It’s hip2b2

Yes guys. You heard me right. I just migrated from Mozilla Thunderbird TO Ximian Evolution. If you do a Google-search on this topic you will discover that most people are moving from Ximian Evolution TO Mozilla Thunderbird. I am moving the other way around. Why?

1. Tightly integrated with Calendaring Functionality. Mozilla Sunbird is not quite stable and it does not tightly integrate with Mozilla Thunderbird. This is a pretty useful feature for people who need calendaring functionality.
2. Mozilla Thunderbird is a memory hog. Yes, with the same monster IMAP folders (around 3G) and local archive folders (10GB) Mozilla Thunderbird is so sloooooooooow. When I migrated to Ximiam Evolution, I was pleased that performance definitely is better. This is probably because Ximian does indexing better.
3. Most missing features in the past are now present. Auto-complete for email addresses and auto-add new contacts from email are two of the main reasons why I used Mozilla Thunderbird before. Now, you can do these with Ximian Evolution too.

So how do I migrate my mail files? Simple. Since both Ximian Evolution and Mozilla Thunderbird use the same mbox format for email, just copy the mbox file from one client to another. When you start Ximian Evolution for the first time with the new mbox files, it will automatically create the indexes (this step takes sometime with my monster inbox). Easy! No multi-step procedures. So why the blog? Just in case people are like me and start Googling for it, I hope they find the answer right away without having to do trial and error.

BONUS: Synchronizing Ximian Evolution calendar (it also synchronizes tasks and contacts) with an online calendar service.

1. Download and install SyncEvolution. This is a syncML plug-in for Ximian Evolution.
2. Create a ScheduleWorld account (or any other Funambol powered service). The nice thing about ScheduleWorld is that it is SyncML compliant that allows potential access from even mobile devices.
3. Appropriately configure Ximian Evolution with these details (Server URL, Username, Password, Events URI, Events type, Tasks/Todos URI, Tasks/Todos type, Contacts URI, Contacts type)

Enjoy!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 14th, 2007 at 12:01 am and is filed under Open source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.