The Evolution e-mail client has been available for Linux users for ages. It looks very similar to Outlook 2000, it has much the same functionality, and it can connect to MS Exchange servers (and not just for pop3 and IMAP). Novell has now backed a port of the Linux e-mail client to run on Windows. When that happens, many people will probably stop buying Outlook, because Evolution does all the same things and it’s Open Source meaning you can get it for free if you are so inclined. (and lets face it, who wouldn’t be?)
I’m a fan of Thunderbird now, it meets my needs nicely, but before I found Thunderbird I was dismayed to find that Evolution didn’t have a Windows version as it was one of the best OSS e-mail clients on Linux that I had seen. The fact that Evolution can connect to Exchange servers will likely make many enterprise CTO’s take notice as not having to buy licenses to Outlook for several thousand users is not cheap and most of them could potentially save millions of dollars. (At the very least, they could use the threat of swapping to Evolution as a tool to get a better price from Microsoft for LookOut (sorry, Outlook) licenses.
This is also a step to helping users get used to the idea of a Linux desktop, if you’re already using Firefox, Openoffice.org and Evolution on Windows, running them on Linux will require no extra training. And the three applications taken together make up the majority of software most corporate clients would need.
Read more on the subject at ComputerWorld.
