Ever used Citadel?

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Kieran Huggins
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Ever used Citadel?

Post by Kieran Huggins »

The title pretty much says it all..

http://www.citadel.org

I'm considering this as an alternative IMAP server to Google Apps, which massively failed for a client this past week (and also is a PITA to configure T-bird for).

Anyone have any experiences to share? Reviews seem to be damn good.
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Christopher
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Re: Ever used Citadel?

Post by Christopher »

The website was not available when I tried it. But looking at articles about it I think I must have it! I have looked at Zimbra for a while and even installed once or twice -- what a horrible experience. Citadel looks like exactly the kind of thing I would actually use...
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nickvd
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Re: Ever used Citadel?

Post by nickvd »

I've 'used' it (their pre-built vmware appliance) and found it to be a painless setup (as with all pre-built appliances), the mail worked 'out of the box' using a smart host (my isp's mail server).. While I have yet to use it in any sort of production environment I have two or three planned installations some time this year.

I have zero doubt in my mind that it will be the exchange replacement.... as soon as their outlook connector is out of alpha...

One thing that I haven't quite gotten my mind around is the whole web 'bbs' deal... It seems a little counter-intuitive to me, but I haven't really played with it, as I simply wanted the easiest mail server to install/configure. Citadel is that in spades...
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Kieran Huggins
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Re: Ever used Citadel?

Post by Kieran Huggins »

So I tried to love Citadel, but in the end I just couldn't. I thought I should follow up with the reasons behind my rejection.

Citadel is full-blown groupware, which initially seemed awesome to me. I've come to realize that this means a whole lot of confusing overhead for most users. For instance, the IMAP folder list under "inbox" contains "notes", "contacts", "calendar" and some other crap I can't even remember now. In addition to this, there was also a separate IMAP folder for the default shared "room" with various folders like "shared contacts", "lobby", etc... - and in Thunderbird you can't unsubscribe to a folder, nor does it disappear when you unsubscribe to all of it's contents. I'm sure many of you would be able to predict what kind of a headache this would be when dealing with clients.

Also, since it's a "black box" setup, you don't have direct access to any of the parts. All the config is done inside a segregated Berkely DB, and each of the parts is tightly integrated. This means that they're only upgradable as part of the whole package, which I could see being a potential source of future pain.

Instead I opted to go through the Courier-IMAP / Postfix spanking machine, which is proving to be a tad cryptic. So far I have the mail server set up and authenticating & SMTP working as it should, but for some reason the system isn't accepting mail and/or writing anything to local mail folders. I'm sure it's something small I'm missing, but I have yet to decipher the underlying cause of the problem.

The more I think about it, the more I hate e-mail altogether. It gets me thinking along the same lines of that other thread, only I'm daydreaming about the demise of e-mail altogether. It's more than a little long in the tooth, and frankly it can bite me at this point (if you'll forgive the pun).

IM-wise I plan to install Openfire - I've had a Win32 install in the past that I've been pleased with and it will integrate nicely with MySQL. It's Java, which I'm sort of weary of, but the devil you know...

Calendars and server-side contact management are nice, but I have yet to see any real adoption of them in most workplaces. Meh.

In short, I'm really disappointed with Google Apps. It was a hurdle to integrate with Thunderbird due to its abnormal IMAP implementation, and in the end the massive security failure totally killed it. It's no secret that I love me some Google but they totally blew some major trust points there, and that was the proverbial "last straw" in this case. I'll probably still use it for my personal domain in the future and for freebie accounts for friends & such, but would be hesitant to recommend it to a client without attaching an appropriate warning.

Thoughts? Recommendations? As the Ferengi say: "I'm all ears, hoomonn."
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