Kontakt / PIM

[Tahaan]

Why would I want to use Kontakt or any PIM on Ubuntu? It doesn't make sense.

I've accepted the fact that Google will know a lot of things about me, so keeping my data "out of the cloud" is not an issue. I don't care if any government read my emails - Sure they might have a good laugh and/or roll their eyes when they read some of my stuff. Should anything come out in public, for the most part it would be really boring to anyone else, a few things might be a bit embarrassing if my customers, employer, friends or family saw it but I'm sure they will get over it.

What I'm trying to say is I'm happy with giving my information over to Google. I don't get spammed with ads about stuff I don't want, in stead I get lots of targeted ads. I appreciate it because now the ads I see are actually interesting to me. I enjoy the freedom and flexibility of having my data available on "any device" and synchronise between my cloud services and my phone.

I do not want to download my email or list of contacts. It lives in my Google Account, and I have quick access to it whenever I need it. Why would I want to bog down my system with the task of indexing and searching through my mails/contacts/etc? Why would I want to spend the bandwidth on downloading everything? Why would I want to be bothered by the issues of keeping track of what went wrong when synchronisation tasks fails, needs to be re-run or diagnosed or managed?

My calendar pops up on my phone and in my browser. So what reasons is there to have all this PIM stuff which seems to me to be a lot of work for the Kubuntu Apps developers, a drain on KDE resources, a battle to keep up with the specs and features of the services that these applications need to compete with and/or integrate with, and for what?

Really my bug bear is that I don't know how many people actually care about Kontact / KDE PIM. But it seems to be holding back other efforts to move the desktop forward. And this highlights another issue:

Efforts, such as maintaining and developing a PIM software suite, may depend on features in a desktop environment, but the desktop environment should not be affected by the software suite

.

[GreyGeek]

You may not be so happy when they start censoring your emails, like Google, Facebook and Twitter are now censoring their social media sites.

[Tahaan]

You may not be so happy when they start censoring your emails, like Google, Facebook and Twitter are now censoring their social media sites.

Who is "they"? Your government? My government? Your Mail provider? Mine? One of our ISPs? The owner of the transatlantic link this message flies over?

I don't think Kontakt or KDE PIM solves this issue.

What would be painful, and what you may be alluding to, is if Google were to block my access or lose my data, I would be in some trouble. The inconvenience would be staggering, but that is why I use Google on my own domain name (And no, that wouldn't make it easy if I lost access to my stuff in Google's datacenters, but at least I'm not dead in the water)

[claydoh]

Who is forcing you to use it?

KDEPIM is developed completely independently from KDE's Plasma, Applications, and Frameworks. Kubuntu creates packages for it as do the other distros that provide KDE things.

The PIM developers work on it because they want to so it is not a drain on other things.

For each and every valid reason one can present for not using a pim suite there are an equal amount of valid reasons for using one.

Don't like it? Uninstall it.
I don't see a problem here.

Fwiw I use Kontact because of the ui for the most part. That's just me though. I like having all my different email addresses - gmail is not the only email provider out there - having the same interface. There are other little things I like and use that I don't see in the various web interfaces.

[acheron]

AFAIR, the PIM team is pretty self contained, or at least them working on that does not detract from other parts of the KDE project.

[Tahaan]

AFAIR, the PIM team is pretty self contained, or at least them working on that does not detract from other parts of the KDE project.

and

KDEPIM is developed completely independently from KDE's Plasma, Applications, and Frameworks. Kubuntu creates packages for it as do the other distros that provide KDE things.

The PIM developers work on it because they want to so it is not a drain on other things.

Posts like this suggest that things like the PIM affects the other parts of KDE, if not directly, then due to impacting on packaging and roll out schedules.

Fwiw I use Kontact because of the ui for the most part. That's just me though. I like having all my different email addresses - gmail is not the only email provider out there - having the same interface. There are other little things I like and use that I don't see in the various web interfaces.

I'd love to hear what these missing things are!

[woodsmoke]

One of "the points" of a PIM "on a machine" is that one can work "within" a localized system.

When one first opens the PIM on any distro or on windblows for that matter the first option is "local".

If one wishes to use an external service, after all most of us are not all "that" into setting up our own servers, one can use the "option" of Google or my college's MS Outlook system.

It just so happens that my first son is a relly top tier computer programmer and back before the Clinton Bubble Bust, he had a "server farm". He was able to see the coming of the Clinton Bust and therefore sold it off.

But, quite a few of the machines were "early" and the buyer didn't want them so he gave a bunch to me and they made up the bulk of the computers that I modded and donated with Linux on them.

But, to the point, he set up a "private e-mail server" .....lol not as doof as Hillary's ....she got taken so large on that it isn't funny, and so my boy who is the astronomer and I both got a machine and we set up our own e-mail system on it with no links to the outside except "going through the net".

It was built around Eudora and he had tweaked it quite heavily. LOL that was so FAR back in the day that the app was on a 3.5 floppy! lol

However....leaping forward to today....I use Google mail and the college's IMAP account and Yahoo on the KDE PIM because well....it's too much work, besides the machine became quite crusty! lol

So, there is a prime reason for "linux" to actually produce such things as a PIM, an outgrowth of the whole e-mail thing and the physical book being merged.

