Synchronized Calendar with GUI

[Member dknestaut]

Howdy,

Might anyone be able to suggest a calendar application for Linux that stores its information in a single file, has a GUI, and can be read on an Android device without involving CalDAV?

Currently, I’m using pal. It stores everything in a single text file that I synchronize across devices with Syncthing, and I access it on Android using the UserLAnd app (Debian in a chroot environment). It gets the job done, but I wouldn’t mind having some options, and something with a GUI might be a nice change. CalDAV is possible, but I’d rather keep it simple. Any suggestions will be happily investigated.

Thanks!

• This topic was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by Brian Masinick. Reason: Chat
• This topic was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by Brian Masinick.

[Member madibi]

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If you have an android phone, you probably have a google account, that provides both calendar and contacts.
I personally use thunderbird on linux, with lighting (you’ll find it in extentions).
With it I have all my Items: pc linux (also pc win or mac), phone, tablet (and IPhone) connected. You can make a change in one of them and you’ll find the relevant modifications everywhere.

May be also other mails do the same, I don’t know
m

[Member PPC]

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I agree with madibi – Thunderbird is not the lightest e-mail application out there, but it’s Lightning extension does allow you to access Goggle’s Calendar (you can read it and perform changes to the calendar using Lightning).
The “con” side is that you do have to start an e-mail app to get to your calendar, the “pro” sude is that you can also make Gmail work with Thunderbird, getting both your e-mails and calendar integrated into antiX, if you install the “Cloud” package (included in the package ft10-transformation, available on the repository) you even get google drive available on your file manager…

Of course I do have to warn that using Google services does deprive you of any privacy (unless you use encription- example- encrypt your e-mail and files that you store on google drive)

Edit: the current beta of FT10 transformation pack does include a more evolved antiX-Calendar, that stores events on a simple text file that you can import/export to your heart’s content, but it’s very basic- it does not, currently, allow recurring events, for example…

P.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by PPC.

[Member madibi]

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OT: may be my post should be moved to ” In a Greek kafeneio” chat

————————————-
PPC wrote

Of course I do have to warn that using Google services does deprive you of any privacy (unless you use encription- example- encrypt your e-mail and files that you store on google drive)
————————————–

@PPC
I apologize. It’s the 2nd time that I write something about your statement in this forum, and that my opinion is not the main thought of everyone here.
I think that in the very 1st moment that you buy an android smart phone you start to choose a road, mainly to pay budget or free (“fake-free”) what you get.
The reality is that you should pay for what you got: if you dont want it, please dont get it.
If they ask to be paid whit your data, why not?
Google is not the devil, it is a company that stay on the market and gives to thousand of families incomes for their lives.
I dont like to take/use someone else product of their job, and then say that i dont want to pay for it.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by madibi.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by madibi.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by madibi.

[Member PPC]

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@madibi: I do agree that this off topic messages should be moved to another thread.

On what you said- I agree: there are very little “free lunches”- if you get something cheap or for free, if you don’t pay with money (and it’s not open source and free, like antiX, LibreOffice, etc), you are paying in some other way- I don’t mind paying with my attention- seeing adds- I’ve been doing that, when watching TV my entire life. I don’t also mind paying with my data, if I expressly choose to do so (I have Brave installed in my system so I can play, for free Stadia games, and access Gmail).
That was (paying with your attention, seeing adds), for some years, the way free stuff worked on-line. But this began to get more insidious- companies like Meta, Google, Apple and Microsoft, etc are tracking every single thing users do, even when they are not using their services directly, because they are now companies that sell targeted advertisements (tailored to the profile they created about each one of their users) – that I don’t agree with.

Are you aware that, even if you have GPS off on your android device (no matter if it’s a phone or a tablet) it is in fact still on and constantly sending your precise location to Google? Are you in doors, without a GPS signal? The addresses of near by wi-fi networks are used to track your position. Are you ok with that? I’m not… Do you want to turn it off? You can’t (not completely, not without installing another OS in your phone).

