Re: Linux at work for a corporate desktop
<quote who="Michael James">
>
> Hi ...
>
> I have been wondering if I am really out there as a Linux user. I have
> been dragging 2 laptops around, 1 Linux, 1 Windows for a couple months.
> Has anyone made the final leap, and dropped the windows machines? I am
> talking about the standard corporate stuff ... email, etc.
>
> I was hoping to give it a go with the Evolution/Exchange connector, but
> we aren't at E2k yet.
the "corporation" i work for uses postfix/sendmail/cyrus. any ol
email client works with it.(I set it up myself).
some of the managers(one that used to work at compaq) have many
horror stories about exchange(e.g. mail server for ~100 employees being
down for a week while MS engineers recover data from a backup tape)
I don't think they'd ever go for exchange.
I worked at another "corporation" which did have exchange, i only
logged in to hceck email once a week or so(system was down quite often)
but when i did, netscape with IMAP worked fine. they even had this
web-based outlook thing, which worked in netscape too. luckily
99% of the mail i recieved there was junk to me so I didn't have
to check mail often.
I worked at another "corporation" but their mail system was mac-based,
using a program called quickmail pro.. POP3 only(at the time)..any
client worked..my client of choice was Netscape 4 on SGI IRIX.
kind of strange that people think everyone uses exchange..sure some
of the big companies do(or maybe most..), i remember seeing recently
that something like 75-80% of the U.S.(at least ..not sure about
others) employment is provided by "small business". And I think
small business was described as 100 employees or less, or maybe
it was 200 employees or less ..
anyways, my experience in the workforce may be limited, but I have
never worked for a company that forced me to use exchange in the
"MS-way"(e.g. outlook). Hopefully I never will.
some people think that people can't live without shared calenders
and stuff, theres a lot of 3rd party applications that provide
this functionality, my current company uses one(only about 5% of
the employees use it these days), and my first mac-based company
had another one. I forget the names of the programs, and have never
used them. People don't have to use exchange to have a shared
calender.(or other "groupware" which amazingly people seem to
get by without them just fine at places that I work(ed) at)
yes this does not answer your question, but I am just trying
to point out that exchange is by no means the "standard" unless
your idea of a "standard" is what at best perhaps 25% of the
employed people at "corporations" use.(as opposed to tradtional
POP/IMAP/SMTP services). which would mean that the 75% using
POP/IMAP/SMTP are in the minority..
I don't really have anything against exchange or outlook, as
long as I don't have to use 'em.
nate
(I live close enough to MS that i could *almost* spit and hit em,
well not quite..I'm about 4 miles from them)
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