[Gllug] Exchange equivalents on Linux

[Philip Hands]

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Mike Brodbelt wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm currently in the position of using an Exchange server for mail at
> work, but for various reasons the server side stuff on our internal
> network will soon become entirely Unix based - it'll be a mix of Debian
> and Solaris. Replacing file/print/authentication is easy, but I'm
> curious as to people's experiences with things that promise to replace
> Exchange. Many of the end users will be on Outlook clients, and we want
> to retain calandaring and support for mobile devices (currently
> Blackberries, but don't necessarily have to be, as long as something
> more or less equivalent is available).

Kolab's definitely worth a look (although I'm being silly, and trying to
get it to work out of the Debian native packages, which are a work in
progress, so I've spent rather more time continuously reinstalling it, than
actually using it[1])

Anyway, if you ignore that siding that I'm shunting around in, you can just
install it the way they intended, onto dedicated Debian sarge box(s), and
it'll work fine:

  http://www.kolab.org/

It's got a commercial plugin (or two) for Outlook, and a few other client
options.  The good thing about it is that they've taken standard components
(postfix, cyrus-imap, openldap,  etc.) and done the work to make it do all
the stuff that Exchange gives you (from what I hear, never having touched
Exchange or Outlook)

Hula might be an option at some point, but I won't be touching it until
they dump mbox format and start using Maildir instead (which is in the
works apparently, which is an improvement over their previous "there's
nothing wrong with mbox, and anyway Maildir is too slow" nonsense).

In contrast to the above, which both have active development on the go,
Open eXchange seems to be rather stalled (and I've heard people grumbling
about non-functional Outlook plugins) so I wouldn't go there.

Cheers, Phil.
- --
[1] at some point you'll be able to do a debian-installer boot, and type:

  auto url=hands.com classes=kolab

and get a new kolab server installed while you're making the tea, but not
quite yet ;-)

See http://hands.com/d-i/ for details
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