Is a New Approach to Email Just What Linux Needs?

This week, some surprisingly positive data arrived about Linux's growing volume of welcome in enterprises. But if you ask many people why Linux isn't more entrenched at enterprises, they might cite compatibility issues with widely used platforms such as Microsoft Office, support concerns, and more. One longstanding concern about Linux in the enterprise has surrounded the fact that email has never been really enterprise-grade on Linux platforms.

As a matter of fact, some of the more promising efforts to pull off smart open source email have been left in the gutter. Mozilla, for example, has pulled way back on its efforts with Thunderbird.  That's why it's interesting to note that some of the respected developers behind the Shotwell photo manager application are working on an email idea called Geary.

We've covered Shotwell many times and it is very popular with Linux users.  The developers behind it are talented.

Ars Technica is out with a story this week that discusses the developers' involvement with Geary:

"Yorba, the creator of Shotwell, has turned to crowdfunding site Indiegogo in an attempt to raise $100,000 toward the e-mail client, named "Geary." After two days, Yorba has raised about $8,000."

"Geary has been under development since 2011, but Yorba is hoping to take it up a few notches. An extremely early version of Geary is available now. It is designed to integrate with GNOME desktops, running on Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, and other Linux distributions."

The developers are adamant that Geary provides a new kind of approach to email, which is what Linux needs. However, Yorba seems to vacillate on when, if ever, Exchange support will be integrated into Geary. Exchange support would make a world of sense since Exchange is so widely used to drive email usage in enterprises around the world.

You can read more about Geary's development here.  It sounds like an application to watch, especially if crowdsourced funding comes through.