Revisiting Linux Part 1: A Look at Ubuntu 8.04
by Ryan Smith on August 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Applications: Communication - Email & Instant Messaging
Windows Default: Windows Mail/Outlook
What I Use: Outlook
Ubuntu Default: Evolution
Separate communication suites are a bit of a dying breed these days, largely due to the aforementioned rise of the web browser. Thanks to services like Gmail, web based email has taken a massive dent out of the need to use an email client, and new services are popping up that are starting to do the same for instant messaging. But they’re not dead yet, and more importantly I’m too old fashioned to give up my dedicated email and instant messaging clients, so this is a matter I consider important.
The default email client on Ubuntu is Evolution, a clone of Outlook. As Outlook is my default email client under Windows anyhow, this worked out quite well for me. Because Evolution is an Outlook clone, it features not just email, but contact lists and calendaring too, supplanting the need for separate applications for those under Ubuntu.
At the same time, because Evolution is an Ubuntu clone, there’s not a lot I can say about it – it’s a clone, there’s not much unique to it. What it is however is a good clone when it comes to my needs. Credit is due where deserved in cloning the monster that is Outlook, because Evolution did email, contacts, and calendaring for me just as well as Outlook does.
The only notable issue I had with Evolution is that it does not have a way to import Outlook PST files. It’s possible to do it, but it involves using Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client as an import/export mechanism. To be clear I’m not faulting Evolution here since PST is a closed Microsoft format.
Users coming from Windows Mail will be a bit less at home, but at the same time Evolution is likely an improvement for them for all the same reasons that Outlook is a better client than (and the de-facto Windows email client in place of) Windows Mail. Perhaps a more direct benefit is that since Evolution is pre-installed with the base OS installation, you don’t need to go hunt down a real email application after the OS installation. Never underestimate the annoyance of having to install more software.
If this description seems short, it’s not for the lack of effort or a dislike of Evolution. In fact I’m plenty happy with it, but as I use it it’s just Outlook with a different GUI. So far as I’m concerned this is a good - if unexciting – thing when coming from Windows and Microsoft Office.
Final Verdict: Meets My Needs
Windows Default: None/Windows Live Messenger
What I use: Trillian
Ubuntu Default: Pidgin
Somewhere along the way to Vista, Microsoft decided to decouple some applications from the OS, MSN Messenger was one of them. As a result Vista does not come with an instant messaging client of any kind, rather it comes with a link to go download the latest version of Windows Live Messenger. Not that it would necessarily be of much use, the last time I saw any statistics for instant messaging network usage, the vast majority of North American users were on AOL’s AIM network. In this case Windows may as well not have an official instant messaging client, because unless you use the MSN network (or Yahoo network) there’s no practical difference.
So it’s a nice change of pace when we note that Ubuntu comes with a multi-protocol instant messaging client as part of the base OS install. Pidgin (née GAIM) supports AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN, and a boatload of smaller networks, thoroughly eliminating any possible problem of not being able to connect to your network of choice. Like Firefox, Pidgin is another significant multi-platform application, and is found on Windows and Mac OS X too.
Moving on to features, Pidgin hits all of the checkboxes as far as requisite features are concerned. Buddy lists, chat logging, file transfers, emoticons, end-to-end encryption, etc are all supported. What helps to set Pidgin apart from other clients, and this one again drawing a parallel to Firefox, is its support for plugins. Plugins aren’t new as far as instant messaging clients are concerned, but many clients don’t support them.
Pidgin comes with 30 such plugins, ranging from tools to integrate Pidgin with Evolution, to adding support for mouse gestures. Some of these are standard features in other IM clients, so clearly not all 30 plugins are by any means unique. I’m also going to throw built-in spell-checking in this category – not new, but sorely missed from a lot of clients.
Coming from Trillian, Pidgin is effectively a drop-in replacement. The two don’t have feature parity (Trillian has more features, specifically audio/visual chatting) but as far as I use either client, I don’t use anything that makes the two notably different once a few plugins are installed. Much like Evolution there’s undoubtedly some missing features once you get deeper that would be of concern to the hardcore users, but it’s nothing that rears its head for me.
