CentOS - Sep 2016 - An 'orrible question: Outlook 365 under wine on CentOS?

Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> On Wed, September 28, 2016 10:05 am, Johnny Hughes wrote:
>> On 09/23/2016 02:50 PM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>>> Either CentOS 6 or 7 - anyone know if it's possible?
>>> Upper Management has decided on a policy that IMAP is going to go
away
in the near future, and they want everyone on Lookout, sorry, Outlook
365.
>>
>> Office 365 (including outlook) has a web client for Mail and Calendar.
<snip>
>
> Yes, I guess the OP got many of us confused as to what the high brass
decision in his company is:
>
> 1. Is it IMAP server (and whatever calendar server) is (are) to be
replaced by MS Exchange server,
>
> or
>
> 2. Clients have to use MS Outlook (is there requirement to have
integrated server side calendar part so users can send embedded event
invitations from the Outlook mail/calendar/(whatever else)
clients?)
>
> 1. is clear, UNIX servers are to go, and MS certified sysadmin will be
hired soon to run exchange server.
<snip>

You're overthinking it, Valeri. This US gov't agency (which I work for
as
a contractor), has (after much work in other directions, has apparently
thrown them out, who knows, they may change their (alleged) minds again),
and trust me, all of the *Nix servers here, that are doing *serious*
scientific research, are not going away. The mail system has been Exchange
all along, but with deciding to go to Oriface 365, they have determined a
policy that with that migration, they are going to *not* *run* IMAP (they
could if they wanted to). Without IMAP, I'm going to have to either
  a) bring in the laptop that runs WinDoze (that sits at home for
emergencies),
       and is theirs, and run that to read my freakin' email (and I
suppose I'll
       need synergy for when I have to copy and paste)l
  b) run the damn webmail client, which would impact my productivity by
15%-20%,
       given that I normally deal with over 200 emails per day (2/3rds log
files
       from out loghost, or logcheck). Webmail will make it take probably
twice
       as long to deal with, or
  c) find a way to install and run Lookout, er, Outlook 365 under wine, or
whatever.

Now, not that I haven't been annoyed at t-bird for several years now, but
webmail or outlook would be miserable... and I don't remember if webmail
lets me search, etc.

Does this make more sense? And, as I said, I really like, and am proud, of
working where I do (this *is* civilian sector), and like most of the folks
I'm working with, a number of whom I count as friends, and, well, I only
need low-power binoculars, not a large reflecting telescope to see
retirement headed my way, so I do *not* want to jobhunt.

     mark

Two replies here.

Firstly, the web client does work quite well. It's a VERY convenient way of 
getting to your emails when off-site / no laptop etc. It seems to work best 
in Chrome on my Fedora and Centos boxes, but I hate how Chrome tried to take 
over your PC.  Mine for example even changes the volume of my music (using 
squeezelite connected to a Squeezebox, so I can monitor the background music 
played in our showrooms)

Secondly,  I've used VirtualBox extensively for testing purposes (I use LAPP
for the servers but all of the client PC's run Win7 / IE)

Even on a relatively small sized desktop PC, the performance hit of having 
Win7 inside a VM as well as everything else I do isn't a biggy. To be fair 
though, all I use my desktop for other than running the VM is to SSH to other 
boxes.

I know you said that your bosses want stuff running on physical kit, but it 
could be argued that it's a small compromise.

Ignoring everything on this thread, my first course of action would be to 
challenge the decision, although you may have already done that.

Gary