mozilla thunderbird, anyone use it?
 

just switched over to it this morning, and thus far i am VERY pleased with it. it's fairly light and simple, seems to have a fairly simple and easy saving system that would be transferrable to other machines (and easy to backup).

AND it's the first client i've successfully used to import my 300+ megs of outlook mail, with the correct folders and mail, etc.

very pleased, i'm just doing some research on wether the win files are compatible with the linux ver files, if so i've got myself a new mail client :)

i use(d) it, and im pissed off at the lack of standards... i mean for christs sake why dont the browser companies have standards they ALL go to.... try loading www.westpac.com.au with ie and mozilla.. on mozilla the left hand side javascript panel wont even load... i spose this is blamed to the designer, but there will always be biased designers, so GET STANDARD DAMN YOU ALL!!!

oohh srry i read firebird i thought u meant the new browser srry

lol... yeah, i meant the mail client.

really, it is on the designer's shoulders to become compliant with both browsers. and, for most (simpler) stuff, it's not that hard to do. i do it every day. but you'd be surprised to see how many people can't make a layout work in mozilla/netscape, or the simply just don't check it. people that call themselves professionals, to boot. oh well.

I've been using thunderbird for quite a while. The two more recent builds (0.3 and 0.4) are very stable and have come a long way in terms of gui. I am very pleased with it and have really had no complaints at all since 0.2.

There is standards in place its called "Internet Explorer!" Standards!

yah, unfortunately we are all placed under the IE monster. plain and simple, you have to build your sites compliant with IE. from what i've seen, and webmasters i've talked to with all sorts of sites, i'd say IE controls 80%+ of the market share. while there are exceptional alternatives like mozilla, IE is convenient.

i build everything for mozilla, and check for IE compatibility. unfortunately under my opinion, IE's html rendering is atrocious at best, which causes for some problems. IE is EXTREMELY forgiving in writing magnificently horrible code... and it will display correctly.

i find that about 98% of the time, if you build something for the mozilla-based browsers, it will work in IE. but that 2% of the time it doesn't, i find it's much more difficult to get it to display properly in IE.

there are however, a few neat tricks that are incorporated in IE that other browsers aren't incorporating, however they are catching up with the times, so-to-speak. although i'm still disappointed that IE doesn't natively support the PNG format. it's such a nice format, you'd think they would allow it. you can get IE to display png's properly, but it's extremely cumbersome, and something i'd not recommend (although i have done it). as far as i know, safari, mozilla, and opera all support the png format.


anyways, good to hear about tbird. i've been happy with it so far, and it seems stable. as long as things maintain, i'll probably be keeping it.

Its actually nearing 93% market share if you count IE V5 and IE v6 together. I will never code for a browser that doesnt make up to 1% of my traffic ;) (Opera for example... .30 total % for 2003 of traffic. less than 1/3 of 1%)

IE rules the web.

lol... yeah, honestly i used opera for a short while to see what all the fuss was about. it was neat in the way a new toy is to a little kid, but hardly something i'd depend on. the shiny coating dulled rather quickly. and safari, well, mac has so little market share, and i have no way of checking it anyways, that i pay little attention to it (i also have not had any complaints from mac users... so i'm guessing it works anyway).

as far as the mozilla thing goes, i do think there is a little more variance in alternate browsers in more webmaster-oriented traffic, since they seem to be a little more tech-oriented than general surfer traffic. plus, since i use mozilla, and i'm fairly particular about being accurate with my code, i find it better for me just to build for mozilla.

i would definitely agree that IE rules the web. i think web marketing is going to change quite a bit in the near future is well. i've heard that a new version of IE to be released 'fore long is going to have a built-in popup blocker like mozilla. when that hits the streets, it's going to put a world of hurt on consoles, and i imagine we will start to see a huge decline in their use. that's just my thoughts, tho.

as much as most of us truly detest consoles, they _do_ work (although i'm proud to say not one of my sites, personal or public has ever used a console, nor will i ever include such ;) ).

png = one sexy format, isnt it vector and also bitmap (like photoshop files, but less HUGE)

Being that I use a number of Gentoo Linux only systems, thunderbird is the mail browser of choice. It is so much more stable than Outlook ... that piece of crap pisses me off whenever I have to use it.

