Since I started my new job last week, I no longer work on a Mac desktop. I now use Ubuntu instead. Our company has an Exchange server and uses Active Directory for authentication. Using a Linux desktop in a Windows environment can be a bit challenging. While you can use Thunderbird to use imap, features like calandar and global address book are not available. Of course there’s Terminal Services using RDP but this is not ideal. My new colleagues pointed me to a little tool called DavMail.
DavMail is a Java program that makes an imap, pop, smtp, calandar and even ldap server available to localhost. It translates requests to the local server and points them to the OWA (Outlook Web Access url) provided by Exchange. This way, my Linux Desktop can use all the services normally not available on Linux. Mail (both incoming and outgoing), calandar and even auto completion of names and e-mail addresses of all of my colleagues work perfectly.
This rocks, thanks guys!
Remi Bergsma's blog 