Exchange equivalent on Ubuntu

Mr. Brightside · 7 Jul 2012 at 13:38

Simple requirement but the solution is not so readily apparent:

I'm in the process of moving back to Linux (Ubuntu this time as I now have a laptop, and easy-hardware-configuration is key) having been on Windows for the last year.

I need to connect to an Exchange server to access my work email and calendar. Googling for this just gives me guides that tell me to configure e.g. Thunderbird to connect to the Exchange server over IMAP. This won't work, because:

The Exchange server is not directly accessible. With Outlook 2010 (as I currently connect), I have to configure it to connect with the 'nest RPC over HTTPS' option (I access from outside of the office network). Thunderbird does not appear to have any such option.

Any ideas?

Cheers,
Mr. B

Nunzio · 7 Jul 2012 at 14:42

Use http://projects.gnome.org/evolution/ with all the exchange plugins, but you will need direct access to the GAL.

Imho, outlook owa is really the only way to use exchange on a linux box.

Mr. Brightside · 7 Jul 2012 at 15:41

Thanks - downloading Evolution now to look into it.

For the uninitiated (me) though: what does GAL stand for/refer to?

BahBah · 7 Jul 2012 at 21:02

GAL = Global Address List

Bigsy · 7 Jul 2012 at 22:34

I always found evolutions MAPI ropey as hell for exchange 2010, not a big fan of evolution either.

Davmail + thunderbird works fine with me though.

deano · 7 Jul 2012 at 22:35

playonlinux and office 2007 or 2010

Mr. Brightside · 15 Jul 2012 at 23:06

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

I tried out Evolution but never got it to work.

In the end I settled on running Outlook on Windows 7 in VirtualBox. I realised that I'm still better off having Office installed for work use (since they gave me a copy it at least doesn't cost anything). But for everything else (all my actual development work as opposed to communication and requirements documents) I'm now using the tools natively in the better environment - Ubuntu.

101001101 · 20 Jul 2012 at 21:23

It costs money ofc, but you can actually run Office (including Outlook) in Ubuntu using Citrix XenApp and the client; although it only seems to work well on 32bit which is annoying.