Evolution 2.0 Released, Screenshots

comforteagle writes "This seems to be slow getting out, but since Novell hasn't updated their site ... Evolution 2.0.0 has been released. Most importantly it has built in JunkFilter support with SpamAssassin, web calendars, and NNTP support. Oh, and some bugfixes. I've posted some screenshots today as well."

Mono?

[FuzzzyLogik]

Why didn't they write this in mono? I know they were in development probably in parallel but still it would be a great way to showcase that mono can do all that good stuff..

Gnome 2.8

[Anonymous Coward]

It was released with Gnome 2.8, nothing to see here.

New feature list...

[dmayle]

It wasn't in the new feature list, but Evolution 2.0 is the one that's supposed to include the GPL'ed Exchange connector, as well as support for Novell's mail server (I forget the name.)

Coral Cache

[bbotbuilder]

here [nyud.net]

Document the EDS!!

[IGnatius T Foobar]

All this new configurability and extensibility in Evo 2.0 is great, but what I'd really like to see is some better documentation for the "Evolution Data Server" (basically the Camel and Wombat API's). Ximian/Novell are hoping that the community will be excited about writing "snap-ins" to extend Evo's functionality, but what about those of us who would like to, for example, connect it to other back-end data stores? There's a "connector" for Groupwise and a "connector" for Exchange ... what if I want to write a "connector" for some other groupware server? (I'm asking this question because I do want to do exactly that.) These API's are barely documented. You have to reverse-engineer the existing connector code to get anything done with it. I'd like to see some real docs.

Also New Feature: Summary Removed

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I glad that there is now Kontact [kontact.org] new on the playground.

Re:For Some reason...

[Noksagt]

Not as good as native, but 1.4 (maybe higher too) seems to run [ntwizards.net] on cygwin.

Re:Any Chance of

[daeley]

On a related note, Mac OS X users can obtain Evolution via Fink [sourceforge.net] and run it in X11.

Cygwin!

[Noksagt]

Oops! Here's the linky [ntwizards.net]

Re:Dude, where's my space?

[stubear]

"Evolution looks nice indeed, but who thought of this stupid buttons below the mailfolders?"

Who though of this? Microsoft [microsoft.com] of course. You thought Evolution was an innovative product? Think again. It's a direct copy of Outlook.

Re:I use it, like it

[kundor]

If you want small apps that do one thing, you really should be using KDE. Gnome apps tend to be big monolithic things far more often, whereas with KParts, KDE is entirely made of small one-function apps that embed eachother.

Re:Kmail

[KeyserDK]

Yes, not inline(!) though. Which most other mailers seem to use.

Re:Any Chance of

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Not quite Evolution, but these guys are working on getting Gnome2 ported to Cygwin [sourceforge.net].

MS Outlook is decent, but it really lacks basic features that should exist in any modern Email/PIM application-- Real message threads, proper message quoting when I reply-to or forward an email message, Todo items which show up in your Calendar, Group contacts which show up in my own Contact list...

Re:I use it, like it

[brainee28]

I found it to be pretty fast, but it took up way too much system resources for me. Too many things running in the background, especially SpamAssassin....it was bogging the rest of my system down. I took it out, and no more slowdowns.

Re:New feature list...

[SeaGK]

evolution-data-server and the ximian-connector is what you are asking for. Includes support for GroupWise an several other "backends" (like MS-Exchange 2000/2003). They are a bitch to get installed on Debian, but Evolution 2.0 is much .... much better than 1.4.6 (Debian's official version), especially on stability of the exchange connector (Connector 1.4.7 crashes all the time for us), it's faster and looks nicer too.

Best Calendaring out there...

[freelock]

I just got Evo 2.0 set up on my laptop, with the new Mandrake 10.1. While I've been having trouble getting my Palm sync'd correctly, I have to say, the new calendar feature is great.

