Ed Stoffel

I’ve purchased Xandros Premium and installed it. I was running Xandros Professional’s trial version, but Premium required a complete reinstallation. I still have Windows XP-SP2 on another machine.

Before completing a switch to Linux OS, it is necessary to determine whether I can do all the things I wish to do apart from Windows. Using an internet browser is not much of a problem, except for sites that require specific browsers. I ran into that problem with SunTrust Bank’s online bill pay system which won’t allow Mozilla Firefox, telling me to use Internet Explorer or Netscape. My employer’s intranet site also requires Internet Explorer.

In searching for email solutions on Linux, I’ve found that while Hotmail works OK in Windows’ Outlook Express, it doesn’t work properly with any Linux email clients I’ve tested. Yahoo Mail’s paid service allows POP access as well as a handy archive feature which ZIPs entire folders as individual .eml files. For saving individual messages, I wish the web interface had a “save-as” button for saving individual messages locally, but it doesn’t.

If I wish to handle email at my own domain, AQ Host offers Horde and SquirrelMail, both of which have “save-as” buttons to save any message locally as an .eml file. AQ Host also includes Spam Assassin for scanning incoming email messages, if desired.

The point of saving messages in .eml format is that it preserves the headers, format and attachments of email messages. While Yahoo Mail’s free service offers a “save text of message” link on each message, saving in .eml format is better. I’ve been archiving in .eml format for over 10 years (except a brief test using Outlook, which oddly uses the incompatible .msg format).

So I plan to read .eml archives with any one of a number of email clients in Linux, and continue saving .eml files with Yahoo Plus or Horde on my own server. Now I need to figure out if I can run all my other essential apps.

My made-to-order bare boned box arrived from TigerDirect and I installed the trial version of Xandros Professional. Many applications I need already run on Linux, but there are a few that don’t including Quickbook Professional, Microsoft Money, and iTunes. That’s where Crossover comes in. This part of the Xandros operating system supports the installation of specific windows applications where you select them from a supported list to setup the correct environment for the application to run in. It’s also possible to install unsupported windows applications, which I’m pleased to find allows me to resurrect some Windows applications that no longer run under Windows XP-SP2, such as older versions of Quickverse (I’ve collected numerous translations).

Email in Linux is still problematic, as I’m unable to find a way to replicate the way I currently use Hotmail… reading and sorting mail into folders at work, and later saving that email at home. POP won’t recognize online folders, and I’ve been unable to get email clients in Linux to recognize email folders from IMAP services (such as AIM and Fastmail). I don’t want to handle email twice (I want it to stay sorted), but I want the ability to archive a selection of it each day at home. The old Mailblocks service would have done this, but AOL shut them down. AOL has lousy spam filtering, too. I haven’t given my AIM Mail address out, and my AIM Mail box is full of undetected spam.

Gmail has excellent spam filters but does not allow auto-deletion of spam. Gmail also does not allow the creation of folders, rather hoping you’ll depend on their message search ability. AIM Mail offers IMAP, but I’ve been unable to get email clients to download mail from folders other than inbox. Don’t other people archive important emails?

 See: Switching to Linux IV