13.4. Tools

13.4.1. Email

13.4.1.1. Evolution

COMMUNITY Popular packages

Installing the popularity-contest package enables participation in an automated survey that informs the Debian project about the most popular packages. A script is run weekly by cron which sends (by HTTP or email) an anonymized list of the installed packages and the latest access date for the files they contain. This allows differenciating, among the installed packages, those that are actually used.

This information is a great help to the Debian project. It is used to determine which packages should go on the first installation disks. The installation data is also an important factor used to decide whether to remove a package with very few users from the distribution. We heartily recommend installing the popularity-contest package, and participating to the survey.

The collected data are made public every day.

→ http://popcon.debian.org/

These statistics can also help choose between two packages that would seem otherwise equivalent. Choosing the more popular package increases the probability of making a good choice.

Evolution is the GNOME email client and can be installed with apt-get install evolution. Evolution goes beyond a simple email client, and also provides a calendar, an address book, a task list, and a memo (free-form note) application. Its email component includes a powerful message indexing system, and allows for the creation of virtual folders based on search queries on all archived messages. In other words, all messages are stored the same way but displayed in a folder-based organization, each folder containing messages that match a set of filtering criteria.

Figure 13.4. The Evolution email software

An extension to Evolution allows integration to a Microsoft Exchange email system; the required package is evolution-exchange.

13.4.1.2. KMail

The KDE email software can be installed with apt-get install kmail. KMail only handles email, but it belongs to a software suite called KDE-PIM (for Personal Information Manager) that includes features such as address books, a calendar component, and so on. KMail has all the features one would expect from an excellent email client.

Figure 13.5. The KMail email software

13.4.1.3. Thunderbird and Icedove

This email software, included in the icedove package, is part of the Mozilla software suite. Various localization sets are available in icedove-l10n-* packages; the enigmail extension handles message encrypting and signing (alas, it is not available in all languages).

Figure 13.6. The Icedove email software

Thunderbird is one of the best email clients, and it seems to be a great success, just like Mozilla Firefox.

Strictly speaking, Debian Squeeze contains Icedove, and not Thunderbird, for legal reasons we will detail in the “Iceweasel, Firefox and others” section later on; but apart from their names (and icons), there are no real differences between them.

13.4.2. Web Browsers

Epiphany, the web browser in the GNOME suite, uses the WebKit display engine developed by Apple for its Safari browser. The relevant package is epiphany-browser.

Konqueror, the KDE file manager, also behaves as a web browser. It uses the KDE-specific KHTML rendering engine; KHTML is an excellent engine, as witnessed by the fact that Apple's WebKit is based on KHTML. Konqueror is available in the konqueror package.

Users not satisfied by either of the above can use Iceweasel. This browser, available in the iceweasel package, uses the Mozilla project's Gecko renderer, with a thin and extensible interface on top.

Figure 13.7. The Iceweasel web browser

CULTURE Iceweasel, Firefox and others

Many users will no doubt be surprised by the absence of Mozilla Firefox in the Debian Squeeze menus. No need to panic: the iceweasel package contains Iceweasel, which is basically Firefox under another name.

The rationale behind this renaming is a result of the usage rules imposed by the Mozilla Foundation on the Firefox™ registered trademark: any software named Firefox must use the official Firefox logo and icons. However, since these elements are not released under a free license, Debian cannot distribute them in its main section. Rather than moving the whole browser to non-free, the package maintainer chose to use a different name.

The firefox command still exists in the iceweasel package, but only for compatibility with tools that would try to use it.

For similar reasons, the Thunderbird™ email client was renamed to Icedove in a similar fashion.

CULTURE Mozilla

Netscape Navigator was the standard browser when the web started reaching the masses, but it was progressively left behind when Microsoft Internet Explorer came around. Faced with this failure, Netscape (the company) decided to “free” its source code, by realeasing it under a free license, to give it a second life. This was the beginning of the Mozilla project. After many years of development, the results are more than satisfying: the Mozilla project brought forth an HTML rendering engine (called Gecko) that is among the most standard-compliant. This rendering engine is in particular used by the Mozilla Firefox browser, which is one of the most successful browsers, with a fast-growing user base.