As for your traffic, your stats are wrong. Many people using mozilla and ESPECIALLY opera have their browsers identified as IE for compatibility (in opera it defaults to IE 6.0). I would guess that in reality you're getting (being a tech site) well over 20% of your traffic on mozilla/opera.

good points, i didn't think about that. although yes, in a more webmaster-oriented or tech-oriented environment, you are going to have a lot higher usage of alternate browsers.

however, in general surfer environments, you're going to have primarily IE traffic. the masses are exactly that.

glad you like tbird tho. i'm really digging it, it's bad-ass. i hope it stays around for a while (and knowing mozilla, it should), since i used outlook for like 5 years.


AND ALL HAIL THE PNG! i love that format, it just angrifies me i can't use it. my two really favorite parts are higher quality animations at smaller sizes, and the ALPHA TRANSPARENCIES. you can do some neat stuff with that, but now i'm forced to do any of it completely static, whereas it could be done dynamically with the png :(

Outlook 97,98,2000,XP Were all utter crap.

Outlook 2003 is all that and a bag of chips. Stable, very fast, and has some features I have wanted. I have 12 IMAP, 2 POP3, and 1 Exchange mailbox running from my outlook 2003 currently. full rule sets, and archival features working and in lightning speed. (that kinda load used to crash XP) :) Oh and my outlook archive folder and main pst total have I think 1.5GB of email in them. Somewhere in the 80,000 - 100,000 emails range. Every email since 1997, and still Outlook can search, and find the emails I need without issue.

you go on believe'n that 20% of the web traffic comes from Moz or Opera :) If it broke 2% I would be impressed. As long as I cant see that they are out there (because of them mis representing what browser they are) I will not code for them.

Did I say in general? I said in tech centered areas such as this you'll have over 20% alternate usage. Interestingly enough at the gentoo forums (linux distro) they show over 55% IE usage, and I guarantee you less than 10% of those people are really using IE ... it's just part of the game. I leave Opera in IE mode to make certain that certain sites load (if it is identified as another browser the sites will display an "upgrade your browser to MS Feces 6.0" message), though I always leave the Mozillas alone. In general usage, I would not be surprised to find alternate browsers clocking in above 10% ... but once again, it is because of the browser ID spoofing that you won't see it as a webmaster.

To put it another way, the local university has all of their compsci systems running on Unix and I'm SURE they're not using IE, but all of their traffic is shown as IE traffic on my website log. Even if IE usage was slashed to a REAL 50% usage, you'd still show the vast majority of hits from "IE" browsers.

This isn't conjecture. I deal with this myself.

I put Thunderbird and Firebird on all of the lab PCs (2 WinXP and 1 Mandrake9), made them default apps, and hid IE/OE. These systems are mission-critical, but of course grad students use them to surf the web and check e-mail anyway. I took this step because I don't have the time or energy to constantly check the systems and keep them patched up and because other people use them all the time. You can cut your support hassles on Windows PCs down to the bare minimum by switching to Firebird/Thunderbird and then running an antivirus that autoupdates. I am sure Joe will argue about that statement, but he supports PCs for a living :)

I honestly dont see the point of Opera since Firebird is free, better supported, and has more features. I used to use Opera long long ago though when no other browsers had tabs.

a bit off topic, but does anyone here use The Bat?

The thought that any application doesn’t require support or maintenance is bullshit in the most conservative of terms. Have you seen all the constant patches and updates for Linux distros that happen almost more often now than with Windows? What about the fact that most of the noticed hacks and patches for Linux are results of exploits that let you Root the damn box!? Windows is far from secure, but most exploits are fairly high level, and only a few have resulted in people being able to run your box. A Root exploit in a linux build, you own the box. Also because no one company makes/mantains all the lil craplets in a Linux distro... any one of the many small additions wrote by some company is a security issues if one of them isnt secure enough. With MS, if its an issue with file sharing, terminal services, or FTP you know who to go to, its all MS's fault. Not having to find geeks to support Samba, or Apache, or proftp all seperately.

