GNOME Evolution (formerly Novell Evolution and Ximian Evolution, prior to

Novell Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi- platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the le ...

's 2003 acquisition of

Ximian Ximian, Inc. (previously called Helix Code and originally named International Gnome Support) was an American company that developed, sold and supported application software for Linux and Unix based on the GNOME platform. It was founded by Miguel ...

) is the official personal information manager for GNOME. It has been an official part of GNOME since Evolution 2.0 was included with the GNOME 2.8 release in September 2004. It combines e-mail,

address book An address book or a name and address book is a book, or a database used for storing entries called contacts. Each contact entry usually consists of a few standard fields (for example: first name, last name, company name, address, telephone num ...

calendar A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a physi ...

task list Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. It involves of various demands upon a person relating to work, s ...

and note-taking features. Its

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fr ...

and functionality is similar to Microsoft Outlook. Evolution is free software licensed under the terms of the

GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their ow ...

(LGPL).

Features

Evolution delivers the following features: * E-mail retrieval with the

POP Pop or POP may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Pop music, a musical genre Artists * POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade * Pop!, a UK pop group * Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band Albums * ''Pop'' ( ...

and IMAP protocols and e-mail transmission with

SMTP The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typica ...

* Secure network connections encrypted with SSL,

TLS TLS may refer to: Computing * Transport Layer Security, a cryptographic protocol for secure computer network communication * Thread level speculation, an optimisation on multiprocessor CPUs * Thread-local storage, a mechanism for allocating vari ...

and STARTTLS * E-mail encryption with GPG and S/MIME * Markdown e-mail formatting * E-mail filters * Search folders: saved searches that look like normal mail folders as an alternative to using filters and search queries * Automatic

spam Spam may refer to: * Spam (food), a canned pork meat product * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ** Messaging spam, spam targeting users of instant messaging ( ...

filtering with

SpamAssassin Apache SpamAssassin is a computer program used for e-mail spam filtering. It uses a variety of spam-detection techniques, including DNS and fuzzy checksum techniques, Bayesian filtering, external programs, blacklists and online databases. It i ...

and

Bogofilter Bogofilter is a mail filter that classifies e-mail as spam or ham (non-spam) by a statistical analysis of the message's header and content (body). The program is able to learn from the user's classifications and corrections. It was originally writt ...

* Connectivity to

Microsoft Exchange Server Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server and calendaring server developed by Microsoft. It runs exclusively on Windows Server operating systems. The first version was called Exchange Server 4.0, to position it as the successor to the related ...

Novell GroupWise GroupWise is a messaging and collaboration platform from Micro Focus that supports email, calendaring, personal information management, instant messaging, and document management. The GroupWise platform consists of desktop client software, whi ...

and Kolab (provided in separate packages as plug-ins) * Calendar support for the

iCalendar The Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) is a media type which allows users to store and exchange calendaring and scheduling information such as events, to-dos, journal entries, and free/busy information, a ...

file format, the WebDAV and

CalDAV Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV, or CalDAV, is an Internet standard allowing a client to access and manage calendar data along with the ability to schedule meetings with users on the same or on remote servers. It lets multiple users in differ ...

standards and Google Calendar * Contact management with local address books,

CardDAV vCard Extensions to WebDAV (CardDAV) is an address book client/server protocol designed to allow users to access and share contact data on a server. The CardDAV protocol was developed by the IETF and was published as in August 2011. CardDAV is ...

, LDAP and Google address books * Synchronization via

SyncML SyncML (Synchronization Markup Language) is the former name for a platform-independent information synchronization standard. The project is currently referred to as ''Open Mobile Alliance Data Synchronization and Device Management''. The purpose o ...

with SyncEvolution and with

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) was a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provi ...

devices via gnome-pilot * Address books that can be used as a data source in LibreOffice * User

avatars Avatar (, ; ), is a concept within Hinduism that in Sanskrit literally means "descent". It signifies the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, goddess or spirit on Earth. The relative verb to "alight, to make one's appearanc ...

loading from address book, e-mail headers X-Face, Face or automatic lookup by hashed e-mail address from

Gravatar Gravatar (a portmanteau of ''globally recognized avatar'') is a service for providing globally unique avatars and was created by Tom Preston-Werner. Since 2007, it has been owned by Automattic, having integrated it into their WordPress.com bloggin ...

service * An RSS reader plug-in * A news client * Import from Microsoft Outlook archives (dbx, pst) and Berkley Mailbox The Novell GroupWise plug-in is no longer in active development. A

Scalix Scalix is an e-mail and groupware server that runs on Linux, licensed under the Scalix Public License (SPL). The software provides e-mail, group calendaring and other collaborative software, which are standard in groupware. It can be also be ac ...

plug-in is also available, but its development stopped in 2009.