Yes, I have android devices, but I still try to avoid using Google services as much as I can- there are open source alternatives that do exactly the same thing that Youtube, Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Maps, Weather, Play store, some Games etc, and do not track you.
Do you know, for example, that Apple can (and does) track every single file on their idevices? Originally, and officially this began as a way of reaching the (commendable) goal of fighting child porn. But once a company can check every little thing you have on your device, what stops them from doing so, even if you don’t want to lent them do so? And you can’t say Apple users should let Apple do that, because they bought a cheap device.
In particular idevices seem to be transmitting your location even when they are turned off- the only way to stop them doing that is run the batery down to compelte 0%…

I’ll go one step further: Imagine mobile devices makers being forced, by the Country they operate in, to warn the police if someone is sending a message to set up a manifestation again War, or Corruption on the government… Or if you are gay and take a picture with your loved one in a country where being gay is a crime, and the Company that made your phone tells the cops about it… Or if you take pictures of the army that is invading your country and your phone relates your exact position and personal data (name and address, not just an IP) to the government of the invading country… Does that sound scary now?

A country (you can “google” which one), during the start of the pandemic, made it mandatory to have a tracking system on mobile devices, with the promises that would be for “health reasons” only. Now, that country made all that tracking data available to the police… Hum… “Not my problem, that is useful for stopping crimes? I have nothing to hide!” You may think? Ok, I can disagree but respect that position… But what about in states (that I won’t name here) where there’s also a “though police”?

Another country had location data from about 80% of it’s citizens, also obtained from a “Covid-19 tracking” application (people can see from my previous posts, that I’m a believer on the scientific method, on applying critical thinking to every day events, I had people close to me suffer from Covid, and I’m fully vaccinated, and take every possible care not to get contaminated, even though I hate masks, I wear one, anyway, I digress- my problem is with any way to track citizens without a Court order)… They promised that that personal data “was safe”… and guess what- they got hacked- now hacker’s somewhere know exactly where you’ve been for the last 2 years or so, if you live in that particular country – Scare, but also happened already… I’m not making this up, you can search on-line…

Facebook’s app on idevices had “a bug, not a feature”, that, without users knowing turned on the camera, took a picture and uploaded it to their servers– does that sound ok to you, just because you are using a “free service”?

Do you know that, when Facebook (now Meta) acquired Whatsup, they had to promise they would not share that app’s data with Facebook… Guess what they ended up doing?

I did not read up on this (I would have to read a huge EULA, to make sure this one is true)- but I read on-line that, if you use MS office On-line (now Office 365 on-line), all the files you create are owned by Microsoft (they are, in fact, in MS owned hardware, but that still seems too weird to be true, specially here in the EU, with all our privacy laws).

These examples are not conspiracy theories (I wish they were), nor a bad “Black mirror” episode. Unfortunately, this is the real world, and are real problems that, if not already happening, will do so in the very near future (months to short years).

Knowing all that, I’m not against Apple or Google – I’m against people being stripped of the their fundamental right to privacy, because they have a mobile device on them (which most people on developed countries do, there’s almost no way around that).
I think private companies do have the right to make a profit, yes. I work, I like to make a profit (even if I make 0 euros from my contributions to the Open Source world). But I also know most “non geek” people (some 95% of device users in the world) have no idea how tracked they are.
Many times, if you want, for example, do to on-line banking, you have to have a phone app for that- that’s “expected” even by banks, and also by state services, etc.
Do you know that, in order to have a banking app, on an android device, it probably requires google services to be running (and google services, of course, share data with Google Services, like your device ID, that is directly linked to your name, and also that you are paying for something and where you are doing that. Is that technically needed? No. here in Portugal, my bank’s app does require Google Services, but the biggest on-line payment service did not, with worked fine without google services turned off. Guess what, after last update? It now does not work without Google Services being active in my device.
Even Streaming services complain that they need Google Services to run on android devices – and do they? Nope, they run just fine with them off, and you are paying cash for that service, it’s not even remotely “free”.

Also, check out the large amount of “free” apps on the android store that does not work without Google Services and an Internet Connect (so they can upload all your data to their servers and then sell it to the highest bidder).

Even people that pay for MS Windows 11 have, by default, every single character that they type recorded and sent to MS servers (once again, you can “google” that fact)- does MS really need (or even deserve) to have that info about you?… and what happens if a non democratic Country’s Government demands access to every single thing their people type on a computer??? Well, antiX does not need that, to be what probably is one of the very best OS’s in the World, on any device, so why does Google need it, or MS?

That’s why I talk about the lack of privacy when using certain types of services… I’m not bashing any particular company, I’m trying to make people be more aware of what they agree to when they use a “free service”.

