietary formats, the longer your IT infrastructure costs will be determined by a third party.

Are you sure that you don't just have to check the box to subscribe?

The interfaces are very similar; Maybe the ubuntu devs simplified it.

I used linux for years before being able to afford a mac... your problems all stem from having to interact with a windows world... when i converted to linux i abandoned windows. of course linux will not work with windows. MS will never let linux product work easily with theirs. just doesn't make sense for them to allow linux any inroads. it's a war to the death man... the battle for the desktop... NO MERCY... yeah kidding there..

Article title is totally misleading. Using Linux in an IT environment is not a problem. Using Linux in an IT environment with a damned MS backend is a bit of a challenge.

I have been using linux in corporate IT environments for 10 years +... The trick? I dont care about exchange. I connect to the mail server via IMAP. I use openoffice, and have no trouble reading MS .doc or .ppt files. I use samba to get to ms shares with no issues. The real issue is what environment are you most productive in? I suspect that you want to be a linux guy, but really are a windows junkie and are productive that way.

two thoughts come to mind:
#1 try using office in WINE
#2 just use the exchange web interface

I'm inclined to agree with the others. You have one specific problem over the 10 years: Exchange. The moment you are using Windows servers is the moment you aren't using anything but Windows on the desktops.

You aren't in a position to change things, but UNIX servers are generally considered to be superior, and you wouldn't have these problems with Linux OR Windows clients.

There is plenty to complain about with Linux as a desktop platform, but in the server environment, there is no way that Microsoft is the better product.

Why haven't you tried FreeBSD. When it comes to the desktop linux is better. But when it comes to a server environment it's flexible and stable.

As others have said, the problem is not with Linux, its that you are experiencing what's called "vendor lock-in". I'm sure you've heard of it. It is not the fault of Evolution devs that they can't get 100% compatibility with a server that was designed to NOT interoperate with any other client but an MS one. For crying out loud, last I checked they are screen-scraping the web client to make it work. That should give you an idea as to how hard it is to interoperate with MS.

Replace Exchange and you will have a much, much easier time.

Also, you might want to rename your article to something like "MS Exchange makes it impossible to use Linux in the workplace". That would be more accurate.

To,

All you brainless Linux nuts out there who think you are helping this guy by pointing out that the "Problem is with Microsoft"; You aren't helping!

You, are part of the problem.

If the gentleman cannot connect to his Exchange server and the Linux software is supposed to be able to do that very thing then something is wrong with the Linux software.

Rather than teasing him with the potential groups he could subscribe to, the software should at least tell him why the needed buttons do not exist.

But no error message is spit out, nothing.

That's just poor programming to have a branch of the possible scenarios in a GUI present the user with NO FEEDBACK at all.

I too have given up on Linux for the same reasons this guy has given up. Amateur level programming abounds in Linux and/or programming done by people who think they are so smart that they can lay the blame at Microsoft's feet.

At the end of this 'quest' I'm left thinking that your quest to interoperate linux apps with a workplace which has sold its operational soul to microsoft is rather a sad statement on the workplace mentality at dell. Those exchange server and outlook licenses aren't free and the shareholders at dell might want to ask why their staff is spending that money instead of utilizing a FOSS solution and using those funds to further the product development, market research, or pay dividends?

And, not to be construed as a personal attack, but if dell's workplace society has frustrated your desires to be free of the fetters of winders for 10 years, instead of quitting the quest to use linux, how about quitting the company and finding a workplace more in tune with your inner man.

Get rid of Microsoft file formats and protocols, and you won't have any problems.

The problem is lacking commitment. You are trying to use Linux the same way that you are using Windows. Use Linux and its applications in the Linux way and your problems will go away.

Office documents, Exchange ? You want to work Microsoft-style, use Microsoft tools.

As others have said, you're blaming Linux for a lack of Windows interoperability. Depends on what you want to do. I have a friend who is a Web developer - he HATES Microsoft but he's stuck with them because he has to see how his stuff looks on a Windows box. That isn't a defect of Linux - Linux isn't a reverse engineered Windows. The people I know who can't run Linux are people who have some mandatory application or operation they MUST run on Windows - for example a VPN application that only works with IE 6.x and cannot run on anything else. However, even these people can benefit from a Linux server their desktop interacts with. Can't tell it's a Linux file server, except that it doesn't break down or contract viruses. Ditto for Web server or print server. Again - Linux will never be "ready" on your terms because Microsoft intentionally keeps changing Windows to stay out of reach of real interoperability - not by accident but by design.

Hm. This may not be fair play, but I run OWA using IEs4Linux just fine.

Not sure if there are features missing between OWA and Outlook proper, but I have never run across any problems.

The obvious solution to this is to run outlook on the Linux machine using wine. Then you have the power of Linux and the propitiatory lock in software that you need.

Ok you will have to pay for an outlook client license but then if you want to use a closed email environment like that then don't expect a free ride.

Your perspective perpetuates what I believe is the wrong image for Linux. Linux is a powerful and flexible OS, why should it be reduced to an office tool which should perfectly integrate with a handful of proprietary software?

I have been using Linux as my sole OS in the office and server room for more than 6 years. Are there problems? Sure, but nothing you can't work around (I mean, do you really need to use an Exchange Server in a small company, or those infamous "Public Folders" for critical material?).

The problems are just different. Don't tell me Windows never gives problems, entire IT crews are constantly working at keeping things in order. Why should you expect to deploy Linux without IT support or IT re-organization? Why should integrating Linux in a MS environment or fully replacing the MS environment be low or no costs? Linux was never designed with that in mind.

The day where Linux will become this perfect Office Beast you want, I'll probably have to look somewhere else to do my work....

Heh, I like the comments. Typical finger pointing. The problem for the end-user is they want the stuff to work. Microsoft is not the good player here, well it's not their problem, they will retain monopoly, and that's it. Period. Given up hope. Done. No need to even try to push Linux to the Mr. Joe Blow, it will not work, they'll scream and switch to their Windows.

I use Mac OS X at home, I use Windows at work and I use Red Hat on my servers, at home and at work. So far, it has worked well for me. I do not have a monoculture going on, and everything works kind of fine, as long as the sysadmin is ready to do the hours to figure out the stuff in Red hat (Ldap, Sendmail and Bind, anyone?), figure out why the heck the system has stopped working correctly in Windows (Exchange server and sub-sub-sub folders of configuration), figure out how to properly connect elsewhere on my Mac (Directory access, Samba and all its glory).

Once one knows, it works fine. I use OpenOffice to read documents whenever I can, but decided to buy a $400 piece of software for work because I lose less time, which means better ROI. I hate Office to the point of changing religion, but that's what the corporate world has. Besides, again, small specks are not working on OO, making it very hard to use consistently. Too bad for it.

Love the article, agree with you 100%. I hope the trend will grow where caring people will become vocal on what they want really. Maybe the community will finally understand.

I see a lot of comments shifting the blame from FOSS to Microsoft. The problem with this is that in order for FOSS to compete with Microsoft for users, FOSS is going to have to be compatable/comparable with it. Excuses whining about how Exchange is propriatary are shameful. Tell me why a protocol analyzer and a few days of tinkering would not be sufficient to obtain the information needed for compatability? FOSS supporters claim each year that Microsoft will fall like Goliath and FOSS will rise to take it's place. This is said while insulting people who complain that FOSS is not comparable to existing propriatary software. You can't claim that FOSS is superior and then lash out when people say it isn't. I prefer FOSS honestly, but the community is not going to get anywhere with comments like "HARHAR j00 has been locked in by M$ n00b!".

It sounds like the only real problem you are having is with Office. Why don't you install WINE and use MS Office through that? Giving up just because Evolution doesn't work with a proprietary Microsoft product isn't fair.

