Evolution or Novell Evolution (formerly Ximian Evolution, prior to Novell

Novell

Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...

's 2003 acquisition of Ximian

Ximian

Ximian was a company that provided free software desktop applications for Linux and Unix based on the GNOME platform. Ximian was founded by Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman in October, 1999, and was bought by Novell on August 4, 2003...

) is the official personal information manager

Personal information manager

A personal information manager is a type of application software that functions as a personal organizer. The acronym PIM is now, more commonly, used in reference to Personal information management as a field of study...

 and workgroup information management tool for GNOME

GNOME

GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...

. It combines e-mail

E-mail

Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

, calendar

Calendar

A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...

, address book

Address book

An address book or a name and address book is a book or a database used for storing entries called contacts. Each contact entry usually consists of a few standard fields...

, and task list management functions. It has been an official part of GNOME since version 2.8 in September 2004. Evolution development is sponsored primarily by Novell.

Its user interface

User interface

The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...

 and functionality are similar to Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...

. Features include iCalendar

ICalendar

iCalendar is a computer file format which allows Internet users to send meeting requests and tasks to other Internet users, via email, or sharing files with an extension of .ics...

 support, full-text indexing of all incoming mail, powerful email filters

E-mail filtering

Email filtering is the processing of email to organize it according to specified criteria. Most often this refers to the automatic processing of incoming messages, but the term also applies to the intervention of human intelligence in addition to anti-spam techniques, and to outgoing emails as well...

 writable in Scheme, and a “Search Folders” feature (i.e., saved searches that look like normal mail folders).

Evolution can be connected to older versions of Microsoft Exchange Server

Microsoft Exchange Server

Microsoft Exchange Server is the server side of a client–server, collaborative application product developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Servers line of server products and is used by enterprises using Microsoft infrastructure products...

 (i.e. not Exchange 2007 and 2010; partial work arounds are available for these versions) using their web interfaces and an Evolution add-on formerly called Ximian Connector

Ximian Connector

Ximian Connector was a computer software program created by Ximian in 2001 to link its GNU/Linux groupware client, Evolution, to the popular Microsoft Exchange Server...

. Using gnome-pilot, it may be synchronized with Palm Pilot devices, and OpenSync enables it to be synchronized with mobile phone

Mobile phone

A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...

s and other PDAs

Personal digital assistant

A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...

.

Licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

, Evolution is free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

.

Evolution 2

Evolution 2, which has been available since September 2004, delivers these features:

• integrated connectivity to Novell GroupWise
  Novell GroupWise
  GroupWise is a messaging and collaborative software platform from Novell that supports email, calendaring, personal information management, instant messaging, and document management. The platform consists of the client software, which is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and the server...
  
  
• integrated connectivity to Microsoft Exchange Server
  Microsoft Exchange Server
  Microsoft Exchange Server is the server side of a client–server, collaborative application product developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Servers line of server products and is used by enterprises using Microsoft infrastructure products...
  
  
• integrated support for GPG
  GNU Privacy Guard
  GNU Privacy Guard is a GPL Licensed alternative to the PGP suite of cryptographic software. GnuPG is compliant with RFC 4880, which is the current IETF standards track specification of OpenPGP...
  
   email encryption
• improved offline support for IMAP accounts
• numerous calendar
  Calendar
  A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...
  
   improvements
• support for S/MIME
  S/MIME
  S/MIME is a standard for public key encryption and signing of MIME data. S/MIME is on an IETF standards track and defined in a number of documents, most importantly RFCs. S/MIME was originally developed by RSA Data Security Inc...
  
  , enhanced contact management
• Pidgin
  Pidgin (software)
  Pidgin is an open-source multi-platform instant messaging client, based on a library named libpurple. Libpurple has support for many commonly used instant messaging protocols, allowing the user to log into various services from one application.The number of Pidgin users was estimated to be over 3...
  
   instant messaging integration
• improved desktop integration
• improved compliance with GNOME's human interface guidelines
  Human Interface Guidelines
  Human interface guidelines are software development documents which offer application developers a set of recommendations. Their aim is to improve the experience for the users by making application interfaces more intuitive, learnable, and consistent. Most guides limit themselves to defining a...
  
  
• integrated SpamAssassin
  SpamAssassin
  SpamAssassin is a computer program released under the Apache License 2.0 used for e-mail spam filtering based on content-matching rules. It is now part of the Apache Foundation....
  
   functionality (with user-defined spam score and whitelist rules in ~/.spamassassin/)
• a connector for Scalix
  Scalix
  Scalix is an e-mail and groupware server that runs on Linux, licensed under the Scalix Public License .Scalix provides e-mail, group calendaring and other collaborative software, which are standard in groupware...
  
   is available

Evolution Express

Evolution Express is a new user interface which is being built on top of Evolution, targeted for mobile and small-screen devices. It is included as part of Evolution 2.30 and can be enabled by passing the --express command-line option.

