Apparently there’s some sort of conspiracy keeping Linux-related links off the front page of the popular link-sharing site Digg.com — or at least that’s what this recent Computerworld editorial would have you believe.

Whether it’s true or not there’s still a very healthy Linux community over there — my review of the Evolution email client currently holds the all-time record for the most reads in a single day, and virtually all of that traffic came from Digg!

If you’re looking for Linux-related news allow me to share two more worthy sites for your consideration:
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Now that I’ve replaced my MacBook with a lean, mean, Linux netbook machine the next step in my open-source assimilation is to install some kind of Linux on my two year-old Mac Pro.

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If you’re using Linux you may have already read TuxArena’s excellent rundown of three highly regarded screencasting apps.

But what if you’re using a netbook like an Eee PC? Has anyone tested these apps and other alternatives on such a machine with a slower processor and limited RAM? I sure hope not, because that’s what I’m about to do here.

Tests were carried out on two machines, an Eee PC 900 & 901, both running the latest release of Easy Peasy. The subject of the screencast is a quick fix for volume issues in Easy Peasy/Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

Watch how fast contenders drop out of the race…

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As soon as Apple’s WWDC keynote wrapped up yesterday I started thinking about what I would write here.

First I was going to write about the new iPhone 3G S, and how the hardware doesn’t measure up to Nokia’s forthcoming flagship N97. But nobody in North America is likely to even blink at this; they’re too busy drooling over the new iPhone apps like the one for Zipcar, that lets you unlock a vehicle and honk the horn from your phone.

Then I thought about documenting how truly evil Apple is becoming, selling an entire line of notebooks with non-removable batteries while advertising how “green” they are.

I also considered writing about how Apple’s big innovation this summer is taking a cue from Acer, Asus and the like — not by releasing a cheap netbook (as many had hoped) but by slashing the price on their current iPhone and making it a commodity item, almost a disposable one like the lower end of their iPod line.

And then it struck me: I really don’t care.

Considering the behaviour of both Apple, Inc. and their unquestioning masses:

1. Greeting the announcement of voice dialing on their beloved iPhone with thunderous applause like it hasn’t been a feature on other handsets for the past five years;
2. Knowingly committing to a multi-year contract on a crap carrier for a locked handset;
3. Being so smug as to summarily dismiss the Ovi Store less than a month after its launch, and the Palm Pre after only a few days on the market…

… I realize that I can’t win — or more truthfully, I no longer have an interest in attempting to penetrate the overwhelming ignorance that is Apple’s reality distortion field.

So if you’re looking for advice on Apple products you should probably look elsewhere. I just can’t be bothered anymore.

Just as I’ve spent a lot of time at this humble WordPress address finding the perfect PIM 2.0 client, my previous blog had a fair amount of space devoted to traditional offline email clients. I’ve got email archives dating back some thirteen years, and I’ve moved them between various apps on OS X and Windows before finally settling on Thunderbird.

The original plan for my spiffy new Eee PC netbook was to dump my email archives on it, but the bundled email client for most Ubuntu-based Linux distributions is Evolution, an app I’ve never tried before.

Since there are barely any reviews of Evolution out there (that I could find, anyway), here’s a quick look…

Finding your mail files in Evolution is pretty straightforward if you know where to look. The default path is:

/home/(user)/.evolution/

In the “mail” folder you’ll find bog-standard .mbox files which you can import into any other email app worth its salt. Evolution also has a nifty backup and restore feature that will compress your data (email + addresses, calendars, contacts, notes & to-dos) into a handy (for Linux users) .tar.gzip file — and restore a full data set from the same file.

As for the actual interface, here’s how it looks in Easy Peasy 1.1:

IMHO it’s not quite as efficient as Thunderbird (seen below, running in Xubuntu 9.04) in its use of screen real estate, which can be fairly critical if you’re reading your email on a 9-inch netbook screen:

Another thing I don’t like about Evolution is that there’s no obvious mailbox maintenance utility as there is in Thunderbird. When you’ve got email archives dating back to 1996 keeping them from getting corrupted is a pretty big deal!

But the deal-breaker for me came not from Evolution itself, but from SyncEvolution, a SyncML client written for it. Specifically:

The order of email addresses and phone numbers in the Evolution GUI is not preserved.

While this is actually a reported bug for ScheduleWorld.com only, I found it to be a problem with my own hosted SyncML service Memotoo, uh… too.

If you’re wondering why this is a critical issue, have you ever sent a text message to someone’s home or business line by mistake? Either it won’t get delivered at all, or — in the case of my carrier — will cost you extra and embarrass the hell out of you.

Evolution will also sync data to a Microsoft Exchange Server, but I didn’t bother testing that functionality, as the whole point of my move to Linux is to get away from proprietary software.

If you use Exchange at work and Linux at home, or if all you need is an offline PIM suite and email client then Evolution should suit you fine. Me, I’m sticking with Thunderbird and keeping my PIM data in the cloud.

[digg=http://digg.com/linux_unix/Quick_Look_at_Evolution_The_Default_Email_Client_for_Ubuntu]