You can subscribe to the same web calendars used by Apple ICal and Mozilla Sunbird/Calendar. But you can also drag events to a personal calendar, where you can synchronize it with a PDA. You can select any set of calendars to publish for Free/Busy (it looks like it can merge multiple calendars, but haven't tested), and you can then attach the URL for your calendar to your VCard, send to other Evolution recipients AND Outlook users, and they can see when you're available to schedule a meeting.

I've been waiting for these features for months--it promises to be the best of all worlds for calendaring. Now to see if it delivers!

Re:Great news... but does it sync with PocketPC?

[datastalker]

Use MultiSync (http://multisync.sourceforge.net/)... I got it to work with my Verizon Treo 600 and Evolution 1.4, and if it can do that, it should have no problem syncing your Pocket PC.

Re:Ximian Exchange Connector

[daemonc]

Not only will it work, but it is now included with Evolution, GPLed, and free of charge.

Re:Any Chance of

[generic-man]

Well, I can't [slashdot.org] because Fink doesn't provide one of the required dependencies. The required dependency, db31 [sourceforge.net], is only satisfied by switching to the "unstable" CVS/rsync distribution.

So no, Mac OS X users can't enjoy Evolution 2.0, or even 1.4 without jumping through a hoop or two.

Re:Mono?

[k98sven]

It's not as far off the mark as you think though.

There are Evolution extensions being written in C#.

(And this has lead to rumors about all of Evolution being rewritten in C#, but I don't think that's any more likely than you do)

Re:For Some reason...

[tomboy17]

Actually, the reason for big buttons (which is what I think you mean by "fischer-price") is simple: Fitts' law [asktog.com]: The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.

In other words, it's a hell of a lot easier for a user to press a big button than it is for user to press a small button. (Even better than big buttons are the edges of the screen, which are effectively infinitely wide/tall).

Unless you're on a tiny screen and need to maximize real-estate, you're much better off with big buttons. Hard to believe I know.

(I used to be a fluxbox/ratpoison kind of guy myself, but I've discovered GNOME + good key bindings + F11-to-go-fullscreen-when-I-need-it is really much easier to get around)

Re:KMail

[monkeySauce]

I would have to agree, and I'll add that Kontact is a very nice Evolution replacement.

I had been using Evolution (1.4) for some time (1.5 years?) and generally liked it. I installed 2.0 and I was really disappointed. Evo 1.4 would crash occasionally on me, and I was dissapointed that 2.0 continued this annoying behavoir. Even more frustrating were they incredible delays I saw in manipulating mail on my imap server. I hoped these problems would dissapear with 2.0 but they did not. Add to this the fact that I, like others, was underwhelmed by the new UI and color scheme, and suddenly I was in the market for a new PIM.

As a KDE user, the natural first step was to give Kontact/Kmail a try. I've barely been using it a week and I've fallen in love. It syncs with my palm V, just like Evo, I find it to be more customizable than Evolution was, and so far it hasn't crashed. So far I have liked every aspect of Kontact as well or better than the Evolution equivalent. Best of all, mail operations on my IMAP server as fast as ever, like they should be. I don't know WTF is wrong with Evo's IMAP support but Kontact/Kmail did it right, and I'm now a convert. So long Evolution!

IMAP storing calendar info

[sita]

I wonder how hard it would be to take an existing IMAP server and store things like the evolution calender and task list on it.

In the outlook/exchange paradigm outlook does most of the work. Why not do the same thing with evolution?

Well, just fire up a DAV server next to the IMAP server and there you go.

Re:yeah...yeah... all hail to our ximian overloard

[Anonymous Coward]

Process Name Memory RSS Memory
evolution-2.0 73.7 19.6
evolution-data-server-1.0 71.4 7.3
evolution-alarm-notify 61.4 8.5

Don't forget to take into account shared memory. Mine still don't add up to 300MB but if you look, a good portion of that is shared memory, which means you can't just add up all the processes total memory usage.

Plus mine is custom built (Gentoo), which may result in less memory usage...