Let me finish with this one- at least, to some degree, Google is “honest”. I recall the time when their motto was “Don’t be evil”. They removed that motto long ago, I wonder why…
I use, every day, Google and, sometimes, Microsoft and Meta services, when I have to, but I do so fully knowing what I’m getting myself into, and always try to minimize the exposure of my personal data (that’s more than most people out there). They are not Evil, nor the Devil. They are just private companies that most countries in the world didn’t notice gathered more info on their citizens than most Intelligence Services can… All in the name of profit.

P.

Edited to add even more examples about privacy problems on-line and on mobile devices, reedited to clarify some points and correct some typos.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by PPC.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by PPC.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by PPC.

[Member dknestaut]

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I was wondering where my thread went. Sigh.

Well, now that it’s been made political, and like most politics, useless to me, I might as well add to the noise.

Personally, I have no problem with Google’s privacy policies. Most of the at-hand arguments from privacy advocates fail to move me because their arguments tend to be either hypothetical, or the weight of their arguments require an absence of privileged that I enjoy and a pile of conceit that I lack. I’ve yet to hear a convincing argument that isn’t from science fiction. Add to that what I feel is a reasonable effort on Google’s/Alphabet’s part to lay out what it collects (everything) and what it does with that data (everything), and I just have to shrug and say *caveat emptor*.

What gets me about Google, however, are the things that few people discuss. For starters, what *are* my options for multiple device calendering with a GUI? Google, and, uh… all the Google-like things. I have few choices. This is the hallmark of a monopoly.

Go a week without using any of Google’s/Alphabet’s products. No, I don’t mean toss up a Nextcloud or Freedombox instance, brush your hands, and call it a day. Go without *all* of them. No Google web fonts. No Google web servers. None of its infrastructure. Almost half the Internet goes dark if you properly boycott Google. The argument of, “You don’t *have* to use Google’s products,” is an argument made by people who only see the tip of the iceberg and assume that is all there is.

But what *really* gets my goat about Google is the environmental impact of surveillance capitalism. All of the servers churning away 24/7 for the hopes of getting me to click on a stupid ad for something I don’t need. How many kilowatts in CPU cycles? How many kilotons of carbon belched into the atmosphere so that I and millions of others will sit through one more cat video and see yet another ad for car insurance?

What set me off on Google was not Edward Snowden, but my Chromebook. I have a Lenovo N21 in my closet. Perfectly fine little laptop. Only 5 years old. And it will *never* see another software update. It’s reached EOL, and there’s nothing I can do with it. No one made an alternate BIOS (that I can find) that will allow me to flash and install antiX or anything else. It’s too old to run Android apps or a Linux VM. I tried to install cruton on it, but the script points to obsoleted repos, and I have neither the chops nor the desire to figure it out. Essentially, I have a fully functional laptop with a joke OS on it, and there’s nothing I can do with it but recycle it or toss it in the rubbish.

Planned obsolescence.

I still use a 13-year-old Acer Aspire1. And I can do that thanks to the devs and the people who make antiX and all the things under it (Thank you!). I have an 18-year-old Dell Dimension2400 that, a bit sluggish, still runs because I can repair and replace and keep it out of the landfill while reducing the demand for new electronics.

The battery on my phone used to make it (sometimes at a crawl) to the end of the day on a single charge. After I deGoogled it, the battery will now easily go two days. Two full days on a single charge. My battery life *more than doubled* when I took away Google’s constant pinging and uploading and downloading. How many CPU cycles were wasted on surveillance capitalism? Multiply that by all the Googled phones in the world? How much electricity is that?

When I pick up one of my spouse’s devices to look at something, I’m shocked by the Internet she sees. There are *so many ads* everywhere, and they’re all flashing and moving and videos are autoplaying and it’s all utter chaos and I ask her, “How can you stand that?” She shrugs and says, “You stop seeing it after a while.”

How many CPU cycles?

I dislike Google not because I’m afraid that they’ll peer in on my private moments and discover how utterly dull my life (thankfully) is, but rather I dislike them because I dislike monopolies, and I *especially* dislike monopolies who abuse their market power without regard for their environmental impact, and I wish that impact was more often the central topic around Google rather than some privacy scare more at home in a Corey Doctorow novel.

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