Outlook replacement for Lubuntu

I've got an older Compaq laptop that was getting horrendously slow with XP so my brother offered to load a Linux distro on it. After fiddling with several, he loaded it with Lubuntu since I wanted to keep things light. It and the Chromium browser work great. This is my first Linux experience and I'm liking it pretty well so far.
The system is set up to dual boot so I've still got my old files and XP on the other side of the partition.

I still use XP and Outlook at the office and that's not going to change any time soon but I hate to boot up XP at home now that I've gotten used to Linux. But what's the best thing to replace Outlook? I've heard of something called Evolution mentioned and my brother recommends Thunderbird.

I just need the same sort of functionality I get with Outlook, which I like pretty well, even after migrating from Palm Desktop. I'm primarily interested in PIM functions and being able to sync with mobile devices. I still have a Palm device and a WM5 device but will probably get some sort of Android smarthphone soon.

Any suggestions?

 

I use evolution mail which comes standard with ubuntu (maybe other distros too). Works just like outlook as an email client.

 

I'll second the recommendation of Evolution. It handles my mail archives (spanning the better part of a decade), my calendars (5-6, spread across two different types of remote calendar system + local), and my contacts (one local address book, one Google Contacts, one LDAP), all nearly flawlessly.

 

I'm also looking for an outlook alternative but it need to support Microsoft Exchange.

 

I have 1 email account in mine.

Evolution handles Microsoft Exchange email accounts.

 

I use thunderbird with the calender plugin. I synchronize my contacts and calender with gmail. From that I can sync it with any handheld device.

 

Some of them. Not all versions of Exchange play well with Evolution (Exchange 2010, for example, does not.)

I miss those days. Between work and personal stuff my workload has proven to be a pretty decent test case for any PIM suite. So far the only two that cope with it well are Kontact (from the KDE 3.5 series) and Evolution.

 

I have 3 email accounts, but I only use evolution for my work email. As for the exchange deal I have never used exchange so I am not familiar with it. I do however need an exchange server at work but I keep getting stone walled on getting a budget for one and there are bigger fish to fry.

 

evolution will now easily sync all your google contacts, calendar and email. I gave up outlook several years ago and keep it all in google incl. appts and what-not; and evolution keeps it off line for me. Also, Phone sync then becomes very easy also.

 

Thunderbird is pretty awesome if you want to theme it

 

Great. I'm tending toward Evolution since I'm told it will keep up with PIM like Outlook. I have heard that Thunderbird is more email-centric.

However I've also read that Evolution relies on Gnome. 'Scuse my ignorance, because I'm a complete Linux noob but I don't even know what Gnome is or if it's loaded on this PC yet.

I don't have a smartphone at the moment. I have two unconnected PDA's, an Aceeca and my old Axim X51V. Both work fine with Outlook. I expect I will get some sort of Android phone soon, though.

 

So, anyone got one that works with MS Exchange 2010?
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@ LandSurveyor

If you are using the repo or pacman, it would load the dependency for you automatically. So don't worry so much, it might look out of place if you are using a different desktop manager.

 

Evolution will connect to exchange servers.