[Sluggo] When people say "Linux doesn't have enough applications", that
     usually translates to, "Linux doesn't have certain specific applications,
     namely MS Office, Photoshop, Yahoo Messenger with webcam, etc."

     [Heather] StarOffice, (ok photshop is a fair dig, we have lots of things
     like it, but none are trying hard to be it), yahoo with webcam == ayttm
     but most people don't know that.

     In a particularly ahem lively discussion at the starport last week, it was
     agreed that the problem is that menu interface standardization isn't. Not
     even by Mr.Tanenbaum's broad definitions.

     For example RH has been using Gnome for awhile, but has changed the menu
     layout in every major revision and some of the minor ones.

     K and Gnome fans alike can't decide whether to keep their menus top or
     bottom. If they were hidden you'd have a flip a coin chance of even
     knowing where to look.

     To most newbs "click the root menu" may as well be hidden entirely,
     because  they  won't  really think that's useful if they have mswin
     experience (it pulls up display settings) and if they don't have even that
     they're just plain lost.

     [Sluggo]  Interestingly, I was going to mention Outlook and Outlook
     Express,  but  I  haven't heard much about them recently. Has their
     popularity diminished?

     [Heather] Yes, and thunderbird's and eudora's have increased.

     My friend Colleen is looking to start an article series on people starting
     from zero* into Linux. I will of course be encouraging her :) and helping
     her out, too.

     * yeah, absolute zero, Kelvin. The kind of people who think "my god, at
     least something says where to start" when they look at Windows(tm), then
     are stalled because they're afraid of the rest of the menu.

     Much as I didn't find linspire groovy, not to my beat, daddy-O, it serves
     an important duty for some.

   Outlook Express comes as default with Windows, and it's not a particularly
   good email client. Thunderbird is taking that market. 

   Outlook is another kettle of fish: it isn't about using Outlook, it's about
   accessing an Exchange server. The big news back when Novell bought Ximian
   was that they open sourced Ximian Connector, so Evolution could access
   Exchange  servers.  I had a look through the code, and... it's a hack,
   basically. 

   Outlook and Exchange communicate with an extremely complicated protocol.
   Ximian  Connector just connects to the Exchange web interface, if it's
   available, and basically acts as a screen scraper (not exactly: it works
   using  a modified version of WebDAV, but it also screen scrapes to get
   enough data to be useful). 

   People who run versions of Exchange that don't have a web interface still
   have to stick to Windows. People who don't have to pull to get the web
   interface set up are also out of luck. 

   On the server end, it's not too bad. There are several open source Exchange
   alternatives that have equivalent features. The Outlook Connector Project
   ([32]http://openconnector.org) aims to provide an open source set of MAPI
   DLLs   to   be   used   by   open   source  projects  (such  as  Kolab
   ([33]http://kolab.org) or Open-Xchange ([34]http://www.openexchange.com)),
   so Outlook can connect to them. Once the server end has been migrated away
   from  Exchange, it's possible to bring in Linux at the client end with
   little disruption. 

   There's also work being done towards implementing the actual protocols used
   between Exchange and Outlook. Luke Leighton, formerly a Samba developer, has
   reverse    engineered    most   (if   not   all)   of   the   protocol
   ([35]http://www.winehq.org/hypermail/wine-devel/2005/01/1054.html),andhas
   started     work     on    both    client    and    server    software
   ([36]http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/oser/exchange5.5). 

   The OpenChange ([37]http://openchange.org) project is also working (slowly)
   towards an Exchange replacement. They seem to be focusing more on reverse
   engineering the database format used by Exchange, so there isn't too much
   overlap (so far). 
            ____________________________________________________

Jabberd Installation Guide Comments

   Tue, 06 Sep 2005 13:41:27 -0700
   Adam Pilorz ([38]adam from pilorz.net)
   Answered By Suramya Tomar

     [Suramya] Tag,

     Got the following feedback on my Jabber install guide. It has some good
     advice for improvements so...

   I've   just   installed   Jabberd   2   server  following  your  Guide
   ([39]http://linuxgazette.net/112/tomar.html), and I want to share some
   experiences which could improve this guide. 

     [Suramya] Thanks for taking the time to email me with your feedback. Would
     you mind if I share this with the Linux Gazette so that they can publish
     it in their next issue. That will help other people who are trying to