Tom's Definitive Linux Software Roundup: Communications Apps

[Shannon_VanWagner]

Something that's not getting as much attention as I think it should is that Evolution in Ubuntu Karmic can import PST files from msoutlook. Not even entoruage2008 can do that! So with Ubuntu Karmic GNU/Linux, you can unlock your email from outlook's proprietary PST format, then you can export it from Evolution into .mbox format (compatible with any standard email client). This makes the next Ubuntu an even better drop-in for business users.

 

[Guest]

Phoronix is great, but I'm in search of cross-platform benchmarking tools (meaning Windows too). Just comparing Linux to Linux isn't as helpful (or provocative) to nearly as many people on a general PC hardware site. If you already don't care about comparing against Windows PCs, Phoronix is pretty dang sweet, but I won't be using it much for articles here. If anybody has suggestions for Linux/Windows benching, pls share, cause I'm putting together a battery of tests for future use.

Well one possible idea would be to test the performance of wine on some games that run in it. See how efficient it is to "emulate" the existent of the windows kernel and the performance drop in doing so. Also for HDD/SSD testing you could set up a RamDrive if you were using 4gb< worth of ram and copy different sized files from the storage devices into ram and see the through put in the progress bar for nautilus. Same for comparing USB and other storage or even internet bandwidth tests. It would be a little crude but I'm sure after a few runs you could get a usable average. I know Aquamark 3 runs fine in wine and so does GTA:SA. A lost of older games that aren't dependent on windows services usually do just fine. Maybe test some open source games as well that are cross platform. You could also do encoding. Linux doesn't really have any gpu acceleration for encoding so as long as you stuck with CPU based encoding that would be a fair test. Maybe compare idle power draw of linux/windows along with boot times and other basic things in each system.

 

[haplo602]

[citation][nom]adamovera[/nom]Phoronix is great, but I'm in search of cross-platform benchmarking tools (meaning Windows too). Just comparing Linux to Linux isn't as helpful (or provocative) to nearly as many people on a general PC hardware site. If you already don't care about comparing against Windows PCs, Phoronix is pretty dang sweet, but I won't be using it much for articles here. If anybody has suggestions for Linux/Windows benching, pls share, cause I'm putting together a battery of tests for future use.[/citation]


Well you definitely have a problem here. Linux folks are actualy not interested in cross=platform benchmarks as such 🙂

I mean filesystems are different, the whole OS infrastructure mostly too. And distro to distro will have different needs. F.e. Gentoo users want to see compilation times benchmarks (of some huge source tree). Fedora/Ubuntu and such are mainly interested in video/graphics encode/decode. Compositing benchmarks.

There are a very few common benchmarks for the casual user:

firefox/opera website rendering benchmarks (both exist on windows too).
video decode/encode with mplayer/mencoder and vlc player.
for gaming mostly wine to windows native difference. maybe blender benchmarks.

that's about it. I guess you are not interested much in server benchmarks.

 

[Guest]

I use both Linux and Windows. Normally command line stuff with linux and windows on the desktop. I am stuck on windows because we use outlook (on exchange) so that the meeting calendar is shared.
If I could use a replacement for outlook that would connect with the exchange server and maintain the calendar I'd switch in a heartbeat.

Tom S.

 

[Guest]

Novell's GroupWise is still a widely used e-mail system. Though I didn't see it mentioned, there is is native Linux version of the GroupWise client. As can be imagined, it ships with SUSE's enterprise desktop (SLED) and can be downloaded for free from Novell's download site.

Another couple of notes about Evolution:

Evolution can talk natively to a Microsoft Exchange server as well as a Novell GroupWise server allowing you to access your email, calendars, and memos/notes that reside on those servers. In the business world, this capability alone goes a long way to enable the usage of Linux on the desktop.

Evolution can also connect directly to web calendars such as Google calendar. The ability to communicate with a wide variety of both open and closed communication protocols really makes Evolution a powerful PIM.

 

[nachowarrior]

wow, finally something on linux on toms... I think micro$haft just dropped their pay/ad click, this is re\/enge!!! haha.

 

[yyrkoon]

[citation][nom]haplo602[/nom]Well you definitely have a problem here. Linux folks are actualy not interested in cross=platform benchmarks as such 🙂I mean filesystems are different, the whole OS infrastructure mostly too. And distro to distro will have different needs. F.e. Gentoo users want to see compilation times benchmarks (of some huge source tree). Fedora/Ubuntu and such are mainly interested in video/graphics encode/decode. Compositing benchmarks.There are a very few common benchmarks for the casual user:firefox/opera website rendering benchmarks (both exist on windows too).video decode/encode with mplayer/mencoder and vlc player.for gaming mostly wine to windows native difference. maybe blender benchmarks.that's about it. I guess you are not interested much in server benchmarks.[/citation]

Uh . . . IOMeter ( I think ). Now I am not positive that is the name, but I do know there is a cross platform disk benching application. Requires Visual Studio 6 tools I believe to compile on Windows ( which I recall are free somehow from Microsofts web page. I also seem to recall the application once compiled correctly was very complex to use, even for a very advanced user ( myself ), but I did not really take the time to try more than a couple of tries. Had too much on my plate at the time, and then lost interest . . .

Sorry to be so vague, but do not have the time to look back into it myself.

 

[yyrkoon]

Yeap . . .

http://www.iometer.org/

Debian, and Windows are both listed as platforms that "should work".

 

[nevertell]

You should make a review of wine, try running all your benchmark apps and games on 2 rigs with the same distros, m/b, processors, memory and hard drives, except for the graphics card- one ATI and one nvidia. That should be interesting.

 

[Guest]

FYI, XMPP = Jabber

 

[Guest]

One of the many reasons I don't often read Tom's Hardware is the authors seem to rarely know what they are talking about... a perfect example is the comment "The one major protocol that Empathy supports and Pidgin doesn't is the increaasingly-popular Jabber."

Jabber is not a protocol. It never was an official protocol. "Jabber" is the name given to the XMPP protocol before it was formalized. If Empathy supports "Jabber" it just shows how outdated it is. Pidgin on the other hand has some of the best XMPP support I have seen of the many IM programs I have tested.

Also... I love how Firefox's spell check can see the problem in the text I just copy / pasted, but neither the author or the editor noticed it.

 

[petar]

I am curious about above displayed image of Ubuntu, windows have transparency, etc, etc... Looks cool !

Is that some skin, or it's default look of UI on Ubuntu ? Is there a link to try this UI myself.

(Forgive me for my ignorance in Linux

 

[thadeous]

I have to second anyone who said that Pidgin supports Jabber. I've been using Pidgin/Gaim for years and it has supported it for years.

Supported protocols
The following protocols are officially supported by libpurple 2.6.4, without any extensions or plugins
...
XMPP (Google Talk, LJ Talk, Gizmo5, ...)
...
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) (formerly named Jabber)
...