In my ’spare’ time I am an associate lecturer for the Open University. I am starting tutoring on a new course, S104, this week. I was on the reserve list and just appointed to the course this week, so I am not very organised and need to catch up! Fortunately there is an online course briefing this weekend, unfortunately I am off to a college reunion this weekend. However, I thought I would try a combination of wifi and my eeepc to get some work done in my more sober moments.
The OU use the Firstclass email client, and although there is a web interface, it lacks a lot of the functionality of the desktop version. My eeepc guru, Liam Green-Hughes pointed me in the direction of a linux version of the software. I gamefully employed my more linux friendly husband to actually do the work for me
. This is what he did, while I helpfully watched desperate housewives and made cups of tea:
- downloaded the deb linux software
- in terminal, sudo dkpg -i <filename>
- active the advance desktop mode
- ta da – there it is under ‘internet’
- set up the OU server and log in!
blogged from the eeepc!

October 21, 2008 at 10:12 am
The sad thing is that the Linux-version of FC stopped at version 8.x and after that all development on that platform ceased, and FC are now only developing the 9.x-series for OSX and Windows.
Sooner rather than later the 8.x-version will be considered obsolete by newer servers, and they will stop accepting connections from that client.
January 19, 2009 at 9:53 pm
I would like to know if anyone knows who to contact to offer help on continuing to develop the Linux version. Thanks
May 9, 2009 at 9:39 pm
9.124 is currently available for linux