CentOS - Jul 2018 - Which is better? Microsoft Exchange 2016 or Linux-based SMTP Servers?

On 07/18/2018 01:58 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:


<snip>
>> But are you guys really telling you think the calendaring / scheduling
>> for individual users and the main corporate account, etc. .. are
working
>> well enough with any Linux solution.
> 
> I must confess, my servers are FreeBSD, but I'm quite sure the same is
> doable easily on Linux.
> 
> We use for calendars Owncloud (may migrate to nextcloud in some future
> to come). That authenticates against LDAP.
And does that calendar solution allow for things like:

1)  Allowing all users in the organization to see users calendars and
see when they are free to schedule a meeting with them.

2) Allow for designated people to schedule meetings for others (ie, your
secretary/office assistant can schedule meetings for people, etc.)

3) Allow a calendar to schedule shared items .. like meeting rooms,
shared vehicles, etc.  So that people can check those out for specifc
time windows, etc.

Those are just a couple of minor things a lot of solutions can't do

And do they work with imap, etc.  Zimbra does not work very well with
Thunderbird and Lighting (for example) .. many solutions don't work with
Windows or Mac clients, etc.

> 
> For mail we use postfix, dovecot and maia for spam filtering (the last
> harnesses spamassassin, clamav and few other things).
> 
> Of course, zimbra you mentioned earlier in the thread (or was it not
> you?), and Kolab provide more corporate-like collaboration environments,
> but I shied away from them as I set myself a goal to give users
> individual handle on spam/virus filtering in email, and neither of them
> has per-user spam preferences (take it with the grain of salt, I might
> have missed something...)
> 
> Just my $0.02.
> 
<snip>

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On 07/18/18 14:36, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On 07/18/2018 01:58 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> 
> 
> <snip>
> 
>>> But are you guys really telling you think the calendaring /
scheduling
>>> for individual users and the main corporate account, etc. .. are
working
>>> well enough with any Linux solution.
>>
>> I must confess, my servers are FreeBSD, but I'm quite sure the same
is
>> doable easily on Linux.
>>
>> We use for calendars Owncloud (may migrate to nextcloud in some future
>> to come). That authenticates against LDAP.
> 
> And does that calendar solution allow for things like:
> 
> 1)  Allowing all users in the organization to see users calendars and
> see when they are free to schedule a meeting with them.
Yes at least about a part of it: calendars can be shared with some 
people or with everybody (which we didn't do, so I may be not 100% 
presenting "experimental fact" here). Not certain about "free/not
free"
mapped on calendars though.
> 
> 2) Allow for designated people to schedule meetings for others (ie, your
> secretary/office assistant can schedule meetings for people, etc.)
Yes, you can share calendar with anybody, and can set any set of choices

can read
can write
can "re-share" your calendar

You can share stuff to external people, and set individual 
authentication for them independent of our system (in general, it is not 
just calendars, but we use it for mostly synchronizing between all of 
your devices, and also sharing: files, calendars, address book; it can 
also be bookmarks, and there are variety of plugins expanding what else 
can be accessed/synchronized via web/dav)
> 
> 3) Allow a calendar to schedule shared items .. like meeting rooms,
> shared vehicles, etc.  So that people can check those out for specifc
> time windows, etc.
No, but for resource booking (if I read the question correctly) we use 
mrbs (https://mrbs.sourceforge.io/). I know, that is not "integrated" 
for you to have everything in one place. I never had time to look for 
extention/plugin to suck from mrbs booked slot into one's calendar.
> 
> Those are just a couple of minor things a lot of solutions can't do
> 
> And do they work with imap, etc. 
No, owncloud/nextcloud don't work with IMAP as far as I know. Mail 
server is separate issue. Zimbra in that respect IS "integrated 
collaborative environment". And so is Kolab. They both are lacking 
per-user spam preferences. One more thing that added some minus for each 
of them in my estimate what to choose is: behind each of them there is 
commercial company. And that in my looooong experience significantly 
increases the chance one day openly available incarnation of each may 
become no longer available for us, and I will have to find replacement 
in a rush and find the way to migrate to it, and the more sophisticated 
the thing is, the trickier the migration will be.

My answers are mostly about owncloud which we use for quite some time. 
Nextcloud is fork of owncloud, and to my regret nextcloud doesn't work 
with postgresql, only with mysql/MariaDB, whereas owncloud works with 
postgresql as well as with mysql/MariaDB (still we have some reasons to 
migrate to nextcloud at some point).

I hope, someone with more knowledge will chime in.


