Forum OpenACS Q&A: Suse Linux Openexchange

Posted by Lars Pind on 01/23/03 12:20 PM

I was pointed at Suse Linux Openexchange, so I took a look at the demo, and it looks *really* nice. In fact, it looks almost exactly the way I want OpenACS to look out of the box.

http://www.suse.com/us/business/products/suse_business/openexchange/index.html

One of the things that I think they've done right, is that they're doing integration well. They integrate with IMAP, LDAP, and Samba. It comes with an installer that installs all of those for you, or you can use the servers you already have running, supposedly. I don't know the details.

Unfortunately, it's not open source. They charge $1,250 for the first 10 user license. So I can't check it out.

But I do want OpenACS to look something like that out of the box. I want an installer that has several standard configurations built in (groupware, company web site, intranet, dotLRN, clean, ...), and I want this to be one of the configurations available.

But please do take a look at the demo, and let's figure out how we relate to something like this.

/Lars

2: Re: Suse Linux Openexchange (response to 1)

Posted by Jeff Davis on 01/23/03 12:50 PM

It seems to be a repackaging of this Netline Application Server based on the generator strings in the html.

The calendar with a link to week view inline is interesting (although I don't think I would have numbered them). I also like the way help works (top right link).

3: Re: Suse Linux Openexchange (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 01/23/03 07:02 PM

It does look nice.

I don't think we're that far away. Give us the apps and I don't think a configuration manager that can choose between them would be all that hard to write.

Integration with services is another issue. Isn't the simplest path to that still a robust and easy to (auto) install ns_java? Last time we had a similar discussion my impression was that once we had that a whole world of libraries would become available. Dan's done various demos but it's still a bit black-magic for our mainstream OpenACS development.

4: Re: Suse Linux Openexchange (response to 1)

Posted by Peter Marklund on 01/23/03 07:19 PM

I think it would be very nice if OpenACS would come with a setup and look and feel like Openexchange has out of the box.

I find the UI really impressive. Like Jeff said, the help links are nice, as are the privilege UI (you can choose private, public, individual) plus the fact that the pages load quickly.

Looking at their document management though I was a little disappointed as it wasn't possible (at least in my browser) to upload a file. What really kills the idea of using Openexchange groupware to me is that it isn't open source.

I think OpenACS is a great and powerful toolkit and it may primarily be a matter of giving it a slick and smart preconfigured UI like the one Suse is showing here to drive adoption.

5: Re: Suse Linux Openexchange (response to 1)

Posted by Rocael Hernández Rizzardini on 01/24/03 06:34 AM

Yes, UI is something important, at the sale point to the clients but in the long term for the end users, they always want something that looks friendly, just see this recent post https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=74583
about XIMS, it looks nice too.