GNOME Evolution

Last updated
GNOME Evolution
Original author(s) Ximian
Developer(s) The GNOME Project
Initial release10 May 2000;23 years ago (2000-05-10) [1]
Stable release
3.50.1 [2]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 20 October 2023
Repository
Written in C (GTK)
Operating system Unix-like
Available in53 languages with more than 80% translation [3]
Type Personal information manager
License LGPL-2.1-only [lower-alpha 1] and others [4]
Website wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evolution

GNOME Evolution (formerly Novell Evolution and Ximian Evolution, prior to Novell's 2003 acquisition of Ximian) is the official personal information manager for GNOME. It has been an official part of GNOME since Evolution 2.0 was included with the GNOME 2.8 release in September 2004. [5] It combines e-mail, address book, calendar, task list and note-taking features. Its user interface and functionality is similar to Microsoft Outlook. Evolution is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

Contents

Features

Evolution's calendar software Evolution 36 calendar.png
Evolution's calendar software
An older version of Evolution Evolution mail.png
An older version of Evolution

Evolution delivers the following features: [6]


The Novell GroupWise plug-in is no longer in active development. [10] A Scalix plug-in [11] is also available, but its development stopped in 2009. [12]

Evolution Data Server

Evolution Data Server (EDS) is a collection of libraries and session services for storing address books and calendars. [13] Other software such as California [14] and GNOME Calendar [15] [16] depends on EDS as well.

Some documentation about the software architecture is available in the GNOME wiki. [17]

Connecting to Microsoft Exchange Server

Depending on which version of Microsoft Exchange Server is used, different packages need to be installed to be able to connect to it. The documentation recommends the evolution-ews package (which uses Exchange Web Services) for Exchange Server 2007, 2010 and newer. If evolution-ews does not work well, it is advised to try the evolution-mapi package. This supports Exchange Server 2010, 2007 and possibly older versions supporting MAPI. For Exchange Server 2003, 2000 and possibly earlier versions supporting Outlook Web App the package evolution-exchange is recommended. [18]

History

Ximian decided to develop Evolution in 2000. It felt there were no e-mail clients for Linux at the time that could provide the functionality and interoperability necessary for corporate users. Ximian saw an opportunity for Linux to penetrate the corporate environment if the right enterprise software was available for it. It released Evolution 1.0 in December 2001 and offered the paid Ximian Connector plug-in which allowed users to connect with Microsoft Exchange Server. Evolution itself has been free software from the start, but Ximian Connector was sold as proprietary software so that Ximian could generate revenue. [19] This changed after Novell's acquisition of Ximian in August 2003. Novell decided to integrate the Exchange plug-in as free software in Evolution 2.0 in May 2004. [20]

Novell was in turn acquired by The Attachmate Group in 2011. It transferred Novell's former Evolution developers to its subsidiary SUSE. In 2012 SUSE decided to stop its funding of Evolution's development and assigned its developers elsewhere. As a consequence only two full-time developers employed by Red Hat remained. [10] Later in 2013 Red Hat dedicated more developers to the project, reinvigorating its development. The reasons given for the decision were the cessation of active development on Mozilla Thunderbird and the need for an e-mail client with good support for Microsoft Exchange. [21]

Distribution

As a part of GNOME, Evolution is released as source code. Linux distributions provide packages of GNOME for end-users. Evolution is used as the default personal information manager on several Linux distributions which use GNOME by default, most notably Debian and Fedora. Ubuntu has replaced Evolution with Mozilla Thunderbird as the default e-mail client since Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. [22]

Defunct Mac OS X and Windows ports

In the past, Evolution was ported to Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, but these ports are no longer developed.

In 2006, Novell released an installer for Evolution 2.6 on Mac OS X. [23] In January 2005, Novell's Nat Friedman announced in his blog [24] that the company had hired Tor Lillqvist, the programmer who ported GIMP to Microsoft Windows, to do the same with Evolution. Prior to this announcement, several projects with the same goal had been started but none of them reached alpha status. In 2008 DIP Consultants released a Windows installer for Evolution 2.28.1-1 for Microsoft Windows XP and newer. [25] Currently it is only available for download from the project's page on SourceForge. [26]

A slightly more recent (2010/2011) experimental installer for Evolution 3.0.2 is provided by openSUSE. [27] [28] Users have faced difficulties getting this version working. [29]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ LGPL-2.1-only or LGPL-3.0-only

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linux distribution</span> Operating system based on the Linux kernel

A Linux distribution is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel, and often a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one of the Linux distributions, which are available for a wide variety of systems ranging from embedded devices and personal computers to powerful supercomputers.