I absolutely agree that Linux is not ready for a place on the workplace desktop. Unfortunately, the Linux community (and most of their proponents) have taken a confrontational stance on Exchange integration. Whenever these questions come up, the usual response from the community is something along the lines of "Don't use Exchange, ass."

Everybody points fingers at Microsoft for making Exchange proprietary and hurting poor little Linux, or at the people who buy and use Exchange/Outlook in their business and hurt poor little Linux. Nobody seems to be interested in helping poor little Linux have it's own client/server collaboration suite. Whether or not it looks and feels like Outlook/Exchange (that's a matter for discussion elsewhere), simply having that software as an option would do wonders for getting Linux integrated at an enterprise level. Interoperability with Exchange is the other golden ticket to being used for business.

Like it or not, Exchange and Outlook are what gets used for business. They are, for lack of a better term, the standard. Not the standard set down by a group of stodgy old men who think everyone ought to configure their e-mail with POP3 and SMTP, but the standard set down by the people with the dollars to spend and the time to save. Where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. So, if the people you want to use your software all think of Exchange/Outlook as the standard of usability and collaboration, you'd damn well better be able to work with it or do the same things if you want to be an option for their business!

I have to agree with some of the other comments I've seen - your expectations are all wrong.

You're defining "Enterprise" as "work seamlessly in an all-Microsoft shop" and those aren't necessarily the same thing.

You also seem to be defining a good Linux experience as doing exactly what you were totally happy about in Windows but without paying.

If what you're looking for is a computer whose function is to attach to a Microsoft domain server and a Microsoft Exchange server and use all the newest Microsoft technologies relatively seamlessly, you should just install Windows. If you're happy with Windows, you should install Windows. Heck, even Microsoft Entourage for OS X can't talk to Exchange right most of the time, and MS MAKES that.

If you're talking about a transition, you're doing it backwards; put Linux on the servers first, where no non-techs have to get used to using it, where you have a greater guarantee of a limited application set, and where Linux has more experience. Also where Windows charges you more in licensing fees for fewer benefits. Samba is great.

THEN start rolling it out on desktops, starting with the thinnest ones, and using your choice of Linux-style or Windows style methods based on the situation.

But if you really want to talk fairly about Linux in Enterprise you need to talk about legitimately comparing a Linux environment with a Windows one.

You need to talk about better natural security and less time trying to clean up stupid-user infections. You need to talk about the ease of remotely configuring, updating, and reinstalling large numbers of machines. You need to talk about running remote applications via X being free. You need to talk about the registry mostly being replaced with a large number of text files you can easily and remotely overwrite and a total lack of DLL-hell, meaning you almost never HAVE to totally reinstall a machine - and if you do, you never have to open a control panel on any client machine ever to set a single setting unless you want to. A seamless ability to use any convenient desktop in the office.

Certainly there's add-on Windows enterprise software to do many of these things that Linux does naturally. And I'd point out that OS X does most of them too and has a more user friendly desktop. Some studies show substantially lower costs in terms of administrators with Linux - if the administrators know Linux.

But if all you want is a Windows machine, USE a Windows machine. Saving $129 is not, alone, a sound rationale for using Linux in a professional environment where all you seem to want is Windows.

Well, saying that Microsoft discourages interoperability doesn't resolve the bug that you are experiencing, even if they do. To fix it, try downgrading to a previous version and see if it had the same symptoms.

However, turning the tables, I run an all Linux datacenter (actually four datacenters, but who's counting), and I have 5 Windows users running laptops with XP on them, and in order to please them, I've got to run Samba on my file servers to cater to them (the minority). If it wern't for those 5 people, I wouldn't have to worry about smb at all, I could just use NFS and not worry about all the freaky "features" (read: bugs) that make me create cruft to fix permissions, etc etc.

Perhaps you should talk with your IT department and see if you could access your folders through straight IMAP, or if they would cater to your operating system.

In the big picture, what does it tell you when compatibility and standards of operation only flow in one direction? What incentive does Microsoft give me to use its operating system if it won't use standards for network computing that have been established for years?

I've run Microsoft Windows from time to time, but I just can't get it to work in my all Unix environment. At first, it was the file sharing. The TCP/IP stack wasn't installed by default, only this Netbeui thing that didn't interoperate with my NFS setup.

I couldn't operate on a groff document file, or even a perldoc Pod file. Everytime I tried to use Microsoft Office to modify the standardized HTML formatted documents that my vendor used, they kept getting bigger and bigger.

The individual pieces for Windows got better of course since 1998. They replaced the generic error message with segmentation fault errors. I eventually was even able to connect to my Unix TCP/IP LAN to share files via NFS, get on the Internet out of the box, and even run a gopher client (and later, a web browser! Wow!)

But now, even ten years later, I still can't get Outlook to display the Internet headers by default when forwarding/reporting spam, I can only go through a number of menu options to copy/paste the headers into my emails to abuse@. I still can't make my Outlook calendar syncronize with the iCalendar format uploaded by my Macintosh and Linux systems and maintained with PHP and Apache.

So, I've finally given up on my attempt to make Microsoft Windows interoperate with standards-based technology. Maybe I'll try again in two years.

Well, I for one have had few problems using Linux in a corporate environment. The solution to the Outlook/Exchange issue for me was Windows Terminal Services. Our corporate IT folks manage a number of windows terminal servers, and I use those for Email/Calendering, as well as any other windows specific applications I am forced to use. I also don't understand why you insisted on converting between MS Office and Staroffice formats. Just leave it in the MS Office format, if that is what your company uses, but that is neither here nor there.

As for the guy that posted he had problems with Ubuntu Breezy on a D610, I used Ubuntu Breezy on a D610 until November of last year. The only "issue" I experienced was that the wireless was kind of a pain to get working. I ended up borrowing a script a friend of mine wrote to manage the key and network settings. As a programmer, I'm comfortable with such things, but I wouldn't ask my boss to go through the same experience. But, all the hardware worked out of the box, including the odd resolution screen.

Really... It sounds like every reason you had could just be put as "it's not microsoft". Issues connecting to Exchange, Issues because everyone uses Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. This has nothing to do work Linux and everything to do with, you want Microsoft products.

If you want them that bad, ask Microsoft to port over to Linux or keep on using Windows because you're a slave to Bill Gates.

I'll simply echo the others who state accurately that your problem isn't ubuntu/linux but the closed-door proprietary non-solution from Microsoft.
1) do away with Exchange
2) give workers choice
It's really that simple. And any arguement that "but we need Exchange to do our job" is specious. How did anyone do their job before Exchange? In the end a business concern must make a choice - lock in to Microsoft where no choice exists *or* do not lock in to Microsoft. The fact that this top-level choice exists should nudge in the right direction.

Microsoft doesn't adhere to any standards but their own. They work hard to make sure the only way you'll have a good experience is when you use Microsoft throughout the enterprise; desktop and server. If you want to use Microsoft servers for the core of your network; be prepared to use Microsoft for the clients. Likewise, if you're using MS Outlook for your mail client, don't expect anything but Exchange to provide full functionality.

If you truly wish to use Linux in your enterprise without a hitch; you'll need to get rid of the Microsoft stuff that's hanging things up.

I've used Linux, BSD and Mac OS on the desktop, and have done so for years and I know plenty of people I've worked with who do the same. I have no intention of being forced to wrestle with a Windows based desktop for day to day work any time soon.

The few instances of finding I have to deal with an unusually formated Microsoft Office documents (typically documents that are formatted in a way that makes them problematic to deal with in World itself) are nothing compared to the benefits I gain from from using pretty much any Unix based desktop.