Now I know airspirit is a total gentoo zelot, so theres no chance is even speaking any wrong about gentoo (even if it takes more work to get it to do what you want than it woudl take to write a ****ing OS). My point airspirit, is as long as the minority of browsers out there hide under IE's name don’t bitch about people not coding for them. If the browser was that good, they wouldnt need to hide under their competitors name, but would make a point to show the industry they are good enough to be on their own.

as far as email clients, I am pretty neutral. All I know is nothing... not one damn app out there can do all the things outlook can do. No office package is as well refined, and filled with tools that are functional and effective than MS office. Office 2003 has renewed my faith in MS as a groupware/productivity tool company. I have sat in many many meetings with the geeks from the UW system trying to get the state to go to all freeware stuff for email/web/productivity.

They make these big plans, but then when you break it down. They have 7 ... SEVEN applications on a server side to be supported to do what EXCHANGE can do. But its free! They had 2 suites of applications that a workstation would need to do everything O2K3 does. But its not free! the cost of the suites on a linux workstation ok was close to the cost of Office 2K3 Pro!

I have done cost analysis for the states groups on Linux based (or as I like to call it "doing it just cause its leet and hip this year") desktop and groupware implementations Vs MS and their goods. and Linux does come in cheaper, but not by much at all. I think it was a total saving of 20$ per workstation and would take an extra 2 years to implement, and additional staff.

I just hear these zealots far too often preaching that just cause software costs money its bad. Or needs to be patched, its bad. MS is far from good, but they are the best option out there still.

I wont choose any other OS than linux (or BSD) on a web server though... that’s what its meant to do, be a server. Guess I don’t get the whole rush of being able to say "were a linux house" when I hear someone say that, I cant help but think "wow just too cheap to do it right". :)

and pH, I support Windows servers for a living, I work on PC's at home for fun :) Also I do maintain Linux servers at work and at home also. I have run linux desktop implentations, recently I tested a few office suites from them. I've been there, and I see that I could make more money maintaining Linux system (simply cause they require more of it than any windows system I have ever seen, and do not have the facilities for automated updates the way windows systems now do), but its just a damn headache. Even the ultra shitty Office XP was better than almost any linux office implementation out there.

Joe my point was that not many serious Windows exploits or viruses come out when you take IE and Outlook/OE out of the equation. When something serious comes out then I know about it and patch all boxes, but that's much less often w/o MS browser and e-mail running on those PCs.

For my own notebook I use Outlook 2003 and IE6 (w/ myie2 on top) and prefer it. But I use that PC every day and keep it updated as a matter of course.

I block kazaa and a few other things with the hosts file too on those PCs and have no problem using them on my own systems :)

I can't imagine switching an office over to Linux. I get enough dumbass windows questions as is; I can't imagine totally changing someone's work environment and teaching them all how to do tasks over again.

I can say bad things about Gentoo or any other OS. I can just say many more bad things about windows. As for "if your browser didn't suck", many pages actually will default you to the error page based ONLY on your browser string, not any compatibility issues. Many pages that I know would work perfectly barf out because of these hardcoded flags.

I have never, however, outside of office (in which I point only to Access, Excel, and to a lesser extent Word) found a microsoft product that was LESS hassle than the similar OS product. Granted, it typically takes longer to set up an OS server OR desktop, but in the end the maintenance nearly disappears. One problem child at work who caused numerous virus outbreaks, network breaches, and other problems was no longer a problem the moment I moved him to Linux, and furthermore I only needed to spend less than an hour to get him accustomed to the new system.

When I hear a shop is using windows servers and products, I think "incompetant". As for the email servers, my father in law runs a set of email servers that route hundreds of thousands of email messages per day and it is strictly OS software. Ever since they got rid of Exchange they haven't had any more server nightmares ....

I'm not a zealot by any means: I just recognize what works. Just because YOU may not understand how to run the OS software and haven't experienced the lowered tech staffing it brings doesn't mean it's not a good thing. I've run it all, and I PREFER the OS stuff, even though I have the budget to go either way.

As for constant security issues, give me a break. There has been one major breach in a less common (I.E. not in your server) kernel version in the last six months. If you fall victim to that you don't deserve your job. There is no constant patching at all. Regardless of the PR and FUD MS spreads (which you seem to have swallowed), the issues that OS software faces is miniscule compared to the crap MS sells.

