Jenny_Hopkins@toby-churchill.com wrote:
Hi,
Here at work we are finally getting rid of lotus notes server/client for our mail. Hoorah! Hoorah! We are replacing it with, cough, MS Exchange and a front end of our choice. My brother wants to use a linux box with Opera for his mail, and I would do likewise or use exim-mutt type things. Does anyone have any experience with linux and ms exchange? Is it pop3 or imap? Does it keep its mail in weird format that Opera won't be able to read? etc etc.
All of this is IIRC, and no doubt someone will shout if I'm wrong!
Exchange is fully proprietary, and doesn't run IMAP. You're restricted to Outlook as a client. Note too that it's impossible to restore individual emails if lost, one can only restore an entire instance of Exchange resulting in guaranteed data loss if the internal DB dies (which it is prone to do). To overcome this, big corporate users run two instances of Exchange, and restore to the "dummy" one whence individual emails can be copied out, and the "live" one left alone.
Exchange uses an internal DB to store email (as opposed to IMAP/POP) because NTFS isn't good enough at securing private emails, so the DB adds an extra layer of permissions, ACLs etc.
Frankly, a mysql-driven postfix system using SASL and courier with any client you like is way better, and a helluva lot cheaper...
This is a great opportunity to start running linux as a work desktop, as Notes and the odd word doc are all I need ms windows for now, and I don't intend to miss it!
Don't forget you'll need to keep Outlook!
Cheers, Laurie.