Linux is all about choice!

woodsmoke

[Tahaan]

One of "the points" of a PIM "on a machine" is that one can work "within" a localized system.

... snip ...

So, there is a prime reason for "linux" to actually produce such things as a PIM, an outgrowth of the whole e-mail thing and the physical book being merged.

Linux is all about choice!

woodsmoke

I get that, I am all for choice. My concern really is more about something like a PIM apparently affecting the availability of an updated desktop environment to those of us who won't use said PIM.

[claydoh]

and



Posts like this suggest that things like the PIM affects the other parts of KDE, if not directly, then due to impacting on packaging and roll out schedules.

I don't know how you got that idea from that post. It is the qt in Ubuntu's archive that is holding things up at the moment.

Porting qt is the real workload is something Kubuntu devs don't normally have to worry about, I believe. Ubuntu uses it so we can't just push a new version out without possibly breaking all the non plasma software that uses it.






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[Tahaan]

I don't know how you got that idea from that post.

I got it from this words:

However, KDE Applications have thrown us a few problems, especially with KDE PIM (Kontact) which has been restructured into new packages. There are a LOT of changes in the pipeline and we don't release software when there are known issues. Rather than breaking installs or trying to make a release without PIM, it was decided to concentrate on getting PIM fixed and transition to Qt5.6.1

I don't see how that DOESN'T give you the idea that PIM causes problems. Did you even read it?

[GreyGeek]

Who is "they"? Your government? My government? Your Mail provider? Mine? One of our ISPs? The owner of the transatlantic link this message flies over?

I don't think Kontakt or KDE PIM solves this issue.

What would be painful, and what you may be alluding to, is if Google were to block my access or lose my data, I would be in some trouble. The inconvenience would be staggering, but that is why I use Google on my own domain name (And no, that wouldn't make it easy if I lost access to my stuff in Google's data centers, but at least I'm not dead in the water)

The antecedent of "they" comes from your post, i.e., Google. Google is already censoring posts and videos that are not aligned with the MNM narrative. Other "news" sites which have pledged themselves to censoring "hate" speech are listed here.

I used Google for about ten years, almost from its inception, and had a G+ blog to which I posted frequently, used a lot of their free apps, their GDrive, their Talk, VOIP, GoogleEarth, etc... They had ten years of my passwords, including the passwords to my wifi router login and admin pages. When Google/YouTube announced their censorship policy I downloaded my emails, my passwords, my GDrive files and then canceled and deleted my account.

Here is an example of a censored video. It is a cellphone video taken by three thugs who drove around stealing Trump signs, except that at one stop an old lady was on her porch and came down to stop them. A brave thug hit her in the head and knocked her to the ground, then ran off with her signs, laughing all the way back to the car. I know that because I saw the video before YouTube deleted it. An unusual number of videos have been deleted for a variety of reasons that are not well defined and capriciously applied. FirstDraftNews, created a couple months after Hillary announced her candidacy for POTUS, has a mission of "collaborating" videos posted by ordinary people who used their cellphones to capture events in real time, from their physical position. YouTube & Google are showing by example what "collaborating" means. Google (YouTube), Facebook and Twitter announced that they were joining forces to censor the web. I assume you understand that political descent which disagrees with the Left is not racist or xenophobic "hate" speech.
(If you really want to see it then go to keepvid.com, sign up, get the pro version, and download it)

Note: you can no longer find the original video clips WITHOUT the Left Wing commentary because they've been deleted.

FirstDraftNews is teaching its acolytes to prevent linking on their websites to offensive websites by adding "rel=nofollow" to the <a ref=.....> link. That way they can mention the source without allowing a jump to the "offending" website from theirs.

Not so amazingly, while thoughtful videos are demonitized or deleted, stuff like this "advertiser friendly" video remains.

[woodsmoke]

Two items not related to each other.

A) As to "division of labour", without getting into listings of stuff, there really ARE people who are just into "making a Linux" thing. They are, maybe....don't know, half? of the total number of people who "make linux". They are kind of like the ideal of the classic "wandering Ronin". They are very good at what they do and they will do it for someone if it piques their interest. So, whether a PIM exists or not is of no relvance to them, do what they wilt is the whole of the law.

I would opine, probably wrongly, that maybe a third are people who are actually paid to do a Linux thing, again, they work on what they are told, PIM or not.

There is a smaller group who only work on "one thing". An example is a distro which is now defunct. the ONLY thing about that diostro was that the people were going to strip ANYthing away that they did not perceive as being "free", and that tis a whole 'nother discussion. I know this because I ran their distro for a while and would post what was working or not and at one time was very CURTLY told that they could care less about my comments as to whether it worked and I should probably go elsewhere. However, that distro may have indirectly lead to GNASH.

Another example is certain clients for the MPD, that is what they work on, that is it, end of story.

And there is the smallest group which is those who are "learning' Linux and sometimes contribute code which may or may not be useful.