But hey, whatever makes you feel justified in wasting money and helps you sleep at night ....

hehehe YES YES YES!!! Thats what I know and love. Linux people cant grasp "email" as being more than something from the 1970's where its just text from one person to another. Such items as groupware functionality are totally lost on almost every linux admin I have ever met. Lower tech stuffing’s? Umm Yeh we got 2 dudes who run 80 Exchange servers, attached to a 40,000 object environment with 200 additional servers. With a client base of 2000.

Also what about like network wide security... last I checked, using pure LDAP as a network wide security implementation was pointless. Guessing Linux guys dont like automated (or don’t understand the concept) systems management and configuration. We have none of the issues you talk about ... we have a network wide uniform security implementation that the only way linux could get CLOSE to it us becoming bitch to an NDS tree. "problem children" like you mention are not an issue if you actually have a security implementation at the base level of the network. If you know how to use group policies, you can do anything you want to any workstation that logs into the network. Don’t see Linux doing much of that ;)

Your talk about patches and security breaches... yeh.. hehehe the same cam be said for almost anything, if you let your system get taken down you deserve to loose you job. Last I read Red Hat was considered a bigger security risk than windows 2000 :) The fact you think anyone who runs a windows OS is incompetent solidifys the Zealot namesake which I have branded on you.

Linux based stuff is all about individual applications working on their own, whether it be on a server or a workstation. There is hardly ANY interactivity between applications, or crossover of data. That on its own is one of the main security aspects of Linux stuff. If you dont give data a chance to jump products and features it cant be exploited. Where in MS world they run on the principle of making applications and services extremely interoperable, and flexible. While this gives more functionality, this also makes it so the products are far more sensitive to any ****up in code that may lead to an exploit.

I do realize that many Linux admins ( and I see this from the "free thinking" UW group who think open source IS the second coming itself (Jesus Part II in code form) cant understand or refuse to understand that people use and benefit from being able to exchange data fast and effectively. Also I do understand that nearly no one who runs Linux systems appreciates or can handle the thought of using a network wide security implementation (ie: Domain/Directory). Personally I really enjoy centralized account management which is linked to the groupware systems, database systems, and productivity systems.

Its something when going to a "free" product would COST the state of Wisconsin 10million more dollars, and require a dozen consultants to come onboard to do data moves and conversions in the first 2 years than upgrading to the current "expensive" "wasteful" software. Even the linux people saw that it was pointless to pursue that course cause, quite simply, who wants to do a 2 year project for an app base as unstable and questionable as the open source apps. (unstable as in, no one knows where/if they will be around in a few years, or what the deal will be, with real vendors of real applications you actually get support termination dates, product life cycles, etc...)

I am betting in your specific implementation your users are working fine with your Linux stuff... they probably didn’t use groupware much, or miss many of the features that left them with that move.

Also about the hassle... it takes me 5 minutes a month to click on the "update" windows thing, and boom the machine is up to date with any patches. hardly call that a hassle. setting up file shares, ftp servers, w/ security even is a 30 second ordeal at the most. cant think of how Linux would be easier.

meh... i was going to type a lot, but decided not to :)

both os's have their merits. microsoft has some crazy stuff i think the open source community would take a long time to compete with. now that ms finally seems to have its crap together, things are getting better on both points.

i like unix, and only use freebsd on web servers.

i'm always looking for alternatives... and i won't stop using firebird. i like it much more than IE, and i have a lot of people that see my stuff that aren't using IE.

however, for my work, unix isn't an option, and i doubt it really will be in the near future. it's either windows or mac, and i'm not too keen on using a mac.

I dont use Mozilla Thunderbird, But i do use Mozilla Firebird, i find it has just as many features as IE, and a very effective popup blocker. Theres also a load of extensions availible for it. Make sure you get the extra registry files for java, flash, and shockwave plugins if you want them to work.

I use Firebird, and thanks to tabbed browsing i will hardly go back to IE.
It rocks.

