Re: [Evolution] How do you install 2.29 on Ubuntu 9.10?

["Bryan Karlan" <bkarlan automotivemp com>]

Thank you for all that.  I just figured that pre-release was a beta.  And I
used Windows 7 beta for the last 9 months.  6 of which, it was far more
stable than Vista.  So I figured this to be the same.  I guess not.

I have some changes that I want to recommend to whoever is designing this.
It looks like Outlook, but is far less functional.  As such, it is not an
outlook replacement.  But it is getting better.  Microsoft has made the
current Outlook more fancy but only a bit more functional.  If you could
keep the simple interface and bring in features that a business user like me
would crave then I would take this program quickly.  

I have posted my desires for the improvements elsewhere but did not hear
anything back.  Could you tell me where to post this?

Bryan
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Smith [mailto:paul mad-scientist net] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2009 4:05 PM
To: Bryan Karlan
Cc: evolution-list gnome org
Subject: Re: [Evolution] How do you install 2.29 on Ubuntu 9.10?

On Wed, 2009-12-02 at 14:07 -0800, Bryan Karlan wrote:
> I want to try 2.29 to see what it has improved upon.  I have little
> experience with Linux.  I have Ubuntu 9.10.  I have downloaded the
> file and have extracted it.  However, I find no install or setup file
> as you would in Windows.  I still can't understand why in Linux such
> simple things are made so darn complicated.  How can I figure this
> program out if I can't even figure out how to install it?

Hi Bryan.  I see you've received some responses; they are all correct
although some are perhaps more strident than is strictly necessary.

Although reading between the lines might give you all this already, I
wanted to clarify a few things that might help you and serve as an
introduction to free/open source software and GNU/Linux in particular.

In many FOSS projects, including all of the Gnome desktop environment
projects (like Evolution), the release numbering works like this:
even-numbered releases, like Evolution 2.28, 2.30, 2.32, etc. are
considered stable and are provided by distributions like Ubuntu in an
already-compiled, ready-to-run format through the package manager
(either Applications -> Ubuntu Software Center or System -> Synaptic
Package Manager or whatever).  Since you have Ubuntu 9.10, you already
have the latest released stable version of Evo, which is currently 2.28.

Gnome, and hence Evolution which is one part of Gnome, adhere to a
6-month release cycle (March and September) so the next stable version
of Evo, 2.30, will be out in March 2010, and it will be packaged and
ready for your use in the next release of Ubuntu, which will be
available in April 2010 (Ubuntu _also_ has a 6 month release cycle, in
April and October--nice how that works out :-)).


Right now, development is proceeding on that next release, and code is
flying around the internet in greater or lesser degrees of stability and
completeness.  All Gnome projects use a convention where odd-numbered
releases, like 2.27, 2.29, 2.31, etc. are *developer* releases: they are
newer than the previous stable releases, but not as new as the next
stable release.  These releases are not intended for general consumption
by average users... these releases are *source code only*, not
already-built and packaged applications.  As someone mentioned, this
would be like Microsoft giving you access to the
currently-in-development source code for IE 9 or whatever, and letting
you build it and install it yourself.  They don't, but in FOSS we always
do make it available.  That doesn't mean you have to take advantage
though :-)

It is very rare that a distribution like Ubuntu will package a developer
version like 2.29, especially at this early stage.  Next Feb/March or
so, Ubuntu will start distributing alpha and beta releases of what will
become Ubuntu 10.04 in April: those development releases will, in turn,
usually have development releases of Gnome (and Evolution) already
built.


Although I doubt this is what you really want, there ARE
not-ridiculously painful ways to compile the latest development versions
of Evolution yourself.  I really doubt this is what you want to do but
if you do, let me know and I'll give you some help.  Please remember
that what you get will be pre-pre-pre-alpha quality software, with no
warranty etc.  The build I can help you with, but you may very well not
be that happy with the reliability of the result.


Cheers, and welcome to open source!