Re: SL7 client for Microsoft ActiveSync
Yasha It looks like office 360 supports legacy MAPI clients and thats good news for you because there is a Linux MAPI client library which plugs into several mail clients. Although I've never liked evolution as a mail client there is a plugin which comes with SL for it "yum install evolution-mapi" In addition office 360 supports the new protocol "Exchange Web Services" and though Ive never tried it on SL I do know that recent versions of evolution do support it. Also also I've never tried them but know there are plugins for Mozilla Thunderbird and Seamonkey for "Exchange Web Services" as well The old OWA web scraping clients aren't really needed any more and for the mosty part should be removed from most if not all the mail clients. Also if you are really brave you can checkout the openchange project which is where most of the client libraries are coming from their goal is to make a open source replacement for Microsoft Exchange server and the clients. On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 9:26 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote: > On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 12:10 PM, Chris Schanzle wrote: >> On 02/09/2015 01:40 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: >>> >>> My university IT department, external to any academic or research unit, >>> has made the arbitrary decision to force us to use a Microsoft Office365 >>> external distributed proprietary (cloud) service for official university >>> email. Although this service nominally supports IETF SMTP and IMAP >>> protocols, it is abysmally slow when so doing. The campus IT spokesperson >>> has explained that only a client compliant with Microsoft ActiveSync will >>> fully function with this imposed proprietary closed system service -- >>> translation: if one wants reasonable speed in email, use an ActiveSync >>> client -- probably from Microsoft. >> >> >> I think your campus IT spokesperson is wrong, or you are not paying enough >> to get good service. :-) > > From direct experience with such email clients and Linux and Mac > clients, they're quite right. It won't have "full service" unless it > has access to the calendar and addres list functions. A pure IMAP > solution, as some of us prefer, also won't have the "click on the > group email address and have it expanded to all the group members > automatically" function. That's why saying "it won't have full > service" is weasel words. > > The OWA or Outlook Web Application used by various clients and by most > cell phone applications for Exchange of any flavor is basically web > scraping. It can get you *most* functionality, but it's never going to > work as well as a native Windows client.
Re: SL7 client for Microsoft ActiveSync
On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 12:10 PM, Chris Schanzle wrote: > On 02/09/2015 01:40 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: >> >> My university IT department, external to any academic or research unit, >> has made the arbitrary decision to force us to use a Microsoft Office365 >> external distributed proprietary (cloud) service for official university >> email. Although this service nominally supports IETF SMTP and IMAP >> protocols, it is abysmally slow when so doing. The campus IT spokesperson >> has explained that only a client compliant with Microsoft ActiveSync will >> fully function with this imposed proprietary closed system service -- >> translation: if one wants reasonable speed in email, use an ActiveSync >> client -- probably from Microsoft. > > > I think your campus IT spokesperson is wrong, or you are not paying enough > to get good service. :-) >From direct experience with such email clients and Linux and Mac clients, they're quite right. It won't have "full service" unless it has access to the calendar and addres list functions. A pure IMAP solution, as some of us prefer, also won't have the "click on the group email address and have it expanded to all the group members automatically" function. That's why saying "it won't have full service" is weasel words. The OWA or Outlook Web Application used by various clients and by most cell phone applications for Exchange of any flavor is basically web scraping. It can get you *most* functionality, but it's never going to work as well as a native Windows client.