Out of topic a little, but I use Mozilla Firebird more than a year (Phoenix times :-) and I just cant imagine to surf with IE again although I had some problems with stability in the past. Last builds are finally stable. For me everything is functioning better on Firebird. I use IE only in cases when a web site refuses to load properly (optimized ONLY for IE) which is fortunately rare. Extensions are WOW help in surfing. My OS is WinXP.

I don't use plain IE I use myie2. It also has tabbed browsing, popup blocking, and the other nice features of firebird. I don't know how people can go without tabs!

Been a while .... For background, my father in law runs the computer systems for the USN in the NW region + Hawaii, and all of their servers run strictly on *nix platforms. The clients themselves are usually either windows based or are text terminals. As of yet, they haven't had a major breach into their security systems yet, and besides crap like power outages (why they don't have on-site power generation for this while they do for other things is beyond me) and hardware failure they rarely ever have downtime. What I'm hearing from Joe is that because the people already in his department can't handle a change in-house it will cost a ton to switch over ... which is stunningly obvious, because regardless of the platform you switch to if you don't have competent people onboard then you will have to bring in outside help. Don't pretend this is strictly a Linux issue, since you'd have this problem with any other server OS change as well.

As for the email question, I understand that there are more uses for email than strictly text messaging, though many of these "groupware" features are redundancies that can be handled in other ways. Many places are going to secure IM clients to take care of much of this type of work, or other multimedia messaging clients to take care of these needs, which IMHO is an outstanding option for a large and distributed client base.

Hey, I'm not knocking you for using MS ... if it works it works ... what I'm knocking is that you have the blinders on and won't look at the real reasons that you can't switch. Ford Motor Company is going through this same thing right now, having to bring in external experts to customise a Linux distro for use in server and workstation platforms (doing away with the MS products that are causing constant and massive scale shutdowns on mission critical systems ... it is a daily issue). Since all their current (inept ... omg do they suck, which is part of the downtime issue) tech weenies are strictly MS guys, they needed outside support for it. If their tech weenies were already familiar with multiple platforms, however (as they really should be), then that expense (you should see the salary they're offering ... holy sheeit) would be nil.

Just a thought. I'm not a fan of linux for the cost, politics, or anything else: I'm a fan because it works better than the alternative, in my experience.

Theres like ummm legal reasons that "IM" and other umm geek technologies arent used in the office. There are "other" solutions... hell going back to tree bark and burnt ends of sticks to write down a calendar is one of them. But all in one package thats works together is far more productive than finding about a dozen apps to do the same job. theres always "other" but doesnt always mean better.

Yes there are no people who specialize in convering a massive 40,000 person network from 100% NT/2K to Linux working for the state. It wasnt just about cost in people, but cost in reaserch, testing, and most packages do cost money to get any kind of support, and really... nothign gets purchased without support tied to it.

The real reasons are quite simple:
1. Linux has no solid or good network security infrastructure without implementing a Novell core for the network.
2. workstation support loads and client support loads would sky rocket trying to do what was multiple domain security into pretty much standalone network security via linux
3. We would loose functionality, predictible upgrade paths, predictible life cycles, and stable product evolution.
4. more specialized staff would be needed (increase programmer/development staff" to support code changes in the many custom systems that would be needed. This is the biggest cost factor of all... going from a system that we pay a low fee to buy and support to now needing people dedicated to supporting that in house.
5. Email systems for Linux are robust in simplistic uses, but lack in almost every other way. Would require a good deal of additional work just to get something that would be able to work with SOME of the specialized applications that use mapi communications to work.
6. Downtime of the conversion would be unavoidable and unacceptable.

Those are the real reasons.

DAMN YOU I LIKE MY BARK AND STICKS!!!

Er, um ...

There are legal secure IM networks available for inhouse use, though these all have a licensing cost for the server. Nothing wrong there.