Ximian, Inc. was an American company that developed, sold and supported application software for Linux and Unix based on the GNOME platform. It was founded by Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman in 1999 and was bought by Novell in 2003. Novell continued to develop Ximian's original products, while adding support for its own GroupWise and ZENworks software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nat Friedman</span> American Investor

Nathaniel Dourif Friedman is an American technology executive and investor. He was the chief executive officer (CEO) of GitHub, and former Chairman of the GNOME Foundation. Friedman is currently a board member at the Arc Institute, and an advisor of Midjourney.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xandros</span> Linux distribution

Xandros, Inc. was a software company which sold Xandros Desktop, a Linux distribution. The name Xandros was derived from the X Window System and the Greek island of Andros. Xandros was founded in May 2001 by Linux Global Partners. The company was headquartered in New York City.

M+NetMail was an ISP-grade E-mail package by Messaging Architects. It was designed to deliver scalable messaging and calendaring services, using Internet-standard protocols, across a large enterprise, or to a large group of users who are not particularly associated. The original name for the product, when owned by Novell, was Novell Internet Messaging System (NIMS). Messaging Architects showcased NetMail on its MyRealBox website, this service was discontinued on June 1, 2011.

Kolab is a free and open source groupware suite. It consists of the Kolab server and a wide variety of Kolab clients, including KDE PIM-Suite Kontact, Roundcube web frontend, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Lightning with SyncKolab extension and Microsoft Outlook with proprietary Kolab-Connector PlugIns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scalix</span>

Scalix is an e-mail and groupware server that runs on Linux, licensed under the Scalix Public License (SPL).

openSUSE Community-supported Linux distribution

openSUSE is a free and open source Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. It is offered in two main variations: Tumbleweed, an upstream rolling release distribution, and Leap, a stable release distribution which is sourced from SUSE Linux Enterprise.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SUSE Linux Enterprise</span> Linux distribution

SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) is a Linux-based operating system developed by SUSE. It is available in two editions, suffixed with Server (SLES) for servers and mainframes, and Desktop (SLED) for workstations and desktop computers.

iFolder

iFolder is an open-source application, developed by Novell, Inc., intended to allow cross-platform file sharing across computer networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PulseAudio</span> Sound server for Unix-like operating systems

PulseAudio is a network-capable sound server program distributed via the freedesktop.org project. It runs mainly on Linux, including Windows Subsystem for Linux on Microsoft Windows and Termux on Android; various BSD distributions such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and macOS; as well as Illumos distributions and the Solaris operating system. It serves as a middleware in between applications and hardware and handles raw PCM audio streams.

SUSE Linux is a computer operating system developed by SUSE. It is built on top of the free and open source Linux kernel and is distributed with system and application software from other open source projects. SUSE Linux is of German origin, its name being an acronym of "Software und System-Entwicklung", and it was mainly developed in Europe. The first version appeared in early 1994, making SUSE one of the oldest existing commercial distributions. It is known for its YaST configuration tool.

Bynari is a defunct company based in Dallas, developing server and email software, mainly known for its Insight Family, similar to Microsoft Exchange Server with Outlook.

EGroupware is free open-source groupware software intended for businesses from small to enterprises. Its primary functions allow users to manage contacts, appointments, projects and to-do lists. The project releases its software under the terms of GNU General Public License (GPL).

Linux began in 1991 as a personal project by Finnish student Linus Torvalds to create a new free operating system kernel. The resulting Linux kernel has been marked by constant growth throughout its history. Since the initial release of its source code in 1991, it has grown from a small number of C files under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to the 4.15 version in 2018 with more than 23.3 million lines of source code, not counting comments, under the GNU General Public License v2 with a syscall exception meaning anything that uses the kernel via system calls are not subject to the GNU GPL.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Go-oo</span>

Go-oo is a discontinued free office suite which started as a set of patches for OpenOffice.org, then later became an independent fork of OpenOffice.org with a number of enhancements, sponsored by Novell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jami (software)</span> Distributed multimedia communications platform