Even if your company runs Exchange server, it's not like it doesn't have IMAP and LDAP interfaces (though Mac OS, Linux and BSD have free mail clients that integrate with Exchange - it's built right in on Mac OS X if your IT department stubbornly refuse to be accommodating).

While I'm familiar with the sort of issues you've raised, they are far from insurmountable (nor, IMO, do they outweigh the benefits of a Unix desktop for productivity).

Some quick googling shows that there are bugs and problems Evolution 2.8.1 has with accessing folders.

Since these are known issues, they most likely have been resolved in a newer version. I'd suggest upgrading to the latest version of the software you're trying to use first, and then see what works, and what doesn't.

It might also not be a bad idea, since you're just 'trying this out' to try out the development version, as it's usually still pretty stable, even being labeled as 'development', and will have all the latest and greatest features & fixes.

The latest 'Stable' version of Evolution is 2.8.3. The latest 'Development' version of Evolution is 2.9.6.

Linux doesn't work with Windows? Maybe you should also think about it as WIndows doesn't work with Linux. It is Microsoft that is actually trying to make sure Linux won't work with Windows by making Windows less cooperative. Still, despite that, we actually have it working fine where I work. Most of the engineering staff, and even a couple of the sales staff, use Linux while the rest use Windows.

If you want to help, try to get Microsoft to publish an RFC covering MAPI and the Exchange calendaring protocol. There are more than a few Thunderbird developers willing to implement it.

While you are at it, make sure MS wont ask for royalties for using it.

Your issues have NOTHING to do with Linux. Linux IS ready for the desktop in the workplace - many already use it quite successfully. Linux will never mix well with proprietary MS technology. MS simply builds roadblocks to anything OTHER than their "approved" software.

I'll offer your issues have nothing to do with linux. I use my SUSE Desktop in my business every day and have successfully for the past 5 years.

I'm using the evolution exchange plugin at work and it's working just fine. Granted I don't do actually know what exchange does. For me it just adds an extra calendar into my mail client and lets me check my email. So there are people using linux successfully. The problem is that you have to break down the monoculture. Emailing documents around and making small changes in them is ridiculous (which is the official version? who changed what? was that a formatting or content change?). I stopped doing that years ago and instituted Wikis and Intranets at every job I've had. I don't think I've written an actual word document for work in years.

If you want hosted calendars just setup some calendaring software. If you do these things you'll open up your enterprise for linux, mac, and windows folks. They'll thank you, and you'll have a much better leg to stand on when trying to get rid of Microsoft. Because eventually if you have this great Intranet hosting calendars, and mailing lists, and wikis, someone is going to ask why we need to keep paying the Exchange licensing cost.

I don't know what your Public Folders were being used for but you CAN access Exchange Public Folders using a browser if OWA is installed. Unless you have a custom app. using it that might work.

Granted that the experience in non IE browsers isn't always pretty but your documents are available.

-bill

I'm currently running Fedora Core6 x86_64 with evolution 2.8.2 and I can connect to our Exchange 2003 server just fine and see all my public folders. When working with Linux right now, you often have to "jiggle" things a little bit, but you don't have to pay the $300.00 price tag to M$. I'll never go back to Windows....

You can use IBM/Lotus groupware for linux, it works fairly darn well and it is more secure than exchange is going to be.

I"d take that one step further. as someone who just setup ubuntu 6.10 as a dual boot with xp mce and have played with many distro's in the past, i can say that while even this version of ubuntu is great (once setup) it can't compete seriously with MS until you can install and configure ALL hardware (natively supported or not) without using terminal commands. As great as linux is right now, my 55 year old mother can install windows without my help..i doubt she could do the same with any linux distro.

Did you try clicking the checkbox next to the folder you want to subscribe to?

[Yes. - Ed.]

I always wonder why people say "Linux is not ready for the office enviroment", when all they are doing is trying to integrate with Windows. How exactly do you expect Linux to integrate with 100% compatibility when Microsoft does everything in their power to prevent it?

You should be cheering the fact that it works as well as it does, instead of bashing Linux for a problem that is entirely Microsofts fault. Think about it this way: If Microsoft wanted Linux to be able to integrate into a Windows office, they would tell the Evolution team exactly what needed to be done, maybe even submit patches to them. How can you blame Linux for this?

The problem here it that Ubuntu is a binary distro. If you want it to work, compile the source.

So what you're really saying is that Linux is still not able to interface with a Microsoft-based workflow. If you have a business that is surrounded by Microsoft installations -- domain server, Exchange server, Office documents everywhere -- maybe Microsoft is the best way to go.

The headline is misleading, in a way. It's not that Linux (or Mac OS X, etc) isn't ready for the workplace, much less "the enterprise". It's just that third party tools implementing Microsoft formats and protocols are guessing at best, and can't handle everything perfectly. Which sounds about right, considering what they're working with.

Workplaces and IT departments that work with a platform agnostic infrastructure create systems that are reliable, easy to use, and accomplish the same goals as the Microsoft workflow, without the Microsoft. You choose your technology and run with it, but just because one company doesn't play nice doesn't make the other solutions inferior.

Regarding your two screenshots of the "Folder Subscriptions", what happens when you simply check the boxes in front of the folders you want to subscribe to? I could imagine the buttons were removed because they don't do anything extra compared to simply checking or unchecking the boxes.
Kind Regards, Retro

[Quite frankly, they wouldn't stick and we couldn't access the folders in Evolution. We don't know why - that's was our first thought, too. --Ed.]

You were almost there. All you need to do is check the box(es) next to the public folder and the subscription takes place immediately -- no buttons required.

[We actually tried this - didn't work for some reason. -- ed.]

P.S. I converted all of my machines -- work and home -- to linux a year ago (mostly Ubuntu 6.10 now). Finding I could fully integrate with the corporate Exchange mail/calendar/address book using Evolution was the key. I've been considerably more productive (and happier).

The fact is that Microsoft runs modern business. If you cannot interoperate with Microsoft's applications, then your software does not fit in a corporate environment.

Microsoft is out to make e-mail, calendering, group messaging, all that stuff easy for their customers. Exchange does all of these things quite well, and having them integrated in one package is much more easy than getting separate disjoint applications to do each individually.

Is it Microsoft's responsiblity to make sure their software interoperates with other software? Only to the extent that it makes business sense to them. Microsoft isn't doing anything WRONG (from a business standpoint), per se, however that does not mean they are playing nice with other vendors.

And yes, Office is the de facto standard for office applications. I did the whole "Open Office" route once, and still regret it.

I did the whole "ditch Microsoft" thing on a job as a proof of concept, just used Open Office for the documentation. Didn't work right. This was late 2006 (2003/2004 I could understand). Every time I opened the document, I had to reformat my tables because they would always lose the proper orientation of the text after I saved the document -- this was only in Open Office, I didn't even try to open it in Word at that point. I finished the job, kind of thinking "Oh its coming along I guess -- maybe I could use this", and PDF'd the document for the client.

He told me he wanted the original Word file, so I opened it in Word and all the formatting was screwed up. Had to cut and paste into Word and reformat the whole thing -- THEN he wanted to know why it didn't look exactly like the PDF. Experiment failed.

Try getting your windows system working in a linux environment and you'll have the same problems.

Don't blame Linux for not being able to be 100% compatible with MS software. That proprietary shop is set up to prevent interoperability.

Can't you just buy the MS Office product and run it under Linux using crossover office? Or run it under VMWare or some other virtualizer. Or run it on Citrix?

That would give you 100% Windows Office and Outlook.

I have found that running MS applications in their own VMWare bubbles helps to keep applications from interfering with each other. Plus they seem to run faster and windows crashes less than when it runs on the bare metal.

Did you try clicking on the checkbox on the left side to subscribe?

