----- Original Message ----- > From: "Johnny Hughes" <johnny at centos.org> > To: centos at centos.org > Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2018 8:18:18 AM > Subject: Re: [CentOS] Which is better? Microsoft Exchange 2016 or Linux-based SMTP Servers? > On 07/19/2018 03:18 PM, David C. Miller wrote: >> >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >>> From: "Keith Keller" <kkeller at wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> >>> To: centos at centos.org >>> Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 11:33:17 AM >>> Subject: Re: [CentOS] Which is better? Microsoft Exchange 2016 or Linux-based >>> SMTP Servers? >> >>> On 2018-07-19, Mark Rousell <mark.rousell at signal100.com> wrote: >>>> >>>> Well said. I feel that too many people today have forgotten (or, more >>>> likely, never learned) these lessons from history. People give away >>>> their personal and supposedly private information too easily and, I feel >>>> certain, will come to regret it (some already have come to regret it). >>> >>> While I agree with the above, it doesn't really address Johnny's >>> question, which is which open source calendaring projects can compete >>> with Google calendar for users' ease of use? If I give my users Zimbra, >>> and they hate it, then what? For simple email use, there are plenty of >>> clients which can talk IMAP/SMTP to a linux server, but the options for >>> calendaring (and ''groupware'' in general) are much sparser. >>> >>> It's a hard question, and each organization needs to weigh their privacy >>> concerns against their users' requirements. >>> >>> --keith >>> >>> -- >>> kkeller at wombat.san-francisco.ca.us >> >> Zimbra's calendaring component is also a CALDav compliant server. Users can also >> share their calendars either via the zimbra web client(public, or restricted to >> an email address with a password), or exporting the calendar to an ICS file. >> CALDav compliant calendar clients like Apples calendar app on Mac and iOS can >> subscribe or connect to the zimbra server using its https://zimbra.example.com >> address. The Zimbra web client interface for using and managing calendars is >> just as easy to use as googles calendars. >> > > OK, what you say is true in theory. However, in Thunderbird on Linux > and using Mac clients, etc .. and certainly on Windows workstation > clients using outlook .. zimbra does not work well. It also does not > work well on people's smart phone calendars. People want their phone to > remind them of their appointments .. any solution that is iffy doing > that is just unacceptable in this day and age. > Yeah, I'm not saying it is perfect, nothing is. Zimbra standard also includes active sync so your iOS and android device can connect to it like if it was an exchange server. I have dozens of users doing that and the calendars work as intended. I also have a few dozen users connecting to our zimbra server via the Apple calendar program via CALDav protocol and although Apples program is not 100% CALDav compliant it works fine for the things people actually use. They send invites and get reminders for events just fine. For our outlook users there is a connector that allows outlook to connect to our zimbra server as if it were an exchange server. I wasn't aware that thundebird had a calendar component but it works fine for IMAP and POP. I'm not saying it is perfect but if you have a mix of platforms like I do(Windows, Mac, Linux, android, iOS) and have to host the data yourself, I think Zimbra is a decent solution. That being said, I would prefer to use googles offerings. It would make my job a lot easier. Being an email admin, dealing with spam/phishing/malware, maintaining security patches, OS updates, and hardware sucks.