As for a predictable upgrade path, that is almost a non-issue in the major projects anymore since they all feed off one another. Upgrading on the right distro is a very simple process, only necessitating a reboot in the case of a kernel version change (which is a rare occurance in the workplace). This is one of the reasons I use Gentoo in-house, since I create the binaries on my box (customized to the meta-distro I've developed off of Gentoo in-house) and then feed from the server down to the workstations seamlessly and transparently. Once done, if there is a change in something like the GUI (only reason for user intervention at all), all you have to do is relog (as opposed to reboot) and you're done. Tech support is also greatly enhanced since I can slip into any machine on my network and make the needed change from my desk rather than hoofing it and inconveniencing the user. This is a particularly beautiful thing, since many of the managers here don't want to be interrupted even if their machine is spouting flames from the floppy drive.

As for security, this can be done very easily if you plan it from the beginning and is more than adequate unless you have a loser setting it up. I really don't understand your reasons there, and since I deal with a smaller and more simplistic network I'm probably not too qualified to argue the point. With that said, I have seen extremely hardened networks that run Linux servers and they are breach-free (like the example I gave above).

What I really wish, however, is perfect emulation of the Windows API and DirectX ... once these things happen, I suspect Windows in all flavors and forms will steadily go the way of the dodo. Unfortunately, I'm not too optimistic it ever will. Since those APIs are closed source, it will be damn near impossible to do a perfect or near-perfect emulation (though look at Samba ... I can always hope). I would love to be able to fire up all of my Windows games in Linux ... I'd never use Windows for anything ever again.

people who want to emulate windows on linux scare me hehehehe

just run windows :) it does windows emulation better than linux ;)

You upgrade path argument reaks of small network life. Large networks that have set lifecycle/project times, and have many millions of dollars in static budgets for certain projects a given year. Also networks that have essentially 6 different business roles goign on at the same time. You planning 5 years ahead on projects is not that odd these days...

And yes you lack the understanding about the network security control aspect that I am talking about. Account management, centralized client management, pretty much just total overall centralized network/client/authentication control is something linux does not have in any capacity on its own. That alone is why Linux is used in many specific roles but only in very small shops do you see it used as the core infrastructure. really the network as a whole going to Linux would revert it back to a level thats = to that of windows networks back in 1994. Going back in time 10 years just for a free OS ;)

Mistake on your part: update pushes by servers are done in many places on some massive networks. Since the process can be automated very easily this is a non-issue. It is as simple as having a network mounted package directory (for multiple software platforms you just need to set up a simple database that lists any special needs per machine and/or group) and set up a script that logs to each client in turn and does a push binary install. Of course there are are better ways to do it, but that's a method even a moron couldn't screw up assuming he even wrote the script. One compile (or five if you have an abnormally number of platforms and want to do more than a generic x86 compile) and ten thousand installs ... no problem there. It sure beats the hell out of running windows update on them all and searching for patches for all the individual software products on each individual machine (or using automated update pushes ... which is essentially the same thing, though you're still screwed on the software side).

As for account management and such, have you ever used Linux before? Distributed account management and location transparency is the easiest thing in the world to do. I can log in to my account from any linux box in the building as if I was at my workstation ... no problems there, and I don't have to do anything beyond selecting the username in the menu ... nothing special. I can also manage any other account from anywhere on the network. All you need to do is set up a network mount for your /home directory and you're golden. It would seem you forgot that the *nixes are all natively multiuser and network based operating systems (with the exception of retarded packages like lindows) ....

I don't think you know what you're talking about, or have been advised by ignorant people (microsoft propaganda sheets fall into this category). I'm betting on the latter ... you can't really be held to task if you've been taught [this word's spelling is freaking me out] wrong (which is why I pity the fashionalbe leftists in our colleges rather than drag them down main street by my bumper).

I tell you what, for an obscenely large retainer I'd relocate and hook you guys up, lol.

As for emulating the API: I don't see anything perverse about it. If the software is there, why not make it useful? At least it gives a crossover (much like x86-64 will during the inevitable 64 bit transition) until software houses can start writing for linux. If they wrote for it in the first place there would be no need for emulation at all. In the end, either software houses will magically decide to code for linux while the userbase is low or there will be near-perfect emulation causing the tide to swing to linux that way. Either way would lead to serious problems for Microsoft, though I don't think the former option has a prayer of working (focusing on games in particular).

edit: when I was talking security ignorance, I was referring to the difference in the network protocols and such, not trivial things like account management. I'm sorry I didn't clarify that.