Evolution Data Server

Evolution Data Server (EDS) is a collection of libraries and session

services Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a p ...

for storing address books and calendars. Other software such as California and GNOME Calendar depends on EDS as well. Some documentation about the software architecture is available in the GNOME wiki.

Connecting to Microsoft Exchange Server

Depending on which version of Microsoft Exchange Server is used, different packages need to be installed to be able to connect to it. The documentation recommends the ''evolution-ews'' package (which uses Exchange Web Services) for Exchange Server 2007, 2010 and newer. If ''evolution-ews'' does not work well, it is advised to try the ''evolution-mapi'' package. This supports Exchange Server 2010, 2007 and possibly older versions supporting

MAPI Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) is an API for Microsoft Windows which allows programs to become email-aware. While MAPI is designed to be independent of the protocol, it is usually used to communicate with Microsoft Exchange Ser ...

. For Exchange Server 2003, 2000 and possibly earlier versions supporting

Outlook Web App Outlook on the web (previously known as Exchange Web Connect, Outlook Web Access, and Outlook Web App) is a personal information manager web app from Microsoft. It includes a web-based email client, a calendar tool, a contact manager, and ...

the package ''evolution-exchange'' is recommended.

History

Ximian decided to develop Evolution in 2000. It felt there were no e-mail clients for Linux at the time that could provide the functionality and interoperability necessary for corporate users. Ximian saw an opportunity for Linux to penetrate the corporate environment if the right enterprise software was available for it. It released Evolution 1.0 in December 2001 and offered the paid Ximian Connector plug-in which allowed users to connect with Microsoft Exchange Server. Evolution itself has been free software from the start, but Ximian Connector was sold as proprietary software so that Ximian could generate revenue. This changed after Novell's acquisition of Ximian in August 2003. Novell decided to integrate the Exchange plug-in as free software in Evolution 2.0 in May 2004. Novell was in turn acquired by

The Attachmate Group The Attachmate Group, Inc. was a privately held software holding company based in Houston, Texas in the United States. The major companies held by the group were Attachmate, NetIQ, Novell, and SUSE. Attachmate was owned by Wizard Parent LLC� ...

in 2011. It transferred Novell's former Evolution developers to its subsidiary SUSE. In 2012 SUSE decided to stop its funding of Evolution's development and assigned its developers elsewhere. As a consequence only two full-time developers employed by Red Hat remained. Later in 2013 Red Hat dedicated more developers to the project, reinvigorating its development. The reasons given for the decision were the cessation of active development on

Mozilla Thunderbird Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source cross-platform email client, personal information manager, news client, RSS and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation and operated by subsidiary MZLA Technologies Corporation. The proje ...

and the need for an e-mail client with good support for Microsoft Exchange.

Distribution

As a part of GNOME, Evolution is released as source code.

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

s provide

packages Package may refer to: Containers or Enclosures * Packaging and labeling, enclosing or protecting products * Mail, items larger than a letter * Chip package or chip carrier * Electronic packaging, in electrical engineering * Automotive package, ...

of GNOME for end-users. Evolution is used as the default personal information manager on several Linux distributions which use GNOME by default, most notably Debian and

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...

has replaced Evolution with

as the default e-mail client since Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot.

Defunct Mac OS X and Windows ports

In the past, Evolution was

ported In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...

to Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, but these ports are no longer developed. In 2006, Novell released an installer for Evolution 2.6 on Mac OS X. In January 2005, Novell's

Nat Friedman Nathaniel Dourif Friedman is an American technology executive and investor. He was the chief executive officer (CEO) of GitHub, and former Chairman of the GNOME Foundation. Friedman is currently a board member at the Arc Institute, and an advisor ...

announced in his blog that the company had hired Tor Lillqvist, the programmer who ported GIMP to Microsoft Windows, to do the same with Evolution. Prior to this announcement, several projects with the same goal had been started but none of them reached alpha status. In 2008 DIP Consultants released a Windows installer for Evolution 2.28.1-1 for

Microsoft Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...

and newer. Currently it is only available for download from the project's page on SourceForge. A slightly more recent (2010/2011) experimental installer for Evolution 3.0.2 is provided by openSUSE. Users have faced difficulties getting this version working.

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Evolution (Software) Email client software for Linux Email clients that use GTK Free calendaring software Free email software Free personal information managers Free software programmed in C Office software that uses GTK