Re: [Evolution] copy & paste oddness

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

On Tue, 2017-12-05 at 12:24 +0200, Gottfried wrote:
> This is actually the problem. how come that Ubuntu and therefore 
> LinuxMint use such an old version of Evolution? can't they just pass on 
> a newer version? 

Evolution is not a standalone programme. There are multiple parts to it
and each of those parts has dependencies on other parts of the Gnome
ecosystem. Although it is possible to run, say, Evolution 3.26 in a
Gnome 3.24 environment, the more separate the two versions are, the
more difficult it becomes; eventually you will come across something
that makes it impossible and the only solution is to upgrade the
underlying Gnome libraries (which has consequences for other packages).

> The version used is by far not stable, at least not any 
> more. And I do need different software in order to keep different 
> accounts separate. To put all the emails I have now collected over the 
> years into Thunderbird would blow that thing up and make it useless. Do 
> I really have to run then Evo on a Windows PC, just because the 
> distributors decided to love only their own thing? That does not sound 
> very credible.

There is no functioning version of Evolution for Windows. 

The best thing to do is to ask on your distro's mailing lists / forums
about this.  I'm not (definitely not) an Ubuntu user, but I know there
are PPAs (I think that's the correct term) out there that supposedly
allow you to upgrade Evolution to a newer version.

> Claws Mail is a kind of medieval client that I use for security reasons 
> in a different account. So what would be possible to do? change the 
> whole distribution? But don't the other distributions limit the other 
> software that I am using? In my understanding Ubuntu/LinuxMint are those 
> distributions that make most apps accessible.

I think you have a wrong understanding there. There are lots of distros
that make just as many apps "accessible". It depends on what you want
to run and how bleeding edge you want to be. I use Fedora and I've not
yet come across anything useful that I can't run and that's available
in standard repos. Lots of people swear by rolling release distros such
as Arch to keep up to date. YMMV. Pick something that satisfies your
requirements and just use it - if your requirement is for an up to date
Evolution (or anything else), then don't use an enterprise or LTS
release.

But this is now getting wayyyy of topic for the Evolution mailing
list...

P.