Setting up Thunderbird with Microsoft exchange server is little different than normal mail setup. This how to focuses on setting up mail which have no access with POP and IMAP from Microsoft exchange server. That is quite easy if you have IMAP or POP support on exchange server, but this how to will cover more than that. Lets assume that you do not have support for both IMAP and POP.

1st of all lets list down the softwares which will be used for this how to:
- Java 1.5 or above
- Thunderbird 12.0
- Davmail 3.9.8
- Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or later.
- Extensions [Lightning]
I assume you have already installed Java, if not you can install it from YaST. Oh yeh this how to will be based on openSUSE 12.1 KDE.
Next install Thunderbird from YaST again, if not installed yet.

Setup Davmail:
Now time to download Davmail, download it from here. I have downloaded 3.9.8 version, you can choose yours.
Choose Linux(others) from the list and select your system arch(32 or 64bit).
Extract it with an extracting app you have, and put the extracted directory any where you like, e.g: home folder. Enter to the directory and click on davmail.sh. A notification pop up will appear.

There are not much things to change in the settings(right click on the icon in the notification area) except OWA URL, it can be like:
https://domian.com/exchange/
Change domain.com to your exchange server domain.

All other default ports settings are good to go.
There are logs available if you wana check it, right click and show logs.

Now for Thunderbird mail setup we will cover three areas to configure, configure exchange mail, calendar and directory service.

Section-I (configure mail)
1- Open Thunderbird and from menu > File > New > Existing mail account.
2- Window will appear to enter your name, email and password. Enter your full email address.
3- Change the rest of the settings according to the image below and re-test. Remember to check the ports from Davmail settings to reflect yours.

Note: Username will be like domain\user.
4- If step 3 successfully done, you will see this page. Check it any way and click create account because we are running it on localhost, so no worries.

5- Done.
6- You can change some of the settings from Edit > Account settings, by following the images below, but that’s totally up to you.

Section-II (configure calendar)
1- Install lightning addon from the addon page, tools > add-ons. Restart Thunderbird after installation.
2- Add new calendar from File > New > Calendar.

3- Use this URL: http://localhost:1080/users/<YOUR FULL EMAIL ADDRESS>/calendar . Choose the appropriate options as shown. Change <Your Full Email Address> with your email address.

4- In this window, name your calendar and choose any color you like, remember to not leave the E-mail drop down blank, choose your email address. If you leave it blank, no invitations will be sent to other users.

5- Done
6- In the sidebar a mini calendar will appear, by clicking on the calendar icon at the top will open a new tab.

Section-III (configure directory service)
1- Open Address book and add new LDAP from File > New > LDAP Directory.
2- Enter the information asked for name, hostname, base dn, port number and bind dn.

Note: Bind DN is the username domain\user.
3- Download your directory from the offline tab, if you want.

4- Done

Everything is configured, and now what you can do is WAIT. It will depend on your internet connection and total emails with attachments. It will time some time, so be patient.

If you want to use personal address book, you will need SOGo connector extension. But as it is not compatible with 12.0, so i can’t help with that. You can give it a try here, and then follow this link for how to configure it.

On each boot of the system, Davmail will not start automatically. I found out this way for KDE, which is quite easy. For other desktops and distro, please search for the way around.
Open configure desktop > Startup and Shutdown > Autostart. Click on Add Program button, and locate davmail.sh where you saved it after extraction. Check Enabled checkbox, and that’s it. Davmail will now start on each boot.

Side-Note: If you discover that there are 2 mails in the sent folder, to avoid this go to Davmail settings and in the advanced Tab uncheck ‘SMTP save in sent’ checkbox.

Ref:
- https://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/thunderbird_owa_support
- http://davmail.sourceforge.net/faq.html
- http://davmail.sourceforge.net/linuxsetup.html

Cron, an Unix term stands for Command Run ON. It is very useful utility in Unix/Linux specially for SysAdmins who might like to schedule different tasks on different times for different purposes. Most frequently it is used for running scripts and creating backups. It’s a command based utility, where we can schedule a task on a given time to run. It’s format looks like the following:

MIN  HOUR  DOM  MON  DOW  CMD

MIN = Minutes[0-59] , HOUR = Hour[0-23] , DOM = Day of month[1-31] , MON = Month[1-12] , DOW = Day of week[0-6] , CMD = Command to run

00  06  *  *  *  /home/bak/cback.sh

The above command will run on the following time and will trigger a script at home bak directory called cback.sh:

00 = 0th minute

06 = 6AM at morning

* = Every day

* = Every month

* = Every day of the week

Normally * represents ‘Every’ word here, if you want to run it every hour. Replace 06 with *, which will trigger the script every hour.

You can see the cron jobs by running crontab -l in terminal and add/edit them via crontab -e .

Read Linux man pages in terminal for more knowledge or read this article for more deep understanding.

Don’t be confused about Chrome and Chromium. Both are browsers and using the same engines, then what’s the difference?, the difference is one is actively developed by open source community[Chromium] and the other is maintained and developed by Google[Chrome]. Google Chrome can say provide stable version, while Chromium is dev build version[unstable] which is stable though but have new features which then go to Google Chrome stable version later. Chromium is already provided in openSUSE default repositories. But for Google Chrome we need to add new repository. Which will have three versions, stable, beta, unstable. If you want to have different versions of this browser, install both Chromium and Chrome. Currently i’m running both versions, stable version from Google[Chrome] repository and dev build[Chromium] from openSUSE repositories. 1st of all open terminal and become root by su - , and then type, choose your system architecture:

64bit version

zypper ar http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/x86_64 Google-Chrome

32bit version

zypper ar http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/i386 Google-Chrome

Now type:

zypper ref

And install Google Chrome:

zypper in google-chrome-stable

Now you will have two versions of Chrome/Chromium browser.

MeliaeSVG Icon Theme is an icon set created by sora-meliae. It is quite clean and very refreshing icon theme. Love the simple and cleanse look of the icons.

It is for Gnome, and i am using KDE so how can we install it inside KDE desktop. That is quite easy. 1st download the zip file from deviantart. Extract the zip archive, a new file with .tar.gz will be extracted.

Now open ‘Configure Desktop’ in KDE from kickoff menu. Click on ‘Application Appearance’ and choose ‘Icons’ and click on ‘Install new theme’, browse for the theme which you just extracted(.tar.gz one). And bingo, there you go.. apply it and you will see the changes immediately.

More information here.