New calendar app for Linux

[fox]

I read about this one in one of Linux magazines. It's called MineTime. It is proprietary, but it runs on a lot of platforms and it supposedly allows you to add events with regular descriptive text. It links with various other calendar programs, including Google Calendar, which is what I use as my base. It has other features as well, that I have yet to explore. I just installed it on Ubuntu, and I'll have to play with it to see whether its worth using as my main calendar. If you want to try it out, get it here.

[Jason]

I'm intrigued. I've seen the calendar programs that come with various desktop environments but either didn't like them or they didn't sync to Google Calendar, an absolute must for me. Thanks for the link, When I have a chance to try it, I'll mention my thoughts here.

[Jason]

Been using MineTime for about a week now. It works well. I haven't really tried the descriptive text to add events but it's a nice alternative to Google Calendar although I don't yet see a compelling reason to use it over Google Calendar (unless you use different calendars on multiple devices). Still, it's splendid to have other options especially if you need an offline calendar. Thanks, Fox!

[fox]

My one big complaint with it is that it doesn't save window size changes through a reboot. What I like about it better than Google Calendar is that I get it with one click, rather than opening a browser and then getting it.

[ssfc72]

Thanks for the tip about another Calendar for Linux.
From the description it looked like I might be able to run MineTime, as a stand alone calendar, without having to sync with other calendar programs such as Google or Microsoft.  Unfortunately after installing it and then starting it for the first time, it insists on linking to some other mainstream calendar account, using that account user and password.  Very scary.

I will just have to make do with the Rainlendar2 calendar, until some better, stand alone calendar program, comes along.

[Jason]

Just curious - why's that scary? I mean, if you're using an Android phone, you've already using Google Calendar whether you want to or not. And MineTime isn't using your password for anything, they're just using it to login to the appropriate service. I mean, I guess you can decide to trust them or not but their privacy policy looks pretty good:

When you link an external calendar provider like Google Calendar, Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, iCloud or other CalDAV calendars, we collect the unique identifier and the email address or username of these accounts. Any password or access token, instead, is only stored in the local keychain of your operating system and never leaves your computer. In other words, we cannot access your account remotely with the information that we collect. When available from the calendar provider, we collect the name and company of the user associated with the account. We also collect general statistics like the number of calendars in one account or the total number of events and contacts in each calendar.

They also use the the European General Data Protection Regulation (EU-GDPR) standards which are the toughest in the world. Switzerland also has extremely tight privacy regulations of its own even for any data that might be saved on their servers although the login info never leaves your computer.

[ssfc72]

On my Android phone, i have deleted the Google account, for the phone, once i have all the apps downloaded, that i want.
So the Google Caledar app has no way to upload my calendar entries.

[Jason]

How do you update your apps? I thought you needed a Google account for that. I guess not 

[ssfc72]

I generally don t update the apps, unless they stop working properly.

[Jason]

I generally don t update the apps, unless they stop working properly.

I can understand that being an easier approach but personally, I wouldn't recommend it. Applications on Android are typically written in Java. Java applications need to be updated on a regular basis because of found vulnerabilities. It's a powerful language but with great power comes great responsibility. It's certainly your choice, but just as with Linux, I wouldn't trust a system that isn't being constantly updated.

[Jason]

Fox, do you have issues with MineTime syncing consistenly?

I will add an event to my tablet's calendar but it doesn't show up in MineTime and I see no way to force a sync. I used to try closing it completely (have to use tray to do this) and restarting it. This procedure worked before but not now.

[fox]

I just tried it for the first time and it did sync. I entered the event on my computer and it synced with my phone.

[Jason]

It did at first for me, too, but seemed to stop working. Do you mean you entered an event in MineTime and it synced to your phone? That way I had no problem with but getting it to read appointments setup on my tablet doesn't seem to be happening now.

But to be honest, my phone doesn't seem to be syncing with calendar events on my tablet I just noticed. Geez, this is annoying. I've tried making sure all the sync options are setup on my phone and data saver is off so no idea what is going on. The whole point of an online calendar and apps is so they sync, otherwise, I might as well have an offline one or just go to the google calendar website. Grumble, grumble. 

[Jason]

Figured out the syncing issue. It has nothing to do with MineTime. Turns out my tablet where I was putting my schedule on was setting events to local calendars instead of syncing to the online calendar. I found out about this entirely accidentally.

[fox]

Glad to hear. I didn't have the same problem; an event entered in MineTime did sync with my Google Calendar.