all around good guy and sys admin david solbach set up some mailing lists on the osdw server so we can better coordinate. this includes a general osdw announcement mailing list where we will be announcing upcoming events and other bits of status that may be of interest to those wanting to keep up with what happens with osdw.
i listened to the linux user show this evening as a new podcast of theirs showed up in my akregator. kelly penguin girl and jon put on another entertaining show and while many we kde hackers may not learn anything new about kde from it, it is very interesting to hear kde from the perspective of new and enthusiastic users. they are certainly fans of kde and linux, even kelly who is primarily a mac user these days, and it's interesting to hear what is and isn't obvious in usage.
and speaking of obvious in usage, god damn does outlook suck. i configured outlook 2003 to connect to a kolab server today and while the konsec connector made setting up groupware fairly painless ... it was still insanely complex compared to what i'm used to with kontact which just provides a nice one-step wizard. and then when setting up another outlook client to just do regular ol' imap+smtp i discovered that not only does outlook not do SMTP TLS (hey microsoft, 1998 called and it wants its software back) but when you switch it to use SSL ... it leaves the port at 25 and you have to change it yourself. usability, anyone?
i swear that you have to be a bloody sys admin to configure outlook. there is no way i can see a user getting through that stuff. and i also know that there is no way we could get away with shipping such crappy software without users being all over us and the press giving us bad reviews. and yet millions use it for business every day. huh?
kde-pim hackers: my love for your work was renewed today. microsoft pim coders: please go find yourselves a new profession. seriously.
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16 comments:
"microsoft pim coders: please go find yourselves a new profession."
That was not cool.
If we atacked the same way all the Kontact flaws, their developers would be on jail by now, so please, cut the trolling.
@ramsees
oh please. my friend paid good money for software that has not only been a scourge of insecurity, robs him of his Freedom but which is insanely difficult to set up and make work.
MS has been working on Outlook for how many years? with how many people working on it full time?
our PIM hackers consistently Free the fruits of their labour and have put many, many, many fewer man-years into it and yet the product is more solid in many ways.
when someone does a truly shoddy piece of work, i have no issues calling them on it. in this case MS should've had a much better product out years ago. instead they keep changing the interface around on people and have yet to address many of the most basic issues.
i would be ashamed to have outlook as part of kde given those facts.
or ... do you think outlook is worth the costs (financially, security and freedom) associated with it? do you think the MS PIM coders have earned their keep with outlook?
I didn't said Outlook was a piece of art, I did say that the comment you made was trollish, Every Software has its flaws including KDE Pim and not for that its developers should change their profession, and btw, Have you seen the video of the newer outlook express? it is years ahead of any free PIM, but if any free PIM feeds your needs you won't need it.
Here, where I work we all use Outlook and we have no problems at all, be it security or configurability (We were able to config Gmail in a twist with it and our groupware easily).
And about security in mails, that still a culture for the user, any user w/o a culture about security will have the same problem no matter what OS or PIM manager use.
And who install Kolab anyway? tell me, how many steps or consol commands did you had to do to install Kolab properly on your Linux Box? any average user wouldn't have the skills to do it, simple, the flaws you talk about installing Kolab in Outlook is nothing compared to installing it on a Linux box.
But every body have opinions and we can all expresse it in a nice way.
> Every Software has its flaws
> including KDE Pim and not for
> that its developers should
> change their profession
true, unless unless they show themselves incompetent through their work.
outlook is pretty damn close to displaying incompetence IMO.
> user w/o a culture about
> security will have the same
> problem no matter what OS or PIM
> manager use
untrue. that myth that software, and hardware for that matter, has no useful role to play in security is a lie purloined on the masses by those who do not consider security important enough.
your software certainly does go a long ways to helping keep you secure. yes, you can do stupid things on any OS or network application if you really try, but most people aren't trying to do so. it's for that use case that software should be secure by default.
> And who install Kolab anyway?
more people every day.
but this blog had nothing to do with Kolab, actually. it was an incidental part of the story. it was about trying to simply "add email accounts" and "connect using TLS (nope!) or SSL (harder than it should be)". this is not Kolab specific.
> tell me, how many steps or
> consol commands did you had to
> do to install Kolab properly on
> your Linux Box
to get Kolab working flawlessly with Kontact (which is the analog for Outlook) i ran the Kontact Kolab Wizard. this is a ONE STEP wizard where you supply your login, password and the kolab server's hostname then click OK. it's so simple, anyone can do it. outlook is far, far more difficult here. kontact comes with similar wizards for groupwise, egroupware and slox ...
even installing the Kolab *SERVER* was easier than creating the necessary accounts in Outlook. it took 3 steps:
obmtool kolab
/kolab/etc/kolab_bootstrap -b
/etc/init.d/kolab start
they were documented in the README; the first command instructed you to run the second command, and the second command instructed me to run the third command. not rocket science.
then i logged into the web-based admin interface and added users.
i installed the server quicker than i managed to get those two outlook installs properly configured!
> Kolab in Outlook is nothing
> compared to installing it on a
> Linux box
then you obviously haven't done it recently.
> But every body have opinions and
> we can all expresse it in a nice
> way
there's something to be said about informed opinions, but regardless... when a company wastes my time and then charges me for it (c.f. outlook), they don't deserve politeness.
No offence buy you look like the classic Anti MS troll.
Kontact can configure Kolab easy because its designed to do so, the same is Outlook with exchange.
What PIM on Windows can be configured to work with Kolab easily?
None.
Or is this the way for you to promote the incoming version of Kontact for Windows?
Funnie, becase it was you who were againts of porting KDE apps to Windows, you even wrote and article for it.
I didn't read well the part where you said is not oly about Kolab, sorry.
Ignore last post
Ramsees:
I'm still trying to fathom your posts. Have you ever been a System Admin? Have you EVER set up an exchange server? Have you ever tried to configure kontact to work with all of the above Aaron mentioned?
They're just as simple and quick. Unfortunately I'm not entirely sure that kontact can or will be able to use an exchange server. Mostly because, as always, Microsoft does not WANT other clients to connect to their products. Why? Because they want you to buy their 'new and improved software.' Which, as Aaron was getting to, isn't as great in terms of supplying usability features as kontact.
@Ramsees
oh, i'm not an anti-MS troll. i'm an anti-shit-software troll ;)
just today i was actually commending another piece of MS software for having a decent UI on irc. i really don't care where the software comes from, i care more about it's allowance for Freedom, for security and for quality.
i have, at times, ripped our own software in my blog for failing on one of those three things.
i'm just calling it as i see it.
just like when i warned about porting all our apps to windows, which you mentioned. this is something i am still very wary of. i see benefits to porting select bits of our software, but not all of it. but that's a TOTALLY different topic now ;)
I haven't used Outlook for years, but I remember back in the day, I tried using it to peruse Usenet -- and it stank so badly, I am still smelling it. To put it simply, the text formatting was a joke, and it broke multiple threads into a nonsensical track record of gobbledy-gook. And this was on a Mac, where Microsoft was meant to be more attentive to design. It would surprise me if it got worse.
Nowadays, I stick to Sylpheed. It does what I want: fetches me my Google emails, and allows me to send. I used KMail too, and I was impressed -- but on a 200Mhz Pentium MMX, it coughs really easily.
Well, Outlook is meant to be setup by system administrators or their trained minions. Thats how it works at my University.
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