Koozali.org: home of the SME Server
Obsolete Releases => SME Server 7.x => Topic started by: NoTo on June 18, 2008, 04:13:07 PM
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Not sure of this is the most appropriate place to put this message, so apologies if it's not.
I just wanted to offer a word of congratulations to the development team of SME Server. This product is probably the closest I've ever got to adopting Open Source in my business. Every time I need to replace a MS server product, I take a couple of weeks to check out OS alternatives. It's probably fair to say there has never really been anything that works "out of the box" in the way the the MS stuff does. I've always used the Small Business Server products after our first NT3.5 with MS Mail, SBS4.5, SBS2000, and next week, SBS2003 is going in.
It's fair to say I've always been really bugged by the price of the add-ons - why should I have to pay 500 pounds a year to fight against viruses that aren't my fault? :x Why must I be shafted just to add another ten users?
There has never been a realistic SBS alternative. ie, something I can install easily and then turn to an easy GUI/Webmin to do everything else, without having to go near a command line. But you guys look like you've pretty much cracked it, and I offer my hearty congratulations to everyone involved.
I'll not be adopting this time round, but I admit the i-bay feature alone made it a really close-run contest. On this occasion, it was the fat client ability for calendaring. Kronolith just didn't want to play reliably with Sunbird on the PCs and iCal on the Macs. Ditto eGroupware. These are must-have applications for me, and they have to just work. A calendar failing to publish, failing to share nicely, or failing in anyway is just not an option.
I'll be back in two or three years for another look. In the meantime thank you for the first truly pleasurable experience I've had of open source server platforms. I enjoyed the tinkering for a couple of weekends, but I really should use the time to earn a living.
I might just leave 7.3 on the old server, and in quieter moments have another play.
Well done everyone, it's great to see a project really understanding what small and medium sized business actually want.
With best regards,
Graham
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The new versions of the horde applications seem to play nice with the email clients you state. There are documented successes on the kronolith mailing list. I hope to release for testing and comment all of the updated horde apps this week.
John
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The new versions of the horde applications seem to play nice with the email clients you state. There are documented successes on the kronolith mailing list. I hope to release for testing and comment all of the updated horde apps this week.
John
That's really encouraging, John. I've left SME 7.3 on the old server running alongside the new one, and will definitely have a play when you release the updates.
Thanks for the heads-up.
Graham
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The new rpm's have been uploaded and I just finished building them. They should show up in the smetest repo shortly.
John
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I have just discovered I don't know how to install that,due to my shortage in command line skills. Here's what I did:
wget http://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/smeserver/releases/7/smetest/i386/RPMS/kronolith-h3-2.2-1.el4.sme.noarch.rpm
yum localinstall kronolith-h3-2.2-1.e14.sme.noarch.rpm
It downloaded ok, but the localinstall bit gave the message:
==============================================================
WARNING: Additional commands may be required after running yum
==============================================================
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Loading "fastestmirror" plugin
Loading "smeserver" plugin
Setting up Local Package Process
Cannot open file: kronolith-h3-2.2-1.e14.sme.noarch.rpm. Skipping.
Nothing to do
================================================================
No new rpms were installed. No additional commands are required.
================================================================
If anyone has a moment to set me right, I'd really appreciate it.
Cheers,
Graham
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I'm a fool! Ok, I worked it out by modifying the instructions in the main Contribs instructions. Apologies, it's taking me a lot longer to learn Linux than it ever did to learn CP/M - must be my age :?
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The updated Kronolith from the test repo didn't help. I still can't achieve two-way read/write to shared calendars.
However, I've been so impressed with SME 7.3 that I've decided to adopt it full time and this weekend I'm going live with SME. That's been based on everyone really liking eGroupware and seem to much prefer it to their regular fat client. So for now we'll be browser-based and just wait patiently for SME 8.0 where hopefully the SyncML in eGw will work.
Great work, and thanks for the help.
Graham
Wot's a Linux convert :shock:
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Graham,
Please, don't wait 2 or 3 years. Try Zarafa on SME, you will be supprised!
http://wiki.contribs.org/Zarafa
I was looking for a good replacement for Exchange, and I found Zarafa. It works very good... even in beta.
Thanks to the development team of SME Server!!!
Eryk