Lightning (or lack of) on Suse 10.3

I spoke too soon in my last post. I installed the Lightning extension for Thunderbird and thought everything was good to go. At first glance everything in the calendar addon looked as it should. I should have configured it before posting though because it doesn’t work. It doesn’t respond when I try to add events or tasks, and the calendar view is mashed up in one corner.

For some reason the build that Rob had working on his suse 10.3 isn’t on the project page anymore and we won’t get into the details of why I can’t just get the xpi from him. I tried the nightly and every build in the project history but no luck. What a bummer since I was looking forward to the updates since the version I was running on Windows. Needless to say, neither of us is currently running Lightning. It’s beyond me to tell you what is causing the problem or what to do to repair it. I can however, point you towards other apps:

I went back to GoogleCalendar for a few days but missed the look and feel of Lightning. I’m also wary of creating a dependence on Google. And I hate that they know everything about me. Reading around for other Linux calendar options I decided to try out Korganizer — and I’m very pleased. I think even if Lightning were an option I might stick with Korganizer. The look and feel is very similar to Lightning, and I can have it open with or without running the mail client. Sometimes I work better if I shut down the email — but I still like being able to add to my task list so this is working out well so far.

There’s support for import and export of calendars using iCal so that will be the next step.

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5 Comments

  1. Hey I just found something interesting. I followed your Lightning link and looked at their “Other Systems” section. I found this http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/releases/0.7/contrib/linux-x86-64/ – maybe the xpi in there actually works on Linux x86-x64.

    They have some logic on that download link that guesses your OS because I clicked on the Linux download link and still got brought to the Windows download page. Maybe their logic is flawed for the 64-bit Linux detection so it takes you to the 32-bit Linux download area. Though I don’t know why x86-64 is under a “contrib” folder… anyhow, give it a shot if you want.

  2. yep — that worked. But I’m amazed you found it. Looking in the contrib folder for a download (when others are right there in front of you) is not self-evident.

    thanks. now at least you can get your install back. I’m torn. I might stick with Korganizer.

  3. You might not need to choose. If you can publish the ics file then you might be able to just use Korganizer or Lightning as you choose – with both showing the same data.

  4. And that is exactly what I’m doing. I’ve (finally) got my desktop and laptop calendars synced up.

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