While linux makes a great server, I do agree it lacks in a lot of places that prevent it from being an adaptable desktop OS.

The best desktop linux that I have used is freespire/linspire. However, not perfect, but possibly the most user friendly.

Linux misses out on a lot of "enterprise desktop" capabilties that Microsoft has. Knowing when to use each technology is key. IMO, linux is stuck in this interoperability mode instead of trying to invent stuff to compete directly with Microsoft and their technology.

The stuff that does compete, does so and well. IE Apache, MySQL, etc.

I don't know very much about connecting to Exchange servers with Evolution, but I think I see the problem you were having based on the screen shots you posted.

Recent versions of GNOME (and GNOME apps like Evolution) have been moved from a dialog box system that requires confirmation to one where changes are made instantly.

So, moving from Evolution 2.4 to 2.8, the need to click an extra "subscribe" button before closing the dialog was removed. You should be able to just add a check beside the folders you want and click close.


Jeremy

YoU SHOULD NOT BEING USING EDGY FOR BUSINESS! Use dapper, its got long term support. And dont be a cheap person, get the single user support until you learn how to use linux. Just because you know how to use windows does not mean you know how to use linux.

The real problem is that you're locked in to Microsoft.

Our company is much more fortunate: We've been Linux right from the start, and all of our Linux-based systems are smoothly connected and do everything we need. For us, trying to integrate a Windows box into our network (if we were ever insane enough to attempt it) would be a
problem, because the Windows way of thinking [sic] just doesn't fit into the Linux way.

Welcome to Vendor Lock-In.

Try Xandros next time, they put a lot of effort into making that type of business application work under Linux.

Your particular definition of "the enterprise" is "our Exchange server and a bunch of MS Office documents." You should make that clear, because you're painting with a ridiculously broad brush here.

I work in a similar environment and don't see the issues you mention. OpenOffice handles everything people create here, and I'm reading my email from the Exchange server right now.

But I don't doubt your problems. I just think your expectations are a bit off, and that you extrapolate too broadly.

These are the actions of a crazy person :) -- doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

As long as neither Linux nor Windows are striving to be the ultimate in interoperability, you will continue to have problems inter-mingling. Obviously, it is not the result of which of these environment(s), nor suite(s) of product(s), you use individually. Instead, its the fact that both environment, and suite of products, on either side, are running the race in opposing directions. And that won't change until it makes more money to be inter-operable, or somehow make less money to build proprietary products.

Yeah, well, the reality is that anyone who complains about vendor lock or "proprietary" standards simply lacks the technical or innovative capability to find a solution. The APIs are published. Get to work.

Try SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 and go on the Novell newsgroups if you have an issue. SLED 10 is a less bleeding edge distro with a greater focus on testing and the need to connect to corporate networks. SLED releases every two years due to a focus on stability, Ubuntu releases twice a year due to a desire to have the latest and greatest. It seems strange you are reading a manual off the Novell site but not using a Novell distribution and then wondering why things aren't the same.

By golly some of you zealots can’t see the forest for the trees

What the man is trying to do should be standard fare on any operating system that was serious about gaining any enterprise adoption. What he is describing is the exact issue that prevents Linux from gaining any serious foothold in the home / desktop enterprise market ... it's just too hard for most people.

It's not that people are not smart enough, it's just that people don’t have the time to spend messing round to get basic things to work. It's very hard trying to sell an operating system when you are having to tell your CIO that there is a problem with the exchange integration and you are waiting for a reply to a message board / mail group posting.

I work doing system design and implementation , most of which are in Unix ... so I can say with some experience that with operating systems it's horses for courses. For my Database / Application server I will recommend *ix 9/10 times , but for a desktop operating system for most it’s just a viable option

Most people here who are saying, "Just ditch Microsoft and use Linux programs" are failing to recognize the importance of legacy. If you have years of archived information, you can't simply switch over to new software unless you can easily transfer all your existing data with you.

Saying that you should not have to interoperate with Exchange is naive. Businesses choose Exchange (or any product, proprietary or otherwise) because it solves a problem for them at a price they are willing to pay. Rarely do business decision makers care about the ideology of the product. You cannot use a product that prohibits you from doing the things you need to do to make your business succeed.
The reality of the world is that businesses use proprietary products. If your business wants to work with another business, you have to be able to interact with their systems. I admire the author for trying to get it done with OSS, but it is clear to me that he understands how things work in the real world.

Why do you want to use Linux in the first place?? You will not contribute to Linux just by being a user. You just want to be benefited by it.

There is a valid reason for everything to either work or not work in this world.

If something is not working, try to understand the problem instead of throwing mud at it. Nobody had promised that Linux will work seamlessly with windows.

Its like blaming Microsoft if MS office is not working in Linux

Eric:

Word processor documents like Microsoft Word format and the Open Document format are not geared to making things look exactly identical. They are a kind of rich-text format that provides supplementary information about text sufficient to reasonable formating. PDF, however, is oriented to formatted output. Correctly implemented, any PDF rendering engine will produce output that visually appears identical to any other. Your client's expectations are out of touch with what PDF vs. document formats are about, regardless of whether you use OpenOffice or Microsoft Word. You just won't likely run into it if you are a user of MS Word because you wouldn't have tried PDF at all.

MS Windows and MS Office are in fact the most used computer tools in business, as you say. The reason this is so is in part because Microsoft was there first with something really complete that worked well. Today, what Microsoft offers is, in terms of office functionality, still better than what OpenOffice provides. If all I was doing was office stuff like that, I'd prefer MS Office for the task. But OpenOffice is catching up and is better than what MS Office was at a few years ago. But at the same time, Microsoft is doing two things: They are trying to make MS Office better (this is a good thing) and they are trying to make things not work, or work poorly, for OpenOffice (this is not a good thing).

For the more technical things I do, I really need Linux. Windows simply cannot do the job well and safely. While I can keep a Windows computer off the internet, I don't have that choice for the technical work I do, so Linux is required, even if just for the security. So the only issue I have to decide is whether to dedicate a separate computer that is isolated from the internet to do my smaller than average office needs, or use Linux with it's not-quite-as good tools. Things are close enough that for me it isn't worth having the 2nd computer (dual-booting is way out the question because I have too much stuff running on Linux all the time).

Your mileage most certainly will vary. OpenOffice isn't for everyone. Only a fool would ever think it could be. No matter how good it becomes, Microsoft will do something that beats it somewhere to keep at least some of the market. In the end it all comes down to just how much of a market there will be for each. I suspect Microsoft will keep the majority of the market for a long time.

The big issue we still need to deal with is interoperability of documents that you and I might share if we had a need to do that. OpenOffice developers want to be interoperable. Microsoft doesn't want to be. Think about how that works in a world where at least some people really can't use MS Word. Wouldn't you rather have a Word program that would play well with others? I would. And if Microsoft were to ever do that and port Word to actually run natively on Linux as a binary program, I actually would give it very serious consideration to buy and use.

Part of the problem from what I can tell is trying to use Evolution. I spent time with it over the past 6 years here and there and it never worked right even when trying to use it with just IMAP. There are so many stupid little things wrong with it to count.

Did you know that as of the end of last year the response from the development team to putting your contact info as a signature above a reply in a messages is "thats not how you should be sending your mail". I mean c'mon!

We've since switched to Zimbra.

I don't think the issue isn't that there aren't ways work around to this issue as so many people have posted. It also isn't that he doesn't like Linux for all you fanboy MS haters out there. It is that if Linux wants to truly reach the mainstream in these environments like it tries so hard to do, things like this must SIMPLY WORK. He has been far more patient than most users would be in this situation, trying again and again for 10 years. The average user won't be that patient. They will try, and when it doesn't work exactly like they think it should, they will go back to what they know. The concept of "if you want to use Linux you have to change your protocols and get rid of exchange, and hire an IT manager to configure your servers differently" isn't reality. I agree that open standards are better than proprietary, but the cost and time involved for most companies and users to switch if their legacy is proprietary is too much. Especially if it doesn't work on the first try. Linux is getting much better, but it isn't there yet.