Jami is a SIP-compatible distributed peer-to-peer softphone and SIP-based instant messenger for Linux, Microsoft Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. Jami was developed and maintained by the Canadian company Savoir-faire Linux, and with the help of a global community of users and contributors, Jami positions itself as a potential free Skype replacement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNOME</span> Desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like systems

GNOME, originally an acronym for GNU Network Object Model Environment, is a free and open-source desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GroupWise</span> Messaging and collaborative software platform

GroupWise is a messaging and collaboration platform from Micro Focus that supports email, calendaring, personal information management, instant messaging, and document management. The GroupWise platform consists of desktop client software, which is available for Windows,, and the server software, which is supported on Windows Server and Linux.

References

  1. ↑ Icaza, Miguel de (10 May 2000). "Evolution "Prokaryote" 0.0 has been released". evolution-hackers mailing list. GNOME. Retrieved 27 January 2013.
  2. ↑ "Evolution 3.50.1 2023-10-20". 20 October 2023. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
  3. ↑ "Module Statistics: evolution". Damned Lies. GNOME. Retrieved 27 January 2013.
  4. ↑ COPYING-File in the Sourcecode-repository of Evolution
  5. ↑ Cumming, Murray; Charles, Colin; Madeley, Davyd (15 September 2004). "GNOME 2.8 Release Notes". GNOME. Retrieved 27 January 2013.
  6. ↑ "Evolution Mail and Calendar documentation". GNOME Library. GNOME. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
  7. ↑ "Support markdown in composer (#449) · Issues · GNOME / evolution · GitLab". GitLab. 18 May 2019. Retrieved 2022-08-25.
  8. ↑ "evolution-kolab". GNOME Wiki. GNOME. Retrieved 15 December 2013.
  9. ↑ "Evolution RSS Reader Plugin". Evolution plugins. Retrieved 29 January 2013.
  10. 1 2 Barnes, Matthew (19 September 2012). "What's New in Evolution 3.6". evolution-list mailing list. GNOME. Retrieved 29 January 2013.
  11. ↑ "Scalix Connect for Evolution". Xandros Corporation. Archived from the original on 9 January 2013. Retrieved 29 January 2013.
  12. ↑ "Git log of evolution-scalix". GNOME Git. GNOME. Retrieved 29 January 2013.
  13. ↑ "Evolution Data Server Reference Manual". GNOME. Retrieved 9 February 2015.
  14. ↑ "California". GNOME. Retrieved 9 February 2015.
  15. ↑ "GNOME Calendar".
  16. ↑ "gnome-calendar in Debian with dependencies".
  17. ↑ "Apps/Evolution/EDS_Architecture - GNOME Wiki!".
  18. ↑ "Choosing the right connector". GNOME Library. GNOME. Retrieved 29 January 2013.
  19. ↑ Barr, Joe (3 December 2001). "Ximian Evolution 1.0 links Linux to Exchange". The Register. Retrieved 29 January 2013.
  20. ↑ "Novell Announces Evolution 2.0 and Release of Connector for Microsoft Exchange Server Under Open Source License". Novell. 11 May 2004. Retrieved 29 January 2013.
  21. ↑ Ruiz, Alberto. "Evolution needs your help!". Silicon Island. Archived from the original on 31 March 2017. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
  22. ↑ "Oneiric Ocelot Release Notes". Ubuntu Wiki. Ubuntu. 12 March 2012. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
  23. ↑ "Evolution 2.6 for Mac OS X". Novell. Archived from the original on 28 May 2007. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
  24. ↑ Friedman, Nat (17 January 2005). "Evolution for Windows". Nat Friedman's Blog. Archived from the original on 15 April 2013. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
  25. ↑ "Evolution for Windows". DIP Consultants. Archived from the original on 19 December 2009. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
  26. ↑ "Evolution", SourceForge (project)
  27. ↑ Strba, Fridrich (25 May 2010). "Experimental Evolution installer for Windows" . Retrieved 26 January 2013.
  28. ↑ "Experimental Evolution 3.0.2 packages for Windows". openSUSE. 28 August 2011. Archived from the original on 14 November 2012. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
  29. ↑ "windows Evolution doesn't start: libglade*/libgdk*/libg*.dll missing". GNOME Bugzilla. GNOME. 21 September 2011. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.