software overload

By basd on Feb 23, 2010 | In kde4, linux, opensuse, gnome

So, since my screen is dark in KDE, I've been getting more familiar with LXDE.

...

It's somewhat perplexing, but working really nicely. The perplexing part is that it adopts bits and pieces from KDE4, Gnome and Compiz. I thought initially that it did not have compositing effects, but now it turns out that it does and they work quite nicely. These are turned on and off via Compiz menus, but it appears that its running on the Kwin windows manager. And then again, Kwin decorating is not available, it's using GTK.

The KDE 4 "personal settings" system works, but it's not clear which options are actually available in the LXDE desktop and which are not. For instance, as mentioned, the effects are turned on via Compiz. The screensaver and power management are handled by xscreensaver, which I'm not fond of because it runs a lot of cpu and therefore my idling computer runs a bit hot (as compared with the KDE 4 screensaver). So, that's a strange dichotomy -- when I'm actually using the computer, a lot of programs execute faster in LXDE, but when idling, until it powers down the screen, the screen saver is NOT efficient. Which would be meaningless -- except on my least powerful machine that runs my music collection, we like to run the clock on the screensaver.

Trade-offs everywhere.

But, I've been busy. I've reduced the software necessary to get my calendar data from proprietary-land to openoffice database from six down to two as the result of very convenient google synchronization. The proprietary program recently added a beta to sync with google calendar. It has a manual sync to MS Office, but the one to google is automated. (Aren't open source options convenient?) And, goggle calendar will sync with other stuff, so now the calendar is ending up on my blackberry where I need it and also in Sunbird. I'm working on trying to get it to run through Akonadi and Korganizer, but it does not seem to have set up correctly. And in any event, I ultimately need a CSV output, which I can get from Sunbird but not from Korganizer.

Well, where I really need it is in a database. I have another "route" which is via a php calendar, which gets the data from google calendar to Mysql. But, that particular program handles the date/time in a rather proprietary way, so I will have to write a translator if I use that route.

I wish I could find some software that would sync from Google Calendar to anything in a MySQL or other reasonably convenient database. But, so far I haven't found anything. Manual export to CSV is seeming to be my best option at the moment.

BTW, I was not aware of all the sync options coming out of Google Calendar. As you can see, I learned more at SCALE than the info I passed on (re KDE). In this instance, another person working the booth with me had his Android phone and Korganizer syncing with his Google Calendar, which caused me to take a new look at the options. I was somewhat surprised to find a Blackberry app right there on Google (with some scary warnings about how it would mess up my connection to the enterprise server, but it didn't). Sunbird syncs nicely via webDav. So, lots of new software toys.

Anyway, enough already! Time to not try anything new for a few days.