Squeeze also brings a relative newcomer on the web browser scene, Chromium (available in the chromium-browser package). This browser is developed by Google at such a fast pace that maintaining a single version of it across the whole lifespan of Debian Squeeze is unlikely to be possible. Its clear purpose is to make web services more attractive, both by optimizing the browser for performance and by increasing the user's security. The free code that powers Chromium is also used by its proprietary version called Google Chrome.

13.4.3. Development

13.4.3.1. Tools for GTK+ on GNOME

Anjuta (in the anjuta package) is a development environment optimised for creating GTK+ applications for GNOME. Glade (in the glade package) is an application designed to create GTK+ graphical interfaces for GNOME and save them in an XML file. These XML files can then be loaded by the libglade shared library, which can dynamically recreate the saved interfaces; such a feature can be interesting, for instance for for plugins that require dialogs.

The scope of Anjuta is to combine, in a modular way, all the features one would expect from an integrated development environment.

13.4.3.2. Tools for Qt on KDE

The equivalent applications for KDE are KDevelop (in the kdevelop package) for the development environment, and Qt Designer (in the qt3-designer or qt4-designer packages) for the design of graphical interfaces for Qt applications on KDE.

The next versions of these applications should be better integrated together, thanks to the KParts component system.

13.4.4. Collaborative Work

13.4.4.1. Working in Groups: groupware

A previous edition of this book mentioned PHPGroupware, but this software is no longer in Debian… It is no longer actively maintained, and no existing version was compatible with the PHP version 5.3 included in Debian Squeeze, which is why the Debian maintainer asked for the package to be removed.

→ http://www.phpgroupware.org/

eGroupware was also mentioned, but it too went the way of PHPGroupware, but for different reasons. The software is still maintained by the company that develops it, but no volunteer has stepped up to ensure its maintenance within Debian. Should you still wish to use it, the project itself provides Debian packages.

→ http://www.egroupware.org/

All is not lost though. Many of the features traditionally provided by “groupware” software are increasingly integrated into “standard” software. This is reducing the requirement for specific, specialized groupware software. On the other hand, this usually requires a specific server. A good example for such a server is Kolab, that can integrate into KDE (Kontact, Kmail, and so on), the Horde webmail, Thunderbird (via a plugin) and even into Microsoft Outlook. Kolab is part of Debian Squeeze (kolab* packages).

→ http://www.kolab.org/

13.4.4.2. Instant Messaging Systems

When setting up an internal instant messaging system for a company, the obvious choice is Jabber: its protocol is an open standard (XMPP), and there is no shortage of features. The messages can be encrypted, which can be a real bonus, and gateways can be set up between a Jabber server and other instant messaging networks such as ICQ, GAIM, Yahoo, MSN, and so on.

ALTERNATIVE Internet Relay Chat

IRC can also be considered, instead of Jabber. This system is more centered around the concept of channels, the name of which starts with a hash sign #. Each channel is usually targeted at a specific topic and any number of people can join a channel to discuss it (but users can still have in one-to-one private conversations if needed). The IRC protocol is older, and does not allow end-to-end encryption of the messages; it is still possible to encrypt the communications between the users and the server by tunneling the IRC protocol inside SSL.

IRC clients are a bit more complex, and they usually provide many features that are of limited use in a corporate environment. For instance, channel “operators” are users endowed with the ability to kick other users from a channel, or even ban them permanently, when the normal discussion is disrupted.

Since the IRC protocol is very old, many clients are available to cater for many user groups; examples include XChat and Smuxi (graphical clients based on GTK+), Irssi (text mode), Erc (integrated to Emacs), Chatzilla (in the Mozilla software suite), and so on.

QUICK LOOK Video conferencing with Ekiga

Ekiga (formerly GnomeMeeting) is the most prominent application for Linux video conferencing. It is both stable and functional, and is very easily used on a local network; setting up the service on a global network is much more complex when the firewalls involved lack explicit support for the H323 and/or SIP teleconferencing protocols with all their quirks.

If only one Ekiga client is to run behind the firewall, the configuration is rather straightforward, and only involves forwarding a few ports to the dedicated host: TCP port 1720 (listening for incoming connections), TCP port 5060 (for SIP), TCP ports 30000 to 30010 (for control of open connections) and UDP ports 5000 to 5013 (for audio and video data transmission and registration to an H323 proxy).

When several Ekiga clients are to run behind the firewall, complexity increases notably. An H323 proxy (for instance the gnugk package) must be set up, and its configuration is far from simple.

