[CentOS] Zimbra vs. Scalix vs. et. al.

[Patrick]

Hi John,

On Fri, 2007-08-31 at 16:27 -0400, John Hinton wrote:
> Well, I stumbled onto zimbra....

I tried the demo a long time ago when it was first launched. Quite
impressive although it was painfully slow.

> I have a Scallix system built, but still have some rough edges to try to 
> smooth. Like the way it works with sendmail, no dnsbl's will work as 
> sendmail sees all mail as coming from locohost (scalix). Still battling 
> that one which is when I ran across Zimbra.

A while back I was investigating Scalix. There are documents on the
Scalix wiki that explain how to use postfix instead of sendmail:
http://www.scalix.com/wiki/index.php?title=HowTos/Postfix
http://www.scalix.com/wiki/index.php?title=HowTos/Complete_Postfix

> So, this made me start wondering.
> 
> Are there other exchange server-like products out there?

I'm only aware of the ones already mentioned by others. Obviously there
are commercial alternatives like Kerio.

> Has anyone dealt with Scalix and Zimbra (or another from the question 
> above) and would you care to post pros and cons to each?

Nope, I have no experience with either apart from looking at the Scalix
docs and the Zimbra demo.

> Some of the cons to me with Scalix.
> 
> It uses it's own directory structure which is non-sensical to any admin.
> Each seems to be assigned on a numbering system.. finding who has what 
> where is not fun and I fear will be a nightmare in the future. 

Doesn't sound very manageable. Here is a link to a doc explaining howto
use an already deployed openldap server:
http://www.scalix.com/wiki/index.php?title=HowTos/OpenLDAP_User_Management
Quess it should also be possible to use the Red Hat/Fedora Directory
Server and iirc there is also a doc about Scalix and Active Direcory.
See the howto section on the Scalix Wiki.

> Sendmail 
> milters work fine to a point, but there is the limit of filtering using 
> dnsbl's and it appears it will require setting up sendmail as the 
> receiver, passing to scalix, passing back to sendmail, passing back to 
> scalix and the user mail boxes... adding an extra loop.

See what you mean. I'd replace sendmail with postfix any day.

> Shared folder are nice.. shared calendars are pretty good although I 
> don't see a way to sort by user are even really see immediately for 
> which user the event exists.
>  You can drag and drop from Outlook IMAP a 
> file directly to the server, but internally we don't use outlook... but 
> for other clients this could be nice.
> 
> So, how are those Zimbra installs going and what's the scoop?

Found a few links comparing Zimbra, Scalix and Open-Xchange:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8722
http://www.dotmedia.co.za/web/opensource/mail-collaboration/
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/730879.html
(look for the post from MistaKa0s)
http://techrepublic.com.com/2415-1035_11-92919.html
http://downloads.techrepublic.com.com/abstract.aspx?docid=302289
http://www.open-xchange.org/cgi-bin/simpleforum.cgi?fid=01&topic_id=1143150870 (look for the post from Paul Sterne and BoP)

Regards,
Patrick