I own a company, and I don't want you using Linux. Why??

Well, next time you find me working in your industry and can offer the same services as you at 2/3rd the price as yours and STILL have considerably better net margins than you can ever hope for, you will understand why OSS is better.

The reality is that at the end of the day the cost of business is key. I have proven that I can offer better services than my competitors with linux substantially cheaper. If you cant, then great!!! Just don't realistically expect to take my company on, because you will lose.

It's sad that many "open systems" users don't have and "open mind", in order to understand that blaming MS, the corporations or the users who dare to try, isn´t the best way to pave the way for Linux into the corporate environment.

I too have used Linux exclusively in the workplace. It was a Microsoft based environment and believe me, it had it's challenges. There were only 2 things I couldn't do: Use the Exchange server and test in Internet Explorer. I tried several things, but ended up with VMWare to run these 2 apps. Everything else was Linux. Believe me, it was worth it. I never had the blue screen of death, virus problems, I never had to shut down, it was bliss!

I still can't believe that E-mail, which has been around for over 30 years, has been made proprietary by Microsoft and people have bought into it. That still blows my mind!

There is no question in my mind that if a business wants to save money and be more productive, they should advocate and use Linux. There's just no comparison. It's far more advanced in almost every way.

We have switched 300 users to Linux and another 800 to Open Office 2 on Windows XP. Our saving grace was that we killed our Exchange server instead of migrating to AD. Now we have replaced all our Windows Servers with Linux (except 2 citrix servers for windows only apps). Next year we convert the remaining 800 users to Linux.

Open source and open standards are our choice and I am glad we were able to pull it off. We save $100,000+ yearly on Licensing fees and another $200,000 on support fees all by dumping our proprietary systems and replacing them with open source solutions with vendor support.

[Awesome! -ed]

Evolution does not support shared folders in imap (yes it's stupid, they've promised it for serveral years) . Thunderbird does it very nicly, but does not have a exchange plugin. Kontact does it flawlessly. Install kubuntu instead of ubuntu. :-) Or just apt-get install kontact.

I love Linux and use it every day, but it's just not ready for the conventional end-user desktop. It's a fantastic server, but as for my company laptop, I run Windows with a background Linux machine as a VMware server guest that boots with the box. That way I get the excellent "luser" experience of Windows with the powerful "admin" experience of Linux on demand via SSH at any time.

You've not discussed any of your pursuits and efforts as a change agent in convincing your IT staff to make this happen. If you were to propose the use of Linux as a cost saving mechanism and lobby to convince those with the power to make changes you might have more success. There are a number of alternatives to your public folders issue (DocMgr) and a variety of other products that a skilled Linux Admin could implement to alleviate your issues, but if they are approached from a "I want to use Linux cause it sounds cool" perspective no good business manager will give this a second thought.

Most of the other guys have hit the most important points however. MS made sure their stuff was inoperable with other systems and continues to enforce that. They are having major issues throughout the EU because of this.
Your problems are not with Linux they are with desktop applications. If it were possible to see the APIs implemented in Exchange and there were no legal threats from MS, other products would have been compatible with Exchange years ago. If you truly want to "support" Open Source you can't just use the products and complain when they don't work. Since the product was free you could donate to an open source project, or contribute code, or just submit a bug to their bug tracking system. You could also look into using Cross over office or wine to run office from within linux. Ultimately your problem is that you are dissatisfied with something that cost you nothing and are dissapointed that it doesn't work with a separate product that was designed so that free stuff doesn't work with it in the first place and you are blaming the open source community instead of trying to help fix the problem.

It's not really about blaming Linux or Microsoft. It's that users want things to just work, and your average Joe user isn't going to want the hassle and headache of having to figure out alternatives or workarounds for proprietary obstacles if he can just go back to Windows and have everything work like he's accustomed.

I've tried with the same degree of futility to make the change to linux. I've immersed myself into it where I just wouldn't switch back to Windows forcing myself to work through whatever obstacles I encoutnered.

I really like linux, and we are gradually replacing both our Netware and Windows servers with linux. But from the desktop perspective, while linux has made huge leaps from where it was in the late 90s when I first tried it, its still a niche OS.

Jim,

Many others have pointed out valid problems as you yourself have:

1) Your article / experience is to be more accurately described as "Exchange will only work with Outlook". Thank MS for that (try Scalix if want to improve your mail experience ).

2) The lack of a high quality "Outlook-like" Linux alterative is real, and mystefying.

Either one of the above statements is definitely worth a story, but what you wrote is well documented and non-news.

Regards

Hey, if you are so desperatly in need of Exchange and all that mumbo-jumbo, just install rdesktop on your linux box and connect with terminal services to the server. That way you can stay geek like the rest of us.

I understand geneereal frustration and I'm not outside that. I still think that a lot has to do with components and other non-Linux stuff, the market and different factors.

for example: compatibility it is not 100% Linux fault. It is the way other companies react to Linux.

No one cares about standards. People ask for choices but choices without knowledge are a mess... and IT is still pretty tied to non-Linux stuff since it is what most people uses.

Please don't point the finger at Linux when the problem is that you want to connect to use Exchange, a very proprietary MS product.

We use an almost all Linux shop, supporting 135 desktops, three servers, 30 printers and 150 users doing real work, every day. From accounting, to medical, to office automation (OpenOffice, WordPerfect, Sylpheed, Firefox, GIMP, etc).

It works. It really does. Our TCO is extraordinarily low. Users generally don't care that things look or act a bit different. Management loves the security and reliability.

In fact, the only REAL problems I ever have is when external entities try to force MS stuff down our throats. And even then, we usually find a way to deal with it without too much issue.

MS Saftware certainly not ready for the enterprise.

I've just had to teach a course in SQL, not my usual stuff (that's CompSys, Data Comms and Operating Systems).

I check the syntax of queries, as one does; SQL text wildcard is %; works for mySQL, Postgres, IBMdbs, Oracle, even for MS SQLServer.

Access is touted as a front end for database setups. Great, the students can set up databases, queries etc. and test them.

Except that Access doesn't use % as a text wildcard, it sees it as a literal. Think of all those text strings containing unescaped % that run on Access, but will barf on all other SQL dbms. For some reason, MS decided that it would substitute * for % as the text wildcard.

I suppose that this also means that MS will demand this fart in its ClosedOfficeXML format; some standard.

I'm afraid that MSOffice just doesn't cut it for serious use.

As many have pointed out the problem is exchange. Since you cannot change the problem, you might consider getting crossover office and running (look)Outlook from there.

Also, you might wish to note that we have had many customers with Exchange who spend huge amounts of capital and people time to build a "scalable" server to handle 2000-5000 accounts, that a single Linux box using Postfix, and some other bits easily can handle . In many of our accounts, the IT folk have quietly added such a setup in front of their (S)Exchange server farm, to stop their server farm from crashing under heavy load (which the Linux box easily handles).

What I am saying is that you are using (S)Exchange, and that might be what you need to reconsider.

Someone in this list asked why on earth would anyone want to use Exchange Server in the first place.

Thats easy.

Microsoft told them too.

have you tried using brutus or the evolution-brutus plug-in? you'll need the brutus 'server' installed on any windows box; but after that, evolution, with brutus plug-in, has full MAPI and exchange compatibility.

http://www.omesc.com/modules/main_module/

I've set up ActiveDirectory servers to tie into M$ Exchange - this is possible. There are however literally thousands of options - most of which have no documentation - to adjust.
The only exchange clients I've seen for linux were written by corporations who are still stuck with M$'s attempt at enterprise software.