Re: SL7 client for Microsoft ActiveSync
We've had Office 365 as the university's official system for over a year now. It has been evolving and improving though I still do not like it. Many Uk universities use either that or Google's services, and the main reason is reduced costs and simplified service maintenance, as wellas keeping students happy by offering a cloud-based service with all the add-ons already mentioned in this thread. I have found it reasonably, and increasingly, usable via the Outlook Web Application, thunderbird and mutt, under Linux. So I agree with those whose meesage has basically been 'Don't panic' From: owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov on behalf of Chris Schanzle Sent: 09 February 2015 17:10 To: Yasha Karant; SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-USERS@LISTSERV.FNAL.GOV Subject: Re: SL7 client for Microsoft ActiveSync On 02/09/2015 01:40 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: > My university IT department, external to any academic or research unit, has > made the arbitrary decision to force us to use a Microsoft Office365 external > distributed proprietary (cloud) service for official university email. > Although this service nominally supports IETF SMTP and IMAP protocols, it is > abysmally slow when so doing. The campus IT spokesperson has explained that > only a client compliant with Microsoft ActiveSync will fully function with > this imposed proprietary closed system service -- translation: if one wants > reasonable speed in email, use an ActiveSync client -- probably from > Microsoft. I think your campus IT spokesperson is wrong, or you are not paying enough to get good service. :-) We moved to the vaporous 365 cloud about two years ago. It has not been great. They change stuff. They move you to different 'pods'. They roll out changes to some pods and not others. They change things based on our special auth requirements and other stuff, and it breaks occasionally. Nearly always the web-based method works. Of course IE works best, but firefox works well enough also. While thunderbird downloads all the mail, which in my case and others is 10's of thousands of emails ~6 GB, it will be slow. But once synced, it is reasonably fast...certainly not as fast as having it local, but reasonable to use throughout the day. Initially they did some serious throttling of "abusers" that dramatically impaired use while thunderbird downloaded messages (e.g., rejecting access to Sent folder when sending msgs...retry...retry...done), but that changed about a year ago. Sometimes, often near times of Thunderbird updates but not always, something decides to invalidate all my folders and a full redownload is needed. Takes about half a day now, where before it was about a week, and thunderbird needed several restarts as something would abort and wouldn't recover.
Re: SL7 client for Microsoft ActiveSync
On 02/09/2015 01:40 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: My university IT department, external to any academic or research unit, has made the arbitrary decision to force us to use a Microsoft Office365 external distributed proprietary (cloud) service for official university email. Although this service nominally supports IETF SMTP and IMAP protocols, it is abysmally slow when so doing. The campus IT spokesperson has explained that only a client compliant with Microsoft ActiveSync will fully function with this imposed proprietary closed system service -- translation: if one wants reasonable speed in email, use an ActiveSync client -- probably from Microsoft. I think your campus IT spokesperson is wrong, or you are not paying enough to get good service. :-) We moved to the vaporous 365 cloud about two years ago. It has not been great. They change stuff. They move you to different 'pods'. They roll out changes to some pods and not others. They change things based on our special auth requirements and other stuff, and it breaks occasionally. Nearly always the web-based method works. Of course IE works best, but firefox works well enough also. While thunderbird downloads all the mail, which in my case and others is 10's of thousands of emails ~6 GB, it will be slow. But once synced, it is reasonably fast...certainly not as fast as having it local, but reasonable to use throughout the day. Initially they did some serious throttling of "abusers" that dramatically impaired use while thunderbird downloaded messages (e.g., rejecting access to Sent folder when sending msgs...retry...retry...done), but that changed about a year ago. Sometimes, often near times of Thunderbird updates but not always, something decides to invalidate all my folders and a full redownload is needed. Takes about half a day now, where before it was about a week, and thunderbird needed several restarts as something would abort and wouldn't recover.
Re: SL7 client for Microsoft ActiveSync
2015-02-09 17:33 GMT+01:00 Yasha Karant : > This is a SL issue in that if SL is to be used in the real world as both a > workstation and as a server environment, > one needs workstation applications that communicate/interoperate with > those commonly available from other environments > (the two primary examples being proprietary MS Windows and highly > proprietary Mac OS X -- albeit the latter has BSD internals > and thus can be adapted to open standards -- in addition to the various > "smart phone", tablet, and device environments such > as Android or IOS). > You simply can't compare this, Android and iOS Vendors pay Microsoft a lot of money to use things like Active Sync, free Linux systems dosen't. As long as Microsoft don't offer a complete license free api for using there services, the situation will stay as it is. Regards Thomas -- Linux ... enjoy the ride!
Re: SL7 client for Microsoft ActiveSync
I appreciate the various replies, some of which have been off-list.
One such off list is:
[Entity X} is not yet on the ActiveSync client but
we have been using MS Exchange 2010 for a few years now.
the linux IMAP clients were at first problematic but eventually they
sorted them all out and there are plenty of people who still use
thunderbird to read their mail without significant trouble except
the server getting confused every once in a while. I think you
can expect that office365 cloud-based email, which my wife's university
already uses, will work out the imap kinks in the next bug release or two.
