Upgrading Evolution from 2.4.1 to 2.2.3

I noted here in The Trials and Tribulations of Evolution and later in Another Crossroad that I have had a number of problems with recent versions of Evolution, especially anything not running under Fedora Core 2,3, or 4. In "Another Crossroad", I had just upgraded to 2.4.1, and had everything working.

It lasted a day, then fell apart, and nothing I tried could retrieve it. I finally pulled out 2.4.1 (which meant taking off most of Gnome) with "yum remove", taking the nrpms repository out of the yum.conf, and then rolling 2.2.3 back in from the Fedora base repositories. Since I use KDE this was pretty easy if slightly time consuming. My graphical environment continued working even after I had shredded Gnome.

I then went through and turned off all the groupwise plugins via "tools/plugins" and I now have a stable (has been up for 5 days) working Evolution again, at these versions:

evolution-connector-2.2.2-5
evolution-2.2.3-2.fc4
evolution-data-server-1.2.3-3.fc4

Version 2.4.1 on SuSE 10 is still toast against my MS Exchange servers, but everything else works so well with OpenSUSE I just don't run Evolution there anymore. That is too bad, because to get my schedule over to my Sony Clie , I now configure Kontact to run against MS Exchange, grab my calendar, and then use Kpilot to get the data onto the Sony Clie. Works like a champ though, so I guess I can't argue with success. It would just be easier of it all was working under Evolution / gnome-pilot instead. Historically I have always had more luck with Kpilot than anything else, going back for several years, so I guess this has not been a focus area for other projects.

There was one good thing: IMAP access to Exchange 2000 worked liked a champ under 2.4.1. Blazing fast. If I didn't need Evolution Connector for calendaring that would be a real option.

I also know now I am not the only one: my LinuxWorld lab co-presentor did the same thing I did: Updated his FC4 system to 2.4.1. He is now pulling it back off: It is not just our MS Exchange servers here in this office. This may be a problem on MS Exchange 2000, since that is what we both have at our respective companies. As noted earlier, we'll be going to MS Exchange 2003 soon here, and I'll know better if that is the source of my "pain".

One other side note: Folks have been wondering how the layoffs at Novell are going to affect Evolution and Connector. Jeffery Stedfast, "Evolution Hacker – Novell Inc." posted today in the evolution-list@gnome.org that he did not know of any particular layoffs, but that since everything was now Open Source, the project would not die. Funny thing is that, for me, the Open Source project that has it working for me now is Fedora, so I think his point is already well made. But I love OpenSUSE 10, so I hope they can get whatever Fedora is doing backported to their code line.