Mail client independent address and calendar program?

Question

Dose Ubuntu have any plans in future to integrate a mail client independent address and calendar program?

Answer 1

No such plans exist. If you would like a recommendation on an address book that'll work with the panel applet and a calendar that'll work with the clock applet without forcing you to setup Evolution mail, look at contacts and dates

Answer 2

Nowadays when corporations and "intelligence" agencies intercept our daily communication which is all based to a consitent PIM (Personal Information Management) GNU/Linux OS still cannot provide easy-to-use calendar and addressbook solution.

Contacts in GNU/Linux Ubuntu is un-usable, because one can simply not syncronise it and dates has been discontinued for up-to-date releases.

Meanwhile Apple ceases to provide local synchronisation capability in OS X 10.9 and argues user should just store their data in the cloud. - Well if we want to offer people who want to switch to a free operation system they should get an easy to use option.

Imagine you are using thunderbird and want to sync your calendar and addressbooks to a CalDAV/CardDAV server (on your NAS at home or your hosting provider), such as Owncloud or DAViCal you'd need to install SoGo-connector and on top of that Lightning and hope that all would work. Still your addresses & contacts would not be integrated in your systems calender and your appointment would only appear if your mail-client is running. - How tricky!

Many other client applications have been either discontinued or ceased developpment.

Therefore I come to the conclusion that the most simple and broadly GNU/Linux compatible solution is using mutt with pycarddav and khal. - There is nothing better than the good old command line! And the most reliable solution too!

But I guess the maintainers of GNU/Linux Debian & GNU/Linux Ubuntu should finally think about ways offering working gui solutions for all these users that will switch from proprietary desktop to GNU/Linux!