End quote.
This is a SL issue in that if SL is to be used in the real world as both
a workstation and as a server environment,
one needs workstation applications that communicate/interoperate with
those commonly available from other environments
(the two primary examples being proprietary MS Windows and highly
proprietary Mac OS X -- albeit the latter has BSD internals
and thus can be adapted to open standards -- in addition to the various
"smart phone", tablet, and device environments such
as Android or IOS).
Fully function is not a weasel word -- it means that if a set of
services are available from some service or application -- then all of
these functions can be accessed with equivalent results as if the
"native" proprietary application were used. Evidently,
using IMAP and SMTP -- open public IETF standards -- work, but very
slowly, with the current MS Office365 email service.
The web based interfaces are slow as well. This leaves us with the only
alternative -- until MS works out the Office365 cloud based email imap
"kinks" in the next few maintenance minor releases ("bug releases"). I
am not holding my breath in that MS may view this as a method to force
linux out of the USA professional/commercial workplace.
Yasha Karant
On 02/09/2015 06:03 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 1:40 AM, Yasha Karant wrote:
My university IT department, external to any academic or research unit, has
made the arbitrary decision to force us to use a Microsoft Office365
external distributed proprietary (cloud) service for official university
email. Although this service nominally supports IETF SMTP and IMAP
protocols, it is abysmally slow when so doing. The campus IT spokesperson
has explained that only a client compliant with Microsoft ActiveSync will
fully function with this imposed proprietary closed system service --
translation: if one wants reasonable speed in email, use an ActiveSync
client -- probably from Microsoft.
It's better than some, and a lot more robust than many IT department's
internal services. I've seen Linux favoring shops fail to maintain
complex email services, and especially calendar functions, and had
their client company finally throw in the towel and switch to
Office365 or GMail. And be clear, this is not a "Scientific Linux"
problem, it's a "my company chose to use a hosted, commercial, closed
mail server, and I need to deal with it".
If it does straightfoward IMAP, then any of the dozens of built-in
IMAP capable clients should work for email access, including the
default "evolution" product in SL And there are hundreds of good web
guidelines for "evolution" access to Office365: look around.
What you won't get with a pure IMAP client such as my old favorite
"pine" or other pure IMAP clients, is access to the user address
search engines, calendar functions, integrated address books, etc.,
etc. Those matter to some folks, especially if you need to book a
meeting room and can only use the Exchange clients to do so.
Part of the problem is the weasel words "fully function". Any client
that wants to deal with the upstream office365 server is typically
webscraping the webmail access. That webmail access tends to *suck* in
terms of performance, especially with complex and bulky email systems.
It's why even I maintain a Windows environment with an Outlook client:
I find that waiting a full minute for a new filter to be enabled and
waiting waiting waiting to get a refreshed screen to work with
is unacceptable, and the web based access to Office365 has been
unacceptable for me. But I hammer my email with many alert and
notification systems and cron job reports.
Is there any such client (Microsoft or otherwise) available for Linux, and
in particular, SL 7? All that I found on the web is to use proprietary
Microsoft Outlook under a MS Windows environment under a virtual machine
(e.g., VirtualBox) under Linux -- not a solution I want for regular email
service.
See above. Start from "evolution", which is a popular and well
supported client in RHEL and in SL and work your way out to a client
that works as well as you can expect.
