Recently in Lightning calender add-on Category

We all know that due to the copyright of the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation/whatever-it-is, that the Debian project decided awhile ago to drop the copyrighted logos and names from the very popular Mozilla products, hence:

Firefox = Iceweasel
Thunderbird = Icedove
Seamonkey = Iceape

And it turns out the Mozilla standalone calendar application Sunbird as well as the Lightning version of that app that works inside of Thunderbird/Icedove has its own Debian-dubbed name:

Iceowl.

It took me long enough to figure that out.

I had been using Lightning in my Ubuntu Karmic installation ... a newer version presumably because when I went into the Synaptic Package Manager to install the Iceowl extension for Icedove (see ... I've dropped the Mozilla names entirely and am now speaking Debian), I added Iceowl, restarted Icedove and was told by a dialog that my data in Lightning (yep, back to Mozilla-speak) was created by a newer version of the extension and would be corrupted, hence Icedove/Thunderbird was turning Iceowl/Lightning off to avoid such corruption.

Now I only had a couple of things in Iceowl/Lightning — standing meetings that I'm always forgetting about — so losing any data didn't concern me.

A big of Googling told me that files in my .mozilla-thunderbird profile folder ending with .sbd held the Lightning/Iceowl data. I pulled the following from my profile folder and parked them elsewhere, lest I need them again.

The two files I removed were:

storage.sbd
storage.sbd.msf

Then I started Icedove again. I had Iceowl/Lightning working, but just as in Ubuntu, I couldn't create an "event" on the calendar, rendering it useless, when I installed directly from Mozilla's extension/add-on site. In the case of Ubuntu, Lightning only worked when I used Synaptic to install from the Ubuntu repositories.

But in Debian Lenny, I only used the repositories, no Mozilla-direct files at all.

Back to the Googling. I quickly learned from Mozilla's Calendar Weblog that there's a library package that must be installed before you install Lightning/Iceowl:

You need to install the libstdc++5 package from the repositories first. Reinstall Lightning afterwards. Posted by: ssitter | April 10, 2008 7:04 AM

I completely uninstalled Iceowl, then used Synaptic to install libstdc++5 and then installed iceowl-extension.

I launched Icedove, and right away the calendar display a) looked a whole lot better (it was looking a little funky previously) and b) actually worked, allowing me to create new "events" and trigger alarms for said events.

I'm puzzled. I checked the dependencies of iceowl-extension, and it lists the following:

Depends: libstdc++6 (>=4.1.1)

A quick check of Synaptic shows that I have both libstdc++6 and libstdc++5 installed.

I'm not quite sure what's going on.

There is a Debian bug report on this very issue, #547616 iceowl-extension: Can't open, add or use calendar and tasks.

I replied to the bug with my "findings."

Here's my problem. I need a calendar app that rudely beeps to tell me when to go to meetings and such.

In Ubuntu, that means the Evolution mail client, which has an extensive calendar function, or so I'm told.

But I don't run Evolution. I use Thunderbird to manage my mail, and Thunderbird doesn't have a calendar function ... or does it?

Allow me to digress briefly: I first tried the Orage calendar app from Xfce, which I already have on this Ubuntu box because I have Xfce (but not the full Xubuntu) on it. But Orage, while working generally well for what I need it to do, for some reason is incapable of playing sounds to alert me to ... my alerts.

I did a bunch of Googling, checked bug reports. Nothing about Orage and a lack of sound in Ubuntu.

So I moved on.

I learned about Mozilla's Sunbird project, which is a full-fledged calendering app, and I also learned that there is a Thunderbird add-on called Lightning (Thunderbird and Lightning ... get it?) that brings Sunbird's calendar features to the Mozilla mail client.

Well, I downloaded the add-on, added it to Thunderbird ... and I was unable to create an event. Full stop.

So I backtracked. I removed the add-on and did what I should have done in the first place: I went through the Synaptic Package Manager and added the lightning-extension package, which brings along with it the calendar-timezones and calender-google-provider packages. (Presumably this means Google's calendar can somehow feed off of this ... I'll explore that later.)

I'll repeat for the West Coast audience: If you're running Thunderbird in Ubuntu, downloading and installing the Lightning calendar add-on from Mozilla won't work. Instead use the version in Ubuntu's repository.

Since I generally run Thunderbird all the time for my mail, having my calendar/alerts in there is the perfect solution.

Once I installed the three packages, I started Thunderbird. Right away the app asked whether or not I wanted to import my calendar settings from Evolution. Since I have nothing there, I declined.

Once in Thunderbird, I had Lightning. It works. I did a test event, sound worked, and I'm ready to start creating recurring events and alerting myself to their imminence (and/or eminence).

All this makes me think about the huge value we as users get from Mozilla. I'm waiting for music-manager/iTunes-killer Songbird to get better, and I'm already benefiting from Sunbird in the form of Lightning. ... and that's all on top of Thunderbird and Firefox. Very nice, indeed.

The quick version: To add calendar functionality to Thunderbird in Ubuntu, don't add Mozilla's Lightning add-on directly. Instead, add it through Ubuntu's own repositories, in my case using Synaptic to add the lightning-extension package and its dependencies. Then you'll be calendar-ready in Thunderbird.

The take-away: Don't want to use Evolution (I prefer a true cross-platform application for e-mail, and Thunderbird fits that bill very well) but want calendar functionality in your mail client? Thunderbird and Lightning seem to play well together.

Follow along: Developers of Sunbird and Lightning update things at the Calendar Weblog.