At this point I've encountered no difficulty exchanging documents (ABIWord/Gnumeric as alternatives to OpenOffice, but OpenOffice works rather well)

I'm going to back that the problem here is Exchange - a locked-in (rediculously complex) proprietary set of protocols. But I'll do so as a developer who has attempted to work with that environment - and given up. Investing the years necessary to do this - without being paid - is not something I'm willing to do.
Programmers need to eat too.

Funny, I've had the opposite experience. Back in 96 we started running linux at the isp I worked for, it was faster than the NT 3.51 and the webserver was free rather than costing several hundred dollars.

Warp ahead a few more years and I join an ISP where everything, including the frontpage servers were running linux because the windows frontpage servers had to be rebooted every day to keep them up and that was an unacceptable level of downtime.

Warp ahead a few more years and I come into a medical billing company who is running databases on linux, they work flawlessly and we change over the file serving, fax server, modem pool, monitoring services, and everything but the floorworkers (data entry) computers to linux... working flawlessly still, over a year after I left.

I wouldn't even consider myself an exceptional geek, I know linux, I know unix, I know cisco. That about covers it. Linux has worked like gold anywhere I've ever tried to stick it, I think the worst problem I ever had was getting one of the poorly supported compaq raid cards to work... and that took all of 2-3 hours to figure out.

Linux is rapidly getting better. I am optimistic. Especially with with MS Vista and the further prospects, Linux is the only sensible alternative.
I agree that the interoperation with the Windows world is crucial and I also agree that MS is not even compatible within itself. There are numerous examples.

I have tried Suse 9.0 and Xandros and finally landed at Debian Stable, generated by Knoppix. I use it at home, develop my own software and have a dual boot with Windows 2000.

Both Windows and Linux have their issues and little annoyances as far as bugs and usability is concerned. Unfortunately, Linux has still more of them. I currently have problems with:
- starting Firewall automatically at boot
- printing from editors and browsers
- software packages are too old or unavailable (Debian Stable)
- sometimes switching files between Open Office and Word has errors
On the other hand, Linux has many advantages:
- restricted users run perfectly. Win 2000 has many problems there and you have to run as the Administrator
- security. No Antivirus needed.
- some development environments are better supported under Linux (OCaml, mlton)
- stability (Debian Stable)
- long term outlook (look at Vista!)

I'm sorry you have had so much trouble getting Linux working with Microsoft products. The thing is, Lotus, IBM, Sun, BSD Unix, Apple, HP, and many other products, applications, and operating systems also have trouble working with Microsoft.

Even Microsofts own products have trouble working with each other ( try opening a document created with Office 97 or 2000 in the newest Office, for example ), so its hardly surprising that other vendors are also having difficulties.

Perform a basic root-cause analysis on the above situation - Microsoft is the problem, and has been the problem for a very long time.

Their history of undocumented and/or corrupted interfaces and standards, intentially broken compatibility, and other problems associated with poor business decisions have bought this about.

A computer without Microsoft is like a dog without bricks tied to his head. It works a hell of a lot better.

Well. I think everyone has argued the point to the nth degree. The need to inter-operate seems to be driven by the desire to move to something better without committing to it. Half a commitment will always result in half a solution.

That being said though I use Linux on a daily basis in a corporate environment. This is accomplished by using citrix windowed sessions under linux.

I'm typing this in firefox and the next window on my desktop is outlook, looking for all intents and purposes as if it's running native. It provides me the best of both worlds. The productivity and freedom of Linux with the forced and unchangeable compatibility with windows that I require.

I disagree with others that desktop linux is not there. It is IF it is configured and maintained by a well trained desktop team.

It amazes me that people seem to forget they have a team of 50 MS people dealing continually with the issues of MS desktop support. Years of training and knowledge to supply a useful desktop experience, yet these same people expect to install a linux desktop and have everything just work seamlessly.

The true measure is the TCO and resource required to run a linux desktop solution and until corps bite the bullet and commit to a linux based solution there is no way to fairly compare the two.

If anything it is a testament to Linux that people expect it to just work and are disappointed when it doesn't.

With windows we just expect it not to work (at some point) and accept it's limitations.

Cheers,

Rick.

You guys all whine too much. Yes Linux and FOSS in general are better than Microsoft products functionally. You're preaching to the choir here:), but the bottom line is money. If you want to interact with a Microsoft world in an enterprise environment, then you must pay either in man hours or software licensing....your choice. The two branches of computing weren't created to play nice. I implore you to quit bitching, flaming, and pointing fingers, and start programming. One of the biggest issues with the FOSS movement from a Linux standpoint is that, although open-source, is the elitist attitude that it's all Microsoft's fault. They aren't using unfair business practices. They merely developed a product that the world wanted. People ate up windows and encouraged a huge monopoly. Kudos to Bill Gates for successful business practices. That's what we're all trying to in the enterprise environment anyways. So quit crying. There are no free rides. If Linux is to become a true competitor in the professional world, then we need to get organized and convince the masses that they can switch without learning too much. Let's face it, many, many, many people are scared to death of new software, and will reject anything other than the koolaid they been drinking.
-p

Linux misses out on a lot of "enterprise desktop" capabilties that Microsoft has. Knowing when to use each technology is key. IMO, linux is stuck in this interoperability mode instead of trying to invent stuff to compete directly with Microsoft and their technology

I think you need to be a little more specific. Just exactly what "enterprise desktop" capabilities does a strictly Microsoft Outlook+Exchange enterprise have that you don't get in a strictly Lotus Notes+Domino enterprise?

Many Fortune 500 corporations are Lotus Notes+Domino environments-- that can include a combination of Linux, other Unices, Macs and Windows operating systems. I'd like to know exactly what enterprise features they're missing that a "pure" Microsoft shop has...

However, note that the "ability to edit and collaborate with a .doc file" is not accurately an enterprise feature. The enterprise feature there is actually, "the ability to edit and collaborate with a word processing file." Just because your enterprise got itself locked-in doesn't mean everyone has. In fact, I'd be inclined to consider the lack of such an enterprise lock-in is a distinct "feature" that your enterprise is missing.

@DaedalusLeto

Poor Linux? What about MacOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, or even just older versions of Windows?

Also stop spreading ignorance like that "they just aren't as good" myth. Have you actually stopped to use any other solutions? I mean, POP3 support isn't exactly the rarest thing in email servers.

It's exactly this "Linux enthusiasts are rabid fans who just want to screw Microsoft out of money" mentality that raises the hackles of a true computer user. Get over it, we know why it's a de-facto standard.

It's not because it's better, it's because of lock-ins, MS's ability to actively market, and people who are too scared to put their money into their own workforce instead of into Microsoft's support structure.

Indeed, the problem is standards. Microsoft does not adhere to other peoples standards, no matter how well established in the industry. The "answer" is not to berate all the other software producers in the world, the answer is to focus on the one that breaks all the others. Exchange and Outlook are designed to work together, and _only_ together. When accepting documents, why didn't you mention that OpenOffice was free, and would do a better job of rendering the formatting and keeping file sizes small than MS Office? Both OpenOffice and MS Office will install on the same computer without conflicting.

I worked in the same group as the Author at *ell, but he must have been after my time as I don't remember him. We were a small group back in the mid 90's. Any hoe, having been using Linux since the early days, and being a self proclaimed Linux bigot I approached my manager, back then, and told him that more and more customers were going to / are starting to ask for tech support for the Linux they were installing on their shiny new *ell servers. He laughed at me a told me that we would never do that...Linux was just a toy that people were playing with. How far they've come, you can now buy your Power *dge server with all the Red Hat Linux you could ever want.