HOWEVER, what you are talking about does occasionally happen and an example was ......"bluetooth" I remember when that was a full court press and all hands on deck.

A SIDE NOTE about this is a fellow like the guy who wrote the Cathedral and the Bazaar which had a vogue a few years ago. It was all about how getting those of "pure mind and spirit" would just naturally work on this or that in Linux as opposed to the crass Microsith world.

I really thought that was a cool thing, since I have always eschewed anything from a predatory software situation, but then after I saw people who were desperately trying to get people on board with an app or a distro ( I've been involved in the development of a couple ) and they could NOT get any traction.

I happened to RE-read the book and discovered something............the REASON that people flocked to the author's particular app was not the app, it was his personal charisma.

The point of this ramble is that there is a lot of "ego" and a lot of "vagary" involved in the fits and starts of how Linux is developed and not a small amount of filthy luchre.

B) The tangential part of the thread about "them"

In my life as a wandering Ronin I have developed a lot of chemical technique and a certain farmer approached me about testing the water on an intermittent spring his farm for "pollutants"

You can insert carbon dioxide here but that is not it.

It has a certain "odour" particularly that of hydrogen sulfide.

He was sure that it was coming from a "holding tank" of a factory on the other side of the river from him.

He offered to pay me but I demurred and said that I would do it for free and went and collected.

Using the lab at a local college and my own little doof school, I ran a full series for anions and cations and also all of the standard "sanitary waste" tests.

The only "stuff" in the water was the normal "hard water" stuff and also .....hydrogen sulfide and....fecal coliform. hmmm

I took him out to the spring and pointed at where the chemical plant was and where the town was and reminded him of two salient facts.

The plant was DOWNstream from where the intermittent spring was, and that UPstream was the town and that the town was all on septic systems.

He argued that the area has caves and that an underground cave under the tank could be doing it. Well, I said ok, no fault no foul, you don't owe me anything but that's my opinion.

He then contracted with a water quality place in another state and they said the same thing only charged him a couple of hundred bucks.

It kind of hung there for a while until the company was sued by the EPA for this and had to start incinerating the stuff that they were storing, and I ended up wearing the full encapsulation suit to do some of the initial incineration after I left it went to the "white tyvec suit' and then to ...........cloths....

Well, the local LIBERAL television station jumped like this on like a chicken on a bug and it literally went nation wide there were stations showing up in vans from either coast and telephone calls in the middle of the night from the west coast.

i was asked to be interviewed, and the local anchor, who I actually KNEW tangentially, said that he would visit with me and give me a set of prepared questions, and we discussed them.

When the camera started rolling he lead off with a question that had not been discussed and that was the opposite of what I had told him and what the data was and....he then tried another and i just said that I wasn't going to waste any more of my time. His lead on the local news was with "slanted' information about me, by innuendo, and that I "declined to comment".

Now, the incinerator produces exactly two things...I know, because I did the tail tests and it was ...........um WATER and carbon dioxide...... the products of combustion...i mean an incinerator produces flames from hell, nothing "bad" gets out of there except in the glass that is in the incinerator and is removed as broken glass ....full encapsulation...

So, the local news people, desperate to get a story had a "town hall" and got NO story except from a woman that was a) on wellfare, and a known druggie, who was worried that her kids would die from carbon dioxide, "sniffle sniffle" I certainly don't know what it is but it comes out of "THAT" thing... and surprise............ a week or so later she bought a brand new car cash and left without paying her previous several months rent....

how do I know this? I had her kid in class and he said that it was all a put up job.

Well, FINALLY all of that evil stuff in the holding tank was incinerated and guess what....

no leak....ok it has to be SEEPING...

So the company had to ALSO break up the tank and guess what..........NOTHING in the ground...

EPA leaves, News people leave.... town is left with a ton of expenses but the media had their cokadoodledoo...........which is the only important thing for them now...

folllow the money....

woodsorryaboutthelongstorysmoke

[claydoh]

I got it from this words:



I don't see how that DOESN'T give you the idea that PIM causes problems. Did you even read it?

Of course I did, but I also follow these things a bit closer than a single thread in our forum, being an 'insider' of sorts . So maybe what I see is colored by that.
Still, as I have said the big bugaboo to getting an updated Qt.

If they did not have to transition to Qt 5.6.1, they would be working on getting Plasma et all updated, ironing out the packaging changes etc there as well as updating KDEPIM. They have hit some bumps in the road.. next cycle it could be something else.

What I guess I don't understand is why there is a focus on Kontact being such a big baddie. You don't like it. Fine. You don't see the need for it. Fine.
I don't see pretty much the longest running KDE-only distro NOT packaging one of the major KDE software projects, even if it were not included in the base install

[claydoh]

I'd love to hear what these missing things are!

I'll take the bait:

Filters - the right-click ui to add one for example as well as the options available
Identities - I like having multiple identities so I can have a more formal or less formal signature, as needed (as one example), simply by a drop down menu in the composer
3-pane view - yes there is one in gmail Labs but it looks like hairy dog butt.

I like the consistent ui of a pim suite, especially with multiple email addresses across different , mainly non-web-based providers. Sure gmail can import accounts but only for POP.