The actual reason, why I upgraded was KVM. Lenny seems to be getting more and more stable and by that usable as server system. Of course, it’s not etch yet, but since I’m trying to migrate from VMware (-Server) to KVM I’m actually forced to use Lenny. There are no KVM packages available for Etch, besides the ones from Backports.org. Unfortunatelly, even those are only available at version 28-4, what’s not that usable on a productive system.

However, so like I said, today I s/etch/lenny/g on my APT sources.list and ran an aptitude dist-upgrade. I was pretty surprised how fluent the upgrade worked out, the only thing it broke was the Roundcubemail I have installed on the machine for checking the Maildir via HTTP(S). Apache still works fine, Courier also runs, Fetchmail, and all the other stuff I had configured upgraded with nearly no problems.

Unfortunately, the upgrade still caused problems regarding my everyday-work. The most annoying thing is the fact, that I’m forced to use Icedove as mail client from now on, at least until some strange bug regarding the SSL authentication has been fixed in Evolution. The curious thing is, that with the previous version of Courier, Evolution worked just fine. I don’t know, what exactly the Courier developers changed, but it caused evolution to not be able anymore to authenticate against it. Some might say, it sounds like an Courier bug, but to be honest, I know how things are being implemented into Evolution and I don’t believe it’s Courier’s fault.

It’s pretty much a bummer, because I actually liked working with Evolution. Not because it’s fast – it’s not. And not because it’s light – it’s neither. And not even because it works perfectly in the infrastructure I’m sitting in – it definitely did not. But Evolution unfortunatelly is the only mail reader for the GNOME desktop environment, which really integrates into the desktop. I could always take a quick look at the meetings/appointments I have for a specific test, by just clicking the the clock on my menubar. Also, it was integrated into GNOME’s keyring, so that my mail-account password was just getting unlocked after the login.

However, this tiny, integrative features enhanced the usability of Evolution a lot, even if everything else might just suck. Now I’m trying to find out which bugreport documented the problem I’m experiencing, to put myself on CC. I’m really wondering when this will be fixed. If it takes as long as fixing problems regarding shared folders or caldav, then I guess I’ll just try to say Hello! to my future e-mail client Icedove.

Meh.