For anyone currently using (by force or choice) Microsoft ActiveSync, does
it in fact support the functionality of IMAP and SMTP without staying
completely with a Microsoft proprietary environment, including Microsoft
prop
Re: SL7 client for Microsoft ActiveSync
On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 1:40 AM, Yasha Karant wrote: > My university IT department, external to any academic or research unit, has > made the arbitrary decision to force us to use a Microsoft Office365 > external distributed proprietary (cloud) service for official university > email. Although this service nominally supports IETF SMTP and IMAP > protocols, it is abysmally slow when so doing. The campus IT spokesperson > has explained that only a client compliant with Microsoft ActiveSync will > fully function with this imposed proprietary closed system service -- > translation: if one wants reasonable speed in email, use an ActiveSync > client -- probably from Microsoft. It's better than some, and a lot more robust than many IT department's internal services. I've seen Linux favoring shops fail to maintain complex email services, and especially calendar functions, and had their client company finally throw in the towel and switch to Office365 or GMail. And be clear, this is not a "Scientific Linux" problem, it's a "my company chose to use a hosted, commercial, closed mail server, and I need to deal with it". If it does straightfoward IMAP, then any of the dozens of built-in IMAP capable clients should work for email access, including the default "evolution" product in SL And there are hundreds of good web guidelines for "evolution" access to Office365: look around. What you won't get with a pure IMAP client such as my old favorite "pine" or other pure IMAP clients, is access to the user address search engines, calendar functions, integrated address books, etc., etc. Those matter to some folks, especially if you need to book a meeting room and can only use the Exchange clients to do so. Part of the problem is the weasel words "fully function". Any client that wants to deal with the upstream office365 server is typically webscraping the webmail access. That webmail access tends to *suck* in terms of performance, especially with complex and bulky email systems. It's why even I maintain a Windows environment with an Outlook client: I find that waiting a full minute for a new filter to be enabled and waiting waiting waiting to get a refreshed screen to work with is unacceptable, and the web based access to Office365 has been unacceptable for me. But I hammer my email with many alert and notification systems and cron job reports. > Is there any such client (Microsoft or otherwise) available for Linux, and > in particular, SL 7? All that I found on the web is to use proprietary > Microsoft Outlook under a MS Windows environment under a virtual machine > (e.g., VirtualBox) under Linux -- not a solution I want for regular email > service. See above. Start from "evolution", which is a popular and well supported client in RHEL and in SL and work your way out to a client that works as well as you can expect. > For anyone currently using (by force or choice) Microsoft ActiveSync, does > it in fact support the functionality of IMAP and SMTP without staying > completely with a Microsoft proprietary environment, including Microsoft > proprietary software applications? See above. It's that "fully functional" part that you might be missing with even the best IMAP clients.
Re: SL7 client for Microsoft ActiveSync
On Feb 8, 2015 11:41 PM, "Yasha Karant" wrote: > > My university IT department, external to any academic or research unit, has made the arbitrary decision to force us to use a Microsoft Office365 external distributed proprietary (cloud) service for official university email. Although this service nominally supports IETF SMTP and IMAP protocols, it is abysmally slow when so doing. The campus IT spokesperson has explained that only a client compliant with Microsoft ActiveSync will fully function with this imposed proprietary closed system service -- translation: if one wants reasonable speed in email, use an ActiveSync client -- probably from Microsoft. > > Is there any such client (Microsoft or otherwise) available for Linux, and in particular, SL 7? All that I found on the web is to use proprietary Microsoft Outlook under a MS Windows environment under a virtual machine (e.g., VirtualBox) under Linux -- not a solution I want for regular email service. > > For anyone currently using (by force or choice) Microsoft ActiveSync, does it in fact support the functionality of IMAP and SMTP without staying completely with a Microsoft proprietary environment, including Microsoft proprietary software applications? > I am having a hard time parsing what you are asking. It is SMTP and IMAP like and it is completely proprietary. I don't know of any linux clients at this time > Yasha Karant
SL7 client for Microsoft ActiveSync
My university IT department, external to any academic or research unit, has made the arbitrary decision to force us to use a Microsoft Office365 external distributed proprietary (cloud) service for official university email. Although this service nominally supports IETF SMTP and IMAP protocols, it is abysmally slow when so doing. The campus IT spokesperson has explained that only a client compliant with Microsoft ActiveSync will fully function with this imposed proprietary closed system service -- translation: if one wants reasonable speed in email, use an ActiveSync client -- probably from Microsoft. Is there any such client (Microsoft or otherwise) available for Linux, and in particular, SL 7? All that I found on the web is to use proprietary Microsoft Outlook under a MS Windows environment under a virtual machine (e.g., VirtualBox) under Linux -- not a solution I want for regular email service. For anyone currently using (by force or choice) Microsoft ActiveSync, does it in fact support the functionality of IMAP and SMTP without staying completely with a Microsoft proprietary environment, including Microsoft proprietary software applications? Yasha Karant