Irony....ain't it!

I came into the same issues in my last attempt to use linux for my desktop. The desktop ran very well, but the lack of proper exchange integration was what made me switch back. In my opinion, exchange is a very easy piece of software to run compared to the alternatives, if you want the whole ldap integration, etc... It takes MUCH more skill to setup the needed services in freebsd/linux/whatever properly, and that kind of ability is hard to find. With Microsoft, an admin can setup the exchange server, and if that admin leaves, someone else can come in, and likely take over where they left off. You cannot do that having a custom compiled gentoo server running postfix, cyrus-imap, pop3, openldap, bind, etc... There is just way too much complication to deal with. Microsoft has the upper hand in desktop and corporate mail deployments, and if linux wants to be a serious contender for that environment, it will have to work with everything that can be thrown at it, including exchange.
When you pay for windows, you pay for the support of tens of thousands of admins who are trained on Microsoft products. Microsoft gives HUGE discounts to the education sector to use its products, and because of that, it will likely remain the industry standard. That is, unless the more vocal of the linux community, instead of chastising users for complaining about lack of full exchange support, just deal with it.

PS. Btw, support for exchange by plugging into OWA is NOT SUPPORT FOR EXCHANGE. It is a terribly inefficient workaround that should not be even be considered proper support.

I only could get about halfway down the comments.

What this really comes down to is simple. Why try and mix water and oil? For maximum compatibility use Microsoft Client end tools for Microsoft Server side systems. This works both ways. I don't know that your statement is fair, saying that Linux is not ready for the corporate environment. That is a very conditional statement and might not have been well thought through.

On the flip side to this, most places do run a Microsoft shop so for optimal compatibility across the board I can see this creating problems.

I would just like to throw in a reminder that there are other realms of the digi business world affected by the same basic issue of open vs. proprietary, than mail/file servers and office apps. I have experience in pro multimedia, setting up digital audio workstations, non-linear video editing suites, rendering/compositing/effects boxes. Its really come to a point for me in digital arts where I am torn between the ease of use and consistency provided by commercial development, versus the awesome scalability of Linux. Right now I use mostly Apple Computers, but while Macs do handle intensive media work, they still cost money, and they still, like MS, want to install "your full featured OS of the future complete with every misdirection we can throw at you," whether you want it or not. Enter Linux and a minimalist server/command line mindset. Perfect right? Decide what modules load on start-up, and everything is perfect? What holds things back is this insecurity in Linux in which I get the feeling may applications are written by developers for the purpose of being petted by other developers. Then after the social insiders have grown disinterested the user is sort of left with this somewhat awkward series of cryptic configuration screens and a vague readme file that says "Hey John, hope you like version .0027!" Not to despair or discourage the efforts of people who work hard for free, but even with package managers attempting to catalog and sync, I'm afraid the vision of an entirely decentralized network of people causing this major revolution is just not realistic. With Linux, and Apple for that matter so bent on defending themselves against the MS dominance in the market, they forget to actually show anyone WHY their systems are actually smarter, faster, and therefore cheaper in the long run. I like the example posted earlier of Mr. Joe who stumbled in out of the rain, took one look at an Ubuntu message saying "you don't have root permission to edit this file," and ran screaming back to MS. However I would bet that one, just one, 30 second ad spot on network prime-time television of the Ubuntu symbol spinning around in 3d space with a half-naked french model draped over it and some new-agey synth, and Mr. Joe would have "apt-get" down 1 hour flat. As it is today, Linux and FOSS is my choice as a desktop. But leveraging a major enterprise infrastructure and bringing up secured pages from a Postnuke web-portal in Malaysia in a tenth of a second is not the simple and universal gateway to switching Linux that the common man really needs. I fundamentally disagree with earlier comments that taking the ideology of a product into consideration is foolish business practice. Without ideology, we are cutthroats, and cutthroats fail, badly. Inspiration and creative learning are advantages you can't put a price on. If the cost of a happier environment and more productive workforce is taking a little time to figure out how to let them use that cute KDE desktop, this is a small price to pay. Perfect integration between MS Word and OpenOffice outputs is a non issue compared to an office building full of bored people.

Linux works for companies like
Dreamworks Animation, Lucas's ILM,
Sony Pictures Imageworks, etc.

And aren't Google and Amazon using linux? (Not sure about Amazon,
but Google is). And IBM is in the process
of migrating.

So *some* people don't seem to have
horrible problems.

I think the biggest problem here is that Linux *does* have to be able to interoperate in order to prove itself, because it's playing catch-up with a company that's been entrenched for years. Many of the posts to this article indicate another facet of the problem - rather than blame the golden child that is Linux, fans would prefer to lay the blame at Microsoft's feet for competing where they fail to. When you're an IT manager who has Microsoft representatives willing to take you out to lunch and make you feel good about giving them your money, versus faceless fans on Linux mailing lists tellilng you that it's all your fault and that you're somehow being punished for giving over to the inferior that is Microsoft, you're going to be hard put to figure out why you'd rather take abuse and scorn rather than a smile and at least some attempt at tech support.

Finally, people who pay the money and run the companies need reassurance that their investments will be reliable and help them to profit. While it might be great to feel that you're better than somebody else, it doesn't actually bring much when nobody else agrees with you. People are convinced by results, and there's very little respect to be earned from blaming the other guy, especially when he's actually getting the job done (and regardless of what you might think of his moral integrity.)

I would suggest that Jim Sampson isn't competent enough.

We've all had problems that crop up with so many things I.T. related. The trick is to not give up at the first hurdle!

I do understand this guy pain.

I've been a Linux user since 1994, and I develop Java software on Solaris/Linux for living.

However my current laptop only runs Windows.

Why? Because I can't find a single distribution that supports it properly. And no, I don't want to spend time and time on forums/mailing lists.

You have titled this incorrectly -- the article is -- 10 years of trying to get Linux to integrate with MS applications, and giving up..

Linux is enterprise ready on its own... duh..

Linux is ready for corporate use. There is just one thing you should remember - it was not designed to work with MS products. So, install linux everywhere and forget that MS exists - it worked for us.

I think many of you forgot a few things. Yes, we forgot about the businesses using MSFT on the other side.

So let's think about this scenario. You are an independant company that wants to work with a big company like Dell. Then you find out that your Linux (or whatever) system is not working well together. You have 2 options: 1st- Convert to MS Windows/Office yourself (the easy way), or 2nd- Try and meet with the IT Group of Dell to convince them to change their computers or install extra software (such as Star Office) onto their machines. (the hard way)

Now, I've worked on BOTH sides of the fence. Believe me I can tell you that the guy on Dell's side would probably like to play with the new software or even Linux, but not at the risk of his job or at the risk of support problems. You see, unfotunately in the modern world of IT the easy answer is just to "use MSFT" and don't re-invent the wheel. IT staf is discouraged in many cases from developing a custom Linux (or Open Source) solution because companies are worried about those people leaving (and their support with them). That is a primary argument AGAINST Open Source. This has been perpetuated by the many, many IT folks that make terrible or no documentation. You all know wht I am talking about.

While on the other hand, you have us Linux and MacOSX people that don't understand why people don't want to integrate and use Open Source.

In their minds, the "business" people already HAVE integrated (even though it was into a one-vendor solution).

So, what can you and I do? There is no "magic software" to fix this issue. There will ALWAYS be problems as long as one vendor is allowed to control and drive the Enterprise Market. Now, the burden of proof is on us (the OSS folks) to develop something a LOT better. Hopefully in another decade business will get wise to this and see the Open Source advantages.

