.. title: Too many meetings
.. slug: too-many-meetings
.. date: 2022-03-13 13:01:13 UTC
.. tags: desktop, linux, web
.. category: 
.. link: 
.. description: 
.. type: text

The number of meetings I'm requested to attend has increased by roughly a factor of five over the last two decades. Instead of five meetings per week I'm currently having five per day on average. It thus doesn't come as a surprise that I depend on an electronic calendar to organize and get reminded of all these appointments.

On my desktops, I'm using the integrated calendar of `evolution <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Evolution>`_ since seven years. Over the time, this implementation of a PIM for the Gnome desktop has proven itself to be reliable and stable, in contrast to `Kontact <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kontact>`_, its KDE counterpart I've `tried to use before <https://cobra.pdes-net.org/posts/revolution.html>`_.

In any case, having a calendar on my desktops is not sufficient anymore, as future appointments are typically arranged after Zoom meetings that I usually attend with my `notebook <https://cobra.pdes-net.org/posts/maxi.html>`_. And even that is not enough: I may want to check my appointments on a whim in the middle of the night, where only my `smartphone <https://cobra.pdes-net.org/posts/resistance-is-futile.html>`_ is immediately accessible. In either case, I do not need a full-blown PIM, but just a calendar client synchronizing with both owncloud/nextcloud and zimbra.

On Linux/GTK, I thought that `gnome-calendar <https://www.linuxadictos.com/en/la-aplicacion-de-calendarios-de-gnome-empieza-el-2020-bien-organizado.html>`_ would be the natural candidate with this functionality. To my surprise it's straightforward to add an owncloud/nextcloud account with the associated calendar, but zimbra is not part of the online account collection of Gnome, nor is a generic CalDAV server. I found that almost impossible to believe, but it's in fact a `longstanding bug <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-online-accounts/-/issues/1>`_ (eight years!) that has still to be acknowledged and addressed by the developers. Fortunately, there's a simple workaround: after installing evolution and adding the zimbra CalDAV server there, it also shows up in gnome-calendar. Apart from this issue, gnome-calendar delivers exactly what I wanted. 

This entire affair is a whole lot easier on Android. `Davx5 <https://f-droid.org/en/packages/at.bitfire.davdroid/>`_ available on F-Droid provides a convenient backend for any number of CalDAV servers, and any calendar app will serve as frontend. It works just as well as gnome-calendar on my notebook, but without any unexpected obstacles during the configuration of the calendars.

I'm now reminded of outstanding appointments wherever I walk and talk. That's progess! Or is it?