Final Verdict: Meets My Needs
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
195 Comments
View All Comments
sadf23ssaaa - Monday, March 22, 2010 - link
Welcome to our website:jordan air max oakland raiders $34--39;
Ed Hardy AF JUICY POLO Bikini $25;
Christan Audigier BIKINI JACKET $25;
gstar coogi evisu true jeans $35;
coach chanel gucci LV handbags $36;
coogi DG edhardy gucci t-shirts $18;
CA edhardy vests.paul smith shoes $32;
jordan dunk af1 max gucci shoes $37;
EDhardy gucci ny New Era cap $16;
coach okely Adidas CHANEL DG Sunglass $18;
zerobug - Monday, February 1, 2010 - link
Regarding benchmarks and Linux-focused hardware roundups, one thing worth of consideration is that while Microsoft places strong resources on O/S development to create features that will require the end users the need to get the latest and greatest powerful hardware, Linux places their efforts in order that the end user will still be able to use their old hardware and get the best user experience while running the latest and greatest software.So,the benchmarks could compare the user experience when running popular software on Microsoft and Linux O/S's, with different powerful machines.
For this, you could pick up some popular open source and proprietary (or their free equivalents) application that can run both Linux and W7. and compare the price, time and power consumption for retrieving, saving, processing, compiling, encrypting,decrypting compacting, extracting, encoding, decoding, backup, restore, nº of frames,etc, with machines in a range of different CPU and memory capacities.
abnderby - Thursday, September 3, 2009 - link
Let me say this, I am a Senior Software QA Engineer, I have been testing windows, windows apps, DB's and web sites for over 10 year now. I am what you could consider an windows guru of sorts.I have off an on always gone and tried linux from red hat 5, 6, ubuntu, suse, fedora etc... Linux is not and has not been ready for mainstream users. Sure simple email, word docs web browsing it is ok.
But in order to do many things I want to do and many advanced windows users the author and many commentors are right. Linux people need to get out of their little shell and wake up.
Linux has such great potential to be a true contenderto windows and OSX. But it lacks simple usability. Out of the box it can come nowhere close to MS or Apple offerings. The out of the box experience is truly horrible.
Hardware drivers? good luck I run RAID cards that have no support. Forget the newest graphics and sound cards. Connecting to shares just as the author mentioned a hassle of a work around.
Again as stated elsewhere Linux needs someone who programs and or scripts to get things done right. I have neitherthe time or patience for such. I use command line when needed. I would rather have 2 or 3 clicks and I am done then have to remember every CLI for every thing I need to do.
Time is money, time is not a commodity. Linus wastes too much time.
It is geting better with each distro true. But It has been 11 years from red hat 5?? and Linux is not a whole lot better than it was then.
What is needed if Linux really wants to make a stand in the desktop space, is a unified pull togeher ofall distro's. Sit down and truly plan out the desktop. Put together a solid platform that out of the box can really put the hurt on MS or Apple.
Look what Apple did with OSX! And how many developers are wrking on it? How many developers are working on Linux all distro's? OSX is a jewel in 7 years it has matured much farther than any *nix distro. And has a following that cannot yet be challenged by any distro available.
Why is it that when win2k came out Linux was claiming to be superior, and yet after 10 years of development it is hardly comparable to XP let alonevista/win 7 or OSX?
You guys really need to wake up and smell the coffee!
Penti - Monday, September 7, 2009 - link
Of course it's not ready for consumer desktops, there are no serious distributions for that.It means no DVD player OOB, no proprietary codecs, no video editing software, no proprietary drivers which works magically. Of course not is SLED and RHEL Desktop ready for normal users it's targeted for Linux admins to set up the environment. Community distributions won't have as easy time to be set up by those. Community distros will also always lack the above mentioned stuff. It's simply not legal for them to offer it OOB. OS X is actually older then Linux and ran on x86 before Apple bought Jobs NeXT company. It's also supported by an OEM. (OEM = Themselves). Which no Linux dist is. It also uses many GNU technologies like GCC, X11 (optional but included on disc), bash shell and so on, and of course SAMBA for SMB/CIFS, on the server edition they use a modified openldap server, dovecot and postfix for mail, Apache, PHP, Perl, MySQL etc. Stuff thats developed on Linux and has matured thanks to it.