For now, I got sick with all the MSFT bull and looked for a company running Linux and MacOSX to work for. I am MUCH happier there.

I hope that gives you some insight to both sides.

TechMundial.com

Or how about you enable the POP3/IMAP services on the Exchange server and connect to those via SSL?

If you can't get that button to appear, why not get the source and take a look at what the code is trying to do. That's the whole point of open source! When something doesn't work, dig in and find out why. If all you want is to absolve yourself of any responsibility for managing and controlling your own IT environment, feel free to by bloatware from MS and pay through the nose for the privilege.

I think you need to be a little more specific. Just exactly what "enterprise desktop" capabilities does a strictly Microsoft Outlook+Exchange enterprise have that you don't get in a strictly Lotus Notes+Domino enterprise?

Specifically Active Directory and a way to enforce policies on a large user base without a local administrator being able to circumvent the issues. I could care less about exchange and so on. There is always OWA that linux clients can use, imo.

Microsoft has it sweet, they implement their broken garbage and linux and mac are busy playing interop. MS does NOTHING for interop.

If someone came up with a genuine replacement for the corp stuff I think that would help with the adoption of linux. The reason being is that the developers would soon realize what everyday users need out of linux. while technical ppl have no problems using linux...everyday end user stuff is a huge issue for normal people to use linux.

And outside of the work place, commercial gaming would help linux. But because of how fragmented the linux community is with the different distro's (while great for choice and ingenuity) it hurts 3rd party software companies for providing a 1 size fits all solution.

I have been using Linux on and off too for over 10 years, like you I would get excited only to have my hopes shot down. The problem is not Linux though. It is the that so many people blindly follow the crowds. Where I work I have so many IT folks claim that if it is MS it works in a MS environment and that is all they will use. Take SAMBA for example, we use to use it but as the servers were updated they were replaced with MS server, partly because it came preloaded, partly because we had only 2 folks that understood *nix's and the manager was not one of them.

So when the new servers were plopped in, SAMBA quit working with them. 2 weeks later after much hair pulling and upgrades to SAMBA, they just moved all of the shares over to MS...no more SAMBA.

Part of what you are buying when you buy MS is interoperability, MS tries to make sure their product work with their products...they are not concerned nor care if anybody else works them....

The best solution is keep things generic. So until the IT world convinces the management world that linux is better MS will rule. And MS tries it's best to convince them to stick with MS.

I now have control of our IT dept, and it is hard to move off of MS, I am working on it though one month at a time.

The problem does not lie with GNU/Linux and the software available to run on it.

I have corporate (and government) clients who strictly run [SuSE] Linux in their environment, from IT staff to admin assistants to the CEO. Their desktops and servers run rock-solid with almost zero downtime. Most made this move because of all the downtime they experienced using Microsoft products.

I have other clients who deploy corporate (and government) JSEE applications to Linux servers on their IBM mainframes.

I have deployed literally hundreds upon hundreds (more like thousands) of [SuSE] Linux installs to corporate and government laptops, desktops and servers. Uptime is generally at around 99%.

You mention Ubuntu .. have you tried SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop?

I suspect your IT department only has folks that deal with MS products. And someone who dabbles with a Linux distro every couple of years certainly isn't in a position to properly deploy it.

What you require is a Linux consultant who has real world experience executing these types of deployments.

Warm regards, Michael J Tobler; author, Inside Linux.

Everything you've posted (main article) sounds very much like my experiences with it over the past six years. I'm doing the same thing (on/off trying it in the workplace). I'm using Ubuntu 6.10 on a Dell laptop and it has it's share of problems (synaptics touchpad weirdness, linksys pc wi-fi card issues, screen resolution problems) which eat up time troubleshooting, debugging, searching, asking, downloading, compiling, repeat. I don't have time for that at work, and I'd rather spend time with my kids while at home (not continuing work). I'd love to see Linux truly step up to the plate and knock Windows down for once, but it seems to step into the ring with one shoe and one glove on everytime. The forked distros aren't helping it either.

It scares the be-jesus out of CIO's to see/hear of the split vendors and support limitations. They like "comfortable" and to them Windows/Office is comfy and simple. It really doesn't matter whether it's better or not, MS has won the mindshare game in the boardrooms of corp America. Anyone who thinks otherwise, doesn't spend time around those MBA types enough.

Exchange vs. POP / NNTP / IMAP... No, Exchange wins, Inbox sharing, send on behalf, things that Linux basement kids don't understand are desired features in the upstairs world...

Linux is not ready for the workplace because I can't use my AutoCAD files. Also, Linux is not ready due to its inability to work with Avid/ProTools sessions. Also Linux is not ready as it does not integrate with MS Exchange.

Linux is the kernel, and support for any of these has never been posited for inclusion in Ring 0, so Linux is obviously a great big waste of everybodys time.

Except Microsofts, who are taking up Novell/SUSE Linux, which includes development responsibility for Evolution, for their MS Linux initiative. Perhaps they could lobby Linus for a WMV codec kernel module for you.

[Actually, I don't have any trouble playing WMV files on Linux -- ed.]

You only have two groups to blame. Microsoft for creating propriety software that shuns industry standards and those who continue to use Microsoft's propriety software that shuns industry standards.

One comment here was the most important of all. The fellow who said using Linux he can cut charges to 2/3 of the MS using competitors.

Has anyone noticed that a lot of US work is going overseas? As other countries shift to Linux, you can bet even more of our work will go overseas where their greater efficiency will allow them to charge lower prices.

Did any of you notice that last year the Chinese government (of course I am making the foolish assumption that you all even noticed that China is soon going to be our #1 competitor) decreed that all new computers purchased had to be CERTIFIED as Linux ready.

And, three or four years from now when our locked-in-to-Microsoft companies are AGAIN forced to buy billions of dollars of computers to use the latest wonderful MS systems, China will simply rebuild their excellent computers with the Linux systems needed to run the latest technology. Those billions of dollars saved by China will give them an extreme advantage.

Meanwhile, carry on with the whining that MS really gives you the best stuff.

I am reminded of the 60's when Japan started importing Honda and Toyota vehicles. Our US car companies sneered at them. They aren't sneering any more. In fact, they are getting kicked around so bad they are starting to whine, "No fair!" And, complaining Toyota really doesn't make a better car -- those who say that have never owned a Toyota any length of time.

The businesses which will survive in the future will be the innovators. Sitting there whining, "It has to be compatible with MS," is not innovating.

The companies which refuse to use anything but MS will not too far in the future be bought out by successful companies which have been more innovative.

I don't blame you. I've gave up after 5 years (which includes two years working for a major Linux vendor).

Sometime last year I made a decision: I won't waste a single bit of my time on OSS stuff.

I might use it when it's ready and universally accepted, until then I've got other things to do.

When you owned your own company, you could have made it 100% *nix and then you wouldn't have these MS problems. I work at a mid-size IT shop that uses Outlook with MS Exchange. We're even MS Gold partners and they still can't get it to work right. Reminders fail to show, you can delete a meeting and it will be back the next day, updates don't get sent when you click "Send Update." When Microsoft gets their code to work with MS Exchange then maybe we can worry about Linux supporting it. Likewise for Samba. MS file shares are unstable and behave badly at high loads. Using a Samba share has been much better except that Win clients refuse to connect from time to time. With Linux clients it works flawlessly every time.

If you want to spend less on IT, use open source. If you are "locked in" by Microsoft's monopoly, you will, in time, be beaten by competitors who are not so bound. Translating an open, text-based standard such as smtp into a vendor-locked proprietary format, a la Exchange/Outlook? Madness! Why pay rent to see the intellectual output of you employees to Microsoft, in perpetuity? It simply boggles the mind that so many corporate IT managers could be so blindered, short-sighted, and profligate.