For many users, Outlook is the de facto standard email client…if you’re on Windows. And why not? It’s an all-in-one groupware suite that can manage your email, your calendar, your tasks, your contacts, and much more. It’s easy to use and, for the most part, reliable. But what if I told you there was a better solution, on the Linux platform, that can do nearly everything Outlook can do? On top of that, it can even connect to an Exchange Server! AND, there is a version for Mac and Windows.
The groupware client I am speaking of is Evolution. This Microsoft Outlook killer was created by Miguel De Icaza to serve as the GNOME groupware suite. Evolution will be automatically installed on any modern GNOME desktop, so there’s no need for you to do any further installation – Evolution is there and ready to blow your mind.
Evolution offers the following features:
- Shared (and private) calendars
- Tasks/Todos
- Contact management
- Support for S/MIME
- Pidgin integration
- SpamAssassin integration
- Fully GNOME integration
- Offline IMAP support
- Integrated GPG
- Support for Groupwise and Evolution built in
- Multiple account support
As you can see, Evolution offers everything you would want/need in a groupware suite. To top that off, the interface is very user-friendly.
To open up Evolution look in the Internet entry in the GNOME start menu. In that entry you should see the Evolution shortcut. When you fire up Evolution for the first time you will have to walk through a very simple setup wizard. This wizard will set up your default email address. Don’t worry, once you have completed the set up you can go back into accounts and set up as many email accounts as you wish.
Evolution Mail client
Evolution will default to the Mail application. As you can see, in the image to the right, The Evolution Mail client looks very familiar. The Evolution UI was created in such a way that users would have an instant familiarity. If you have used Outlook, the learning curve is practically /dev/null.
And Evolution is very easy to configure. From the Edit menu you will find the Preferences entry. Click that and the Preferences window will open up offering you every possible configuration you will need. The Preferences window is also where you add new accounts.
Evolution Preferences Window
In order to set up a new account you only have to click the Add button and proceed through the setup wizard again.
Another feature unique to Evolution is the plugin system. If you open the Edit menu you will see the Plugin entry. When you click on this entry you will open up the plugin window where you can enable/disable various plugins included with Evolution. But don’t think you are limited to only the included plugins. Doing a Google search you will see that there are quite a few worthy plugins to add. One such plugin is an RSS reader for Evolution. Some of these plugins (like the RSS reader) can be installed easily. In Fedora I simply run yum install evolution-rss and the plugin is automatically installed.
RSS Reader
The image to the left shows the gHacks RSS feed in Evolution. An outstanding news feed read in an outstanding groupware client.
Final Thoughts
I have been using Evolution since it’s beta release days. It was an incredible piece of software from the beginning and remains an incredible piece of softare. If you are looking for an open source groupware suite, it is time you evolved.
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17 Responses to “Replace Outlook with Evolution: A Linux Groupware Suite”
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[...] Kontact. I have discussed Evolution in a previous article (Replace Outlook With Evolution: An Open Source Groupware Suite) and so I thought I should offer another alternative groupware suite. And Kontact is quite a [...]
I’ve tried Evolution and tried to like it, but it doesn’t sync with any of my cellphones. That’s a deal-breaker.
Miguel DE Icaza. he is Mexican not italian
Yes, Evolution is nice, but it doesn’t yet connect to Exchange 2007 (which requires MAPI), and as Danny noted it doesn’t yet sync with most mobile devices (only Palm OS). Until those shortcomings are resolved, Evolution has too many deal-breakers.
My biggest complaint is there not being a way to automatically save a copy of an e-mail to your sent folder like you can in Thunderbird if you’re using IMAP. Seems you have to be wedded to an Exchange or Novell server to do that.
The main reason why people still use outlook is because either they don’t know any different and a substantial amount of people have a hotmail account. And no one wants to use their terrible web-interface
@Nathan:
Totally untrue. The main reason people still use Outlook is because their work requires it along with an Exchange server. There’s currently no better way (and I mean better as in simpler and easier, not better as in “good”) to access Exchange than by using Outlook.
Outlook 2007 costs $100, according to CDW.com. How many average Joes do you think are spending that much on an e-mail client for personal use? Not many, I’d bet. Outlook dominates because corporate IT requires it.
I love Evolution, seriously. However, its random close-ups and lack of syncing with my T-Mobile MDA was indeed a deal breaker for me. I use Outlook 2007 and it’s hard to beat the integration with the MS Office 2007 suite and (more importantly) my MDA. Is Outlook perfect? No. I would rather use Evolution as I would rather use Linux, but truth is I need something that is going to work more so than not.
Suggestion: provide a link to the app’s web page.
See here
http://projects.gnome.org/evolution/
and here for Windows
http://www.dipconsultants.com/evolution/
sorry – i forgot to add links. i added one into the article.
as for syncing – i hear ya. but to be honest, the poor syncing isn’t a fault of evolution, that is a wide-spread Linux issue. many times the syncing problems can be traced to a distribution using a bad version of one of the sub-systems used for connecting the device. i have found Fedora to be one of the worst for syncing and Ubuntu and Mandriva to be among the better distributions.
SOGo (http://www.scalableogo.org/) is an open-source groupware server which works with an AJAX web interface and “thick” clients such as Evolution and Thunderbird …
I switched to Linux (Ubuntu) and Evolution over 6 months ago and love ‘em both. Could not get Evolution to sync with my windows based smartphone (AT&T Tilt). Switched to a Palm Treo 680 and it syncs just fine. Evolution seems much more stable than Outlook was and I wouldn’t go back.
Outlook killer? What a fool.
poor syncing isn’t a fault of evolution, that is a wide-spread Linux issue.
One of many which means Linsux will never be accepted in the real world. Dream on fools.
Outlook 2007 costs $100, according to CDW.com
Untrue. Outlook is actually free.
“The main reason why people still use outlook is because either they don’t know any different and a substantial amount of people have a hotmail account. And no one wants to use their terrible web-interface”
No, the truth is people know what works reliably and isn’t coded by some monkey in his momma’s basement. Outlook users are years ahead of and Linsucker.
“Outlook 2007 costs $100, according to CDW.com
Untrue. Outlook is actually free.”
hey monkey Boi Skids can you get me 100 copies for my office then please :D
idiot…………………………………..