Distribution

Evolution is released as part of GNOME. GNOME is the default desktop environment for several Linux distributions, most notably Debian

Debian

Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...

, Fedora

Fedora (operating system)

Fedora is a RPM-based, general purpose collection of software, including an operating system based on the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat...

 and Ubuntu

Ubuntu (operating system)

Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...

 prior to version 11.04. Foresight Linux

Foresight Linux

- External links :* *...

 showcases the latest releases of GNOME. Novell distributes Evolution with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop , formerly introduced as Novell Linux Desktop, is a Linux distribution supplied by Novell and targeted at the business market. It is targeted for desktops. New major versions are released at an interval of 24–36 months, while minor versions are released every 9–12...

 and the openSUSE

OpenSUSE

openSUSE is a general purpose operating system built on top of the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported openSUSE Project and sponsored by SUSE...

 community project.

Evolution is also available as source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

. Some pre-built install packages are available for other operating systems, but only for older versions.

Evolution for Mac OS X

In 2006, Novell provided an installer for Evolution on Mac OS X. This outdated version was downloadable for quite a while but the link no longer works.

Evolution for Windows

In January 2005, Novell's Nat Friedman

Nat Friedman

Nathaniel Dourif Friedman , known as Nat, is a programmer who co-founded Ximian along with Miguel de Icaza in 1999, a company that was later bought by Novell in 2003....

 announced in his blog that the company had hired Tor Lillqvist, the programmer who ported
GIMP

GIMP

GIMP is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.In addition to detailed image retouching and...

 to Microsoft Windows, to do the same with Evolution. Before
this announcement, several projects with the same goal had been
started but none of them reached alpha status.

As of November 11, 2009, DIP Consultants, LLC provides Evolution 2.28.2-1 with Windows Installer, which runs on Windows XP

Windows XP

Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...

 and newer.

An experimental installer for Evolution 2.32 also exists for Windows.

See also

• List of personal information managers
• List of applications with iCalendar support
• Comparison of e-mail clients
  Comparison of e-mail clients
  The following tables compare general and technical features of a number of email client programs. Please see the individual products articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up to date.-General:...
  
  
• SyncEvolution
  SyncEvolution
  SyncEvolution synchronizes Evolution's contact, calendar and task items via SyncML. The items are exchanged in the vCard 2.1 or 3.0 format and iCalendar 2.0 format via the Synthesis C++ client API library, which should make SyncEvolution compatible with the majority of SyncML servers...
  
  
• Microsoft Outlook
  Microsoft Outlook
  Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite...
  
  
• Kontact
  Kontact
  KMail supports folders, filtering, viewing HTML mail, and international character sets. It can handle IMAP, IMAP IDLE, dIMAP, POP3, and local mailboxes for incoming mail. It can send mail via SMTP or sendmail...
  
  
• iCal
  ICal
  iCal is a personal calendar application made by Apple Inc. that runs on the Mac OS X operating system. iCal was the first calendar application for Mac OS X to offer support for multiple calendars and the ability to publish/subscribe calendars to WebDAV server....
  
  
• Address Book
  Address Book
  Address Book is an address book for Apple's Mac OS X. It features various syncing features and integrates into the rest of the OS.-Features:*Exports and imports cards to and from vCard 3.0 format....
  
  
• Windows Calendar
  Windows Calendar
  Windows Calendar is a calendar application that is included with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. It natively supports the iCalendar file format, and has the ability to publish and subscribe to web-based calendars by using HTTP and WebDAV...
  
  
• Windows Contacts
  Windows Contacts
  Windows Contacts is a contact manager which is included in Windows Vista and Windows 7 which replaced and retained most of the functionality of Windows Address Book. Windows Mail integrates with it. Windows Contacts uses a new XML-based schema format where each contact appears as an...
  
  
• Windows Live Mail
  Windows Live Mail
  Windows Live Mail is a free of charge email client from Microsoft's Windows Live set of products. It is intended to be a successor for Outlook Express on Windows XP and Windows Mail on Windows Vista...
  
  
• Mozilla Thunderbird
  Mozilla Thunderbird
  Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a web browser...
  
  

External links

• Official Evolution project page, gnome.org
• openSUSE Evolution page, opensuse.org
• Evolution on Win32, dipconsultants.com