13.4.4.2.1. Configuring the Server

Setting up a Jabber server is rather straightforward. After installing the ejabberd package, executing dpkg-reconfigure ejabberd will allow customizing the default domain, and create an administrator account. Note that the Jabber server needs a valid DNS name to point at it, so some network administration can be required beforehand. The Falcot Corp administrators picked jabber.falcot.com for that purpose.

Once this initial set up is over, the service configuration can be controlled through a web interface accessible at http://jabber.falcot.com:5280/admin/. The requested username and password are those that were given earlier during the initial configuration. Note that the username must be qualified with the configured domain: the admin account becomes admin@jabber.falcot.com.

The web interface removes the need to edit a configuration file, but does not always make the task easier, since many options have a peculiar syntax that needs to be known. /usr/share/doc/ejabberd/guide.html is therefore a recommended read.

13.4.4.2.2. Jabber Clients

GNOME provides Empathy (in the similarly-named package), a minimalist client that integrates in the notification area of the desktop (on the top-right corner in the default GNOME configuration). It also supports many instant messaging protocols beyond Jabber.

KDE provides Kopete (in the openoffice.org package).

13.4.4.3. Collaborative Work With FusionForge

FusionForge is a collaborative development tool with some ancestry in SourceForge, a hosting service for free software projects. It takes the same overall approach based on the standard development model for free software. The software itself has kept evolving after the SourceForge code went proprietary. Its initial authors, VA Software, decided not to release any more free versions. The same happened again when the first fork (GForge) followed the same path. Since various people and organizations have participated in development, the current FusionForge also includes features targeting a more traditional approach to development, as well as projects not purely concerned with software development.

FusionForge can be seen as an amalgamation of several tools dedicated to manage, track and coordinate projects. These tools can be roughly classified into three families:

communication: web forums, mailing-list manager, announcement system allowing a project to publish news;
tracking: task tracker to control progress and schedule tasks, trackers for bugs (or patches or feature requests, or any other kind of “ticket”), surveys;
sharing: documentation manager to provide a single central point for documents related to a project, generic file release manager, dedicated website for each project.

Since FusionForge is largely targeting development projects, it also integrates many tools such as CVS, Subversion, Git, Bazaar, Darcs, Mercurial and Arch for source control management or “configuration management” or “version control” — this process has many names. These programs keep an history of all the revisions of all tracked files (often source code files), with all the changes they go through, and they can merge modifications when several developers work simultaneously on the same part of a project.

Most of these tools are accessible, or even managed, through a web interface, with a fine-grained permission system, and email notifications for some events.

13.4.5. Office Suites

Office software has long been seen as lacking in the free software world. Users have long asked for replacements for Microsoft tools such as Word and Excel, but these are so complex that replacements were hard to develop. The situation changed when the OpenOffice.org project started (following Sun's release of the StarOffice code under a free license). The GNOME and KDE projects are still working on their offerings (GNOME Office and KOffice), and the friendly competition leads to interesting results. For instance, the Gnumeric spreadsheet (part of GNOME Office) is even better than OpenOffice.org in some domains, notably the precision of its calculations. On the word processing front, the OpenOffice.org suite still leads the way.

Another important feature for users is the ability to import Word and Excel documents received from contacts or found in archives. Even though all office suites have filters which allow working on these formats, only the ones found in OpenOffice.org are functional enough for daily use.

THE BROADER VIEW Libre Office replaces OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org contributors have set up a foundation (The Document Foundation) to foster project development. The idea had been discussed for some time, but the actual trigger was Oracle's acquisition of Sun. The new ownership made the future of OpenOffice under Oracle uncertain. Since Oracle declined to join the foundation, the developers had to give up on the OpenOffice.org name. The software is now known as Libre Office.

These changes occurred after Debian Squeeze was frozen, which explains why the repositories still contain OpenOffice.org… but Libre Office is already available in the backports.debian.org package repository, as well as in more recent versions of Debian.

OpenOffice.org, KOffice and GNOME Office are, respectively, available in the openoffice.org, koffice and gnome-office Debian packages. Language-specific packs for OpenOffice.org are distributed in separate packages: openoffice.org-l10n-*, openoffice.org-help-*, and openoffice.org-spellcheck-* (which can be a virtual package provided by myspell-*).