Valeri
> Zimbra does not work very well with
> Thunderbird and Lighting (for example) .. many solutions don't work
with
> Windows or Mac clients, etc.
> 
> 
>>
>> For mail we use postfix, dovecot and maia for spam filtering (the last
>> harnesses spamassassin, clamav and few other things).
>>
>> Of course, zimbra you mentioned earlier in the thread (or was it not
>> you?), and Kolab provide more corporate-like collaboration
environments,
>> but I shied away from them as I set myself a goal to give users
>> individual handle on spam/virus filtering in email, and neither of them
>> has per-user spam preferences (take it with the grain of salt, I might
>> have missed something...)
>>
>> Just my $0.02.
>>
> <snip>
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
> 
-- 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On 2018-07-18, 15:05, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> No, owncloud/nextcloud don't work with IMAP as far as I know. 
> Mail server is separate issue.
Depend on what you define as "work with IMAP", Nextcloud does 
not come with IMAP server, but installing an IMAP server on the 
side of Nextcloud/Owncloud using the same storage probably not 
that difficult. Furthermore, Nextcloud can have IMAP as 
authentication backend, and also have extension that allow 
accessing IMAP from inside Nextcloud interface, make it easier 
to give impression of integration to users.
> significantly increases the chance one day openly available 
> incarnation of each may become no longer available for us, and 
> I will have to find replacement in a rush and find the way to 
> migrate to it, and the more sophisticated the thing is, the 
> trickier the migration will be.
That said, if the code actually FOSS, then anybody who is 
willing can fork the last FOSS code and continue developing it, 
and we have many of those, like Illumos out of Open Solaris, 
LibreOffice out of OpenOffice, MariaDB out of MySQL, Bareos out 
of Bacula, etc.
> Nextcloud is fork of owncloud, and to my regret nextcloud 
> doesn't work with postgresql,
Not true, Nextcloud can have PostgreSQL as database backend: 
https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/12/admin_manual/configuration_database/linux_database_configuration.html

-- 
    ____  ____  ____  ____ (stephan paul) Arif Sahari Wibowo
   /___  /___/ /___/ /___      http://www.arifsaha.com/
  ____/ /     /   / ____/

On 07/18/2018 04:05 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> 
> 
> On 07/18/18 14:36, Johnny Hughes wrote:
>> On 07/18/2018 01:58 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>>
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>>> But are you guys really telling you think the calendaring /
scheduling
>>>> for individual users and the main corporate account, etc. ..
are
>>>> working
>>>> well enough with any Linux solution.
>>>
>>> I must confess, my servers are FreeBSD, but I'm quite sure the
same is
>>> doable easily on Linux.
>>>
>>> We use for calendars Owncloud (may migrate to nextcloud in some
future
>>> to come). That authenticates against LDAP.
>>
>> And does that calendar solution allow for things like:
>>
>> 1)? Allowing all users in the organization to see users calendars and
>> see when they are free to schedule a meeting with them.
> 
> Yes at least about a part of it: calendars can be shared with some
> people or with everybody (which we didn't do, so I may be not 100%
> presenting "experimental fact" here). Not certain about
"free/not free"
> mapped on calendars though.
> 
>>
>> 2) Allow for designated people to schedule meetings for others (ie,
your
>> secretary/office assistant can schedule meetings for people, etc.)
> 
> Yes, you can share calendar with anybody, and can set any set of choices
> 
> can read
> can write
> can "re-share" your calendar
> 
> You can share stuff to external people, and set individual
> authentication for them independent of our system (in general, it is not
> just calendars, but we use it for mostly synchronizing between all of
> your devices, and also sharing: files, calendars, address book; it can
> also be bookmarks, and there are variety of plugins expanding what else
> can be accessed/synchronized via web/dav)
> 
>>
>> 3) Allow a calendar to schedule shared items .. like meeting rooms,
>> shared vehicles, etc.? So that people can check those out for specifc
>> time windows, etc.
> 
> No, but for resource booking (if I read the question correctly) we use
> mrbs (https://mrbs.sourceforge.io/). I know, that is not
"integrated"
> for you to have everything in one place. I never had time to look for
> extention/plugin to suck from mrbs booked slot into one's calendar.
> 
>>
>> Those are just a couple of minor things a lot of solutions can't do
>>
>> And do they work with imap, etc. 
> 
> No, owncloud/nextcloud don't work with IMAP as far as I know. Mail
> server is separate issue. Zimbra in that respect IS "integrated
> collaborative environment". And so is Kolab. They both are lacking
> per-user spam preferences. One more thing that added some minus for each
> of them in my estimate what to choose is: behind each of them there is
> commercial company. And that in my looooong experience significantly
> increases the chance one day openly available incarnation of each may
> become no longer available for us, and I will have to find replacement
> in a rush and find the way to migrate to it, and the more sophisticated
> the thing is, the trickier the migration will be.
> 
> My answers are mostly about owncloud which we use for quite some time.
> Nextcloud is fork of owncloud, and to my regret nextcloud doesn't work
> with postgresql, only with mysql/MariaDB, whereas owncloud works with
> postgresql as well as with mysql/MariaDB (still we have some reasons to
> migrate to nextcloud at some point).
> 
> I hope, someone with more knowledge will chime in.
> 
> 
Don't get me wrong.  I've run qmail, postfix, and zimbra mail servers
with IMAP, along with webmail front ends (roundcude, squirrel mail,
etc), for windows, mac and linux clients for several companies (all on
CentOS of course :D) .. I just don't think that calendaring that I have
seen is as user friendly as google calendar (for example).  But I'm all
for people running mail servers on CentOS (or any other Linux) if they
want !
> 
>> Zimbra does not work very well with
>> Thunderbird and Lighting (for example) .. many solutions don't work
with
>> Windows or Mac clients, etc.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> For mail we use postfix, dovecot and maia for spam filtering (the
last
>>> harnesses spamassassin, clamav and few other things).
>>>
>>> Of course, zimbra you mentioned earlier in the thread (or was it
not
>>> you?), and Kolab provide more corporate-like collaboration
environments,
>>> but I shied away from them as I set myself a goal to give users
>>> individual handle on spam/virus filtering in email, and neither of
them
>>> has per-user spam preferences (take it with the grain of salt, I
might
>>> have missed something...)
>>>
>>> Just my $0.02.
>>>
>> <snip>
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