Some of you might already noticed that I am writing a lot about KDE and related software. This is mostly because I like to use KDE over other desktops for its flexibility and usability (at least from my point of view to avoid any wars in here).
This time I decided to look into Gnome. The reason for this was that I was trying to find some simple and nice desktop which would fit the basic needs in most of the offices. I have many friends who would like to try linux, but they want the desktop to be simple and ready to work out of the box.
I have installed the \”Personal Desktop\” package selection of Fedora Core 4 to see what it offers. Seems to be very good. Gnome is quite strait forward. It does not look so fancy and is not so flexible as KDE, but it is right what the most people who do the usual office job would like to see in front of them.
From the set application to check were Gaim and Evolution. Since I use OpenOffice.org for a long time already I didn\’t bother myself checking it, I just knew it is fine.
I remember that I had problems with Gaim and russian encoding while using ICQ – now it is gone. I noticed a field in the account setup wizard to specify custom encoding and after all it worked fine.
Evolution really impressed me a lot since its abilities to integrate with MS Exchange just amazing. Just specify the MS Server OWA URL and hostname of MS AD and it gives you almost everything you need including email, contacts (both Exchange personal, Exchange common and AD Global Address list), todos and whatever else.
The are only few problems which I found with Evolution:
1. The are no multiple identities as is. In order to have an option to have them, I need to create new account with \”None\” in type field. So basically instead of just plainly creating an identity I have to create an account.
2. Sub-folders of exchange public folders are not displayed – this really sucks. For instance if I have a trea of public folders (what is quite normal) than I will see only the root of the tree and all messages under it, but not the sub-folders (not their content).
3.Message threading by subject is not very intelligent since I have many mail with the same subject unthreaded. This irritates me a lot.
4. Almost no UI customization.
Anyway, overall I liked the expirience, although I still prefer KDE and its software, but for those who needs a simple business desktop – try Gnome, since I beleive KDE needs some tweaking inside of KControl until one can feel fully comfortable.