James Titcumb

Since we started using Eclipse PDT as our primary IDE at Netbasic, there is nothing stopping us from moving to use Linux (for me, specifically Ubuntu) as our operating systems.

Except for one thing… Outlook. It’s a huge drawback because, like most corporate offices, we use calendaring functions, tasks, global address books, and loads of other features on our Exchange server. I did a bit of Googling and found out that since 2007-odd, Evolution (the default mail client with Ubuntu) supports Exchange out of the box. Always wary of things like this, to check it worked, I loaded up a new Ubuntu VM and fired it up. There was a bit of confusion getting it to work, and it repeatedly asked for my password. Once it finally got it working, it slowly loaded. I tried going through a few folders, and it was repeatedly slow. I did another quick Google, and others shared the problem. I restarted Evolution and then it repeatedly asked me for password.

Essentially, it’s obviously a hack to get it working efficiently, which really isn’t what a corporate environment needs. The beauty of Outlook is that you stick in the name of the user, and it loads up everything. In any corporate environment, this is a huge stumbling block for people considering switching to Linux who use Exchange servers.

There are two solutions I see to this - fiddle with Evolution more until it works, or use VirtualBox to run a little VM of Windows with Outlook (see this guide). Personally, I wouldn’t mind running VirtualBox to do it at work, it would provide me with other advantages too…

Update 23rd Oct ‘08: Well it turns out I was wrong. I’m not sure if it was simply a problem of me running it in a VM and having network issues or something, but I just tried it here at home using exactly the same settings and it actually works like a dream!

Unfortunately, I asked our tech lead, Kelvin, and I’m not allowed to install Linux on my work PC (unless it’s in a VM) due to him “being able to access stuff”… although I don’t see why not as I can set up everything just the way other networked PCs are set up in Linux. I tried to set up Ubuntu in a VM image, and supposedly VMware supports multiple monitors, but I couldn’t get it to work, so until I can convince Kelvin otherwise, I’m stuck with Windows….

I followed some guide on the interwebs this evening to set up a password-less SSH connection to my server. I followed all the steps correctly, but kept getting “Server refused our key” in PuTTY.

Thankfully, after a quick Google, this guide helped me out and got it working.

The solution is that Windows sucks, and you should always generate your keys in Linux.

A while ago I posted about the Open Handset Alliance, Google’s initiative to promote open source software on phones, as well as to help develop it’s own mobile device platform, Android. The Beeb announced today that Android will be first used on the new T-Mobile G1 handset.

I’m not sure if it’s direct competition to the new iPhone platform, but I really wouldn’t be suprised if Google had a good try at it. In fact, I really hope they do, and I hope it’s ten times better than the iPhone. If it is, I might pull myself away from Orange and get some T-Mobile action with the Google Android fun…

Those of you who read my blog regularly might notice that I’ve added a couple more AdSense ads to my page, a leaderboard at the top, and an ad in the first post, in addition to the sidebar Adsense unit that’s always been there.

I’m trying to monetize it a bit to cover the cost of hosting for my various websites, but now that my Matched.co.uk ads are paying out quite well, I’m considering dropping them to help make the site look a bit cleaner. I am earning a very small amount from the Adsense units, but I think it might be better to just get rid of them for a nice clean site look…

What do people think… obtrusive? Shall I get rid of them? Or keep them?… I wonder…

Well due to various tiny things not working, and distinct lack of plug-ins, I’m switching back to Firefox for now at work. I can’t remember all the little things, but for example in phpMyAdmin, the frames are not resizeable, so I can’t see all the table names… the Netbasic blog admin section’s visual editor does not work… the Brain Tuner (iGoogle widget) doesn’t work in Google Chrome… Winamp covers the tabs in Chrome due to being in the title bar… there is no flexibility in the New Tab page - would be nice to customize it… Chrome doesn’t prompt to confirm user exit - I’ve lost work a few times doing this… I do miss the search box at top right of Firefox… it has crashed on me a few times…

Anyway, there are other reasons I could list, but for now I’m going back to Firefox as Chrome is sort of hampering me at the moment… sorry Google, I just need stability for now…