Evolution or
Novell Evolution (formerly
Ximian Evolution, prior to
NovellNovell, Inc. is a global software corporation based in the United States specializing in enterprise operating systems such as SUSE Linux Enterprise and Novell NetWare; identity, security and systems management solutions; and collaboration solutions. Together with WordPerfect, Novell was...
's 2003 acquisition of
XimianXimian 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,...
) is the official personal information manager and workgroup information management tool for
GNOMEGNOME is a desktop environment—a graphical user interface which runs on top of a computer operating system —composed entirely of free and open source software...
. It combines
e-mailElectronic mail, often abbreviated as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages, designed primarily for human use...
,
calendarA 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 bookAn 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 interfaceThe user interface is the aggregate of means by which people—the users—interact with the system—a particular machine, device, computer program or other complex tool...
and functionality are similar to
Microsoft OutlookMicrosoft Office Outlook or Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft. The 2007 version is available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite....
.
Evolution or
Novell Evolution (formerly
Ximian Evolution, prior to
NovellNovell, Inc. is a global software corporation based in the United States specializing in enterprise operating systems such as SUSE Linux Enterprise and Novell NetWare; identity, security and systems management solutions; and collaboration solutions. Together with WordPerfect, Novell was...
's 2003 acquisition of
XimianXimian 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,...
) is the official personal information manager and workgroup information management tool for
GNOMEGNOME is a desktop environment—a graphical user interface which runs on top of a computer operating system —composed entirely of free and open source software...
. It combines
e-mailElectronic mail, often abbreviated as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages, designed primarily for human use...
,
calendarA 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 bookAn 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 interfaceThe user interface is the aggregate of means by which people—the users—interact with the system—a particular machine, device, computer program or other complex tool...
and functionality are similar to
Microsoft OutlookMicrosoft Office Outlook or Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft. The 2007 version is available both as a separate application as well as a part of the Microsoft Office suite....
. Features include
iCalendariCalendar 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 .ics extension...
support, full-text indexing of all incoming mail, powerful
email filtersEmail filtering is the processing of e-mail 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...
writable in Scheme, and a "Search Folders" feature (i.e., saved searches that look like normal mail folders).
Evolution can be connected to all versions of
Microsoft Exchange ServerMicrosoft Exchange Server is a messaging and collaborative software product developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Servers line of server products and is widely used by enterprises using Microsoft infrastructure solutions...
except Exchange 2007 using their web interfaces and an Evolution add-on formerly called
Ximian ConnectorXimian 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 phoneA mobile phone or mobile is a long-range, electronic device used for mobile telecommunications...
s and other
PDAsA personal digital assistant is a handheld computer, also known as a palmtop computer. Newer PDAs commonly have color screens and audio capabilities, enabling them to be used as mobile phones , web browsers, or portable media players. Many PDAs can access the Internet, intranets or extranets...
.
Licensed under the terms of the
GNU General Public LicenseThe GNU General Public License is a widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project....
, Evolution is
Free softwareFree 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 minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also...
.
Evolution 2
Evolution 2, which has been available since September 2004, delivers these features:
- integrated connectivity to 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 is a messaging and collaborative software product developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Servers line of server products and is widely used by enterprises using Microsoft infrastructure solutions...
- integrated support for GPG
GNU Privacy Guard is a free software 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
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 is a standard for public key encryption and signing of e-mail encapsulated in MIME....
, enhanced contact management
- Pidgin
Pidgin is a 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 different 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 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 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 is an e-mail and groupware server that runs on Linux, licensed under the Scalix Public License .It was based on HP OpenMail, which was licensed from Hewlett Packard. It provides e-mail, calendars and other collaborative software, which are standard in groupware...
is available
Anjal
Anjal is a new user interface which is being built on top of Evolution, targeted for mobile and small-screen devices. It uses
WebkitWebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. The WebKit engine provides a set of classes to display web content in windows, and implements browser features such as following links when clicked by the user, managing a back-forward list, and managing a history of...
for rendering messages.
Distribution
Evolution 2.22 was released on 2008-03-11, together with GNOME 2.22 (March 2008). GNOME is the default desktop environment for several Linux distributions, most notably
DebianDebian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software especially under the GNU General Public License and other open source licenses. The primary form, Debian GNU/Linux, which uses the Linux kernel and GNU OS tools, is a popular and...
,
FedoraFedora is an RPM-based, general purpose operating system built on top of the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat...
and
UbuntuUbuntu , is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution. It is named after the South African ethical ideology Ubuntu and is distributed as free and open source software. Ubuntu provides an up-to-date, stable operating system for the average user, with a strong focus on...
.
Foresight LinuxForesight Linux is an operating system comprising free and proprietary software with the stated goal of showcasing the latest in Linux desktop technologies...
showcases the latest releases of GNOME. Novell distributes Evolution with
SUSE Linux Enterprise DesktopSUSE 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...
10 and the
openSUSEopenSUSE, , is a general purpose operating system built on top of the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported openSUSE Project and sponsored by Novell...
community project.
Evolution 2.22 is also available as
source codeIn computer science, source code is any collection of statements or declarations written in some human-readable computer programming language...
. 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 is still downloadable here:
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfcontent/downloads.php/evolution/builds/Evolution%202.6%20for%20Mac%20OS%20X%20/ A similar link is discussed here:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/evolution-list/2006-August/msg00208.html.
Evolution for Windows
In January 2005, Novell's
Nat FriedmanNathaniel 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
GIMPGIMP is a free software raster graphics editor. Primarily, GIMP is used as a tool for photo manipulations, such as resizing, editing, and cropping photos, combining multiple images, and converting between different image formats...
to Microsoft Windows, to do the same with Evolution.
As of June, 2009, 2.26.2-1 has been available for download from DIP Consultants, LLC.
Evolution on Win32 This version runs only on
Windows XPWindows XP is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, and media centers. The name "XP" is short for "eXPerience"...
and newer. While not currently supported on Vista, the 2.26.2-1 release is known to be functional, however a number of
bugsA software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
still exist .
Before this announcement, several projects with the same goal had been started (
Evolution for Windows being the most notable), but none of them reached alpha status.
See also
External links