There's a lot of problems with having just community supported stuff, but that doesn't mean it's useless or sucks. Sure the kernel aren't really helping getting drivers in there, by locking out closed source stuff but they end up useless if they are proprietary and not updated any way. For the servers just buy RHEL or SLES certified stuff and you get all the hardware support-needed. But on the other hand you wouldn't be much successful in running 7 year old video drivers in Windows either. Community distros definitively don't need to cease existing for the creation of a commercial one. But there will never be one linux and that's really the beauty of it not the course. It wasn't meant to be something rivaling windows and the kernel developers has no desire to create a distro. That's why we can see Linux in stuff like Android and Maemo. And from home routers to mainframes and supercomputers. For a commercial entity targeting that many devices wouldn't be possible. Not with the same basic code and libraries. There are definitively some top notch products and solutions based on Linux and GNU. But Linux doesn't want anything as it's not an entity. And it's really up to GNOME and KDE to create the desktop environment. It's not the distros that shape them and write all the libraries that software developers use to create their software. As there are no major consumer desktop distro maker there is also no one that can really steer them by sponsoring work and holding discussions either. Not towards a unified desktop environment for normal non-tech users anyway. Also GNOME and KDE has no desire to create a exclusive platform around their software. OS X is a innovative 20 year old OS (since commercial release) and is actually based on work before then (BSD code). OS X UI is really 20 years into it's making and builds heavily on the next/openstep framework. On other Unixes there hasn't been any such heritage to build on, X was an total mess on commercial Unixes and I would actually say it's a lot better and more streamline now. There's just Xorg now, sure there are a lot of window managers but only two major environments now so it's still better then when all the vendors had it's own and couldn't make up it's mind on which direction to go and standardize on. In the middle of the 90's there where like at least 4 major Unix vendors that all had their own workstations.
fazer150 - Friday, September 4, 2009 - link
which Linux distro have you tried? did you try the PCLinuxOS which is atleast as usable as windows xp, 2003?nilepez - Sunday, August 30, 2009 - link
Most end users are not comfortable with the command line. Linux, even Ubuntu, is still not ready for the masses. This shouldn't be confused with the quality of the OS. It's mostly GUI issue. I've also had some issues with installers failing. Some were solved from an xterm and others just didn't work.It wasn't a big deal in most cases, because there's generally another program that can get the job done, but for the typical home user, it's a deal killer. Nevertheless, I must give credit where credit is due, and Ubuntu has made huge strides in the right direction. The UI isn't close to Windows 7 and I suspect it's not close to OS X either, but Canonical is moving in the right direction.
Etern205 - Thursday, August 27, 2009 - link
See this is the problem with some of linux users, you guys are some what always closed in a nutshell. What you may think is easy does not mean the rest of the world will agree with you. In this day and age, people what to get things done quickly and use the least amount of time as possible. For Mac OS X and Windows getting a simple task done takes like 3 simple clicks, for Ubuntu performing the same tasks requires the user to do extensive amount of research just to complete it.I'm glad this article was written by a author who has not head into linux terriroty before and it shows the true side of linux from the perspective of a new user.
If you like to do ramen coding and so forth does not mean the others will. If linux want's to become mainstream, then they really need to stand in the shoes of Joe or Jane.
forkd - Saturday, October 31, 2009 - link
I use mac, windows and linux and I must disagree with your assessment of "this is the problem with some linux users"This article, and this site for that matter, comes from the perspective of a windows (and some mac) user looking at linux. More specifically Ubuntu. From this point of view of course Linux is difficult. A person who is linux focused thinks windows is difficult at first too and is likely to criticize. If you take the time to learn something instead of just criticizing something because it is different you may be a lot happier.
fepple - Thursday, August 27, 2009 - link
Check out all the usability studies the Gnome Project does, then come back and make some more generalization :)SoCalBoomer - Thursday, August 27, 2009 - link
Again - those are done by Linux people. His points are right on. . .someone a while ago did a "Mom" test, which is closer to what is needed, not people who know computers doing studies on usability.