What I like most about gdeskcal is that it can always reside on your desktop, taking up very little resources, and staying out your way until you need it. Gdesktop doesn’t hover over your application windows or demand your attention unless it is giving you a reminder about an appointment. And gdeskcal is easy to install and configure. So let’s take a look at gdeskcal.

Installing

Most likely you will find gdeskcal in your distribution’s repositories. If you’re using Fedora, and you can not find them in your repos, you can always download the rpm file from pbone.net and install the gdeskcall associated with your release. You can also find the gdeskcal-skins package from pbone.net as well. The gdeskcal-skins package will be necessary if you want to use different themes.

To install gdesktop using your Add/Remove Software utility follow these steps:

1. Open up the utility from the Applications menu
2. Do a search for gdeskcal
3. Select both gdeskcal and gdeskcal-skins (the latter may not show up in your repos)
4. Click Apply to install

If you’re not a fan of the gui tools you can always run the command line installation like so:

sudo apt-get install gdeskcal

which will do the installation for you.

Running gdeskcal

Figure 1

You will find a menu entry for gdeskcal in the GNOME Accessories submenu of the Applications menu. When you click on the gdeskcal will open, revealing an elegant, simple calendar desktop applet (see Figure 1).

When gdeskcal opens you will be treated to the default theme. Most of the themes are transparent in nature so, depending upon your background, you might have to change themes so gdeskcal is easily viewable.

Changing your theme is quite simple. If you right click the gdeskcal applet a menu will appear with an entry “Change Skin”. When you select that entry a new window will open where you can select a skin. Now if you had to install gdeskcal via rpm you most likely will notice a lack of different skins to choose from. Even if you installed the gdeskcal-skins rpm file you still may not see any. The reason for this is that, for some odd reason, the gdeskcal-skins rpm installs the skins in the wrong directory. The default directory for gdeskcal skins is /usr/lib/gdeskcal/skins but the rpm installs them into /usr/share/gdeskcal/skins. In order for gdeskcal to see these skins open up a terminal window, su to root, and issue the command:

mv /usr/share/gdeskcal/skins/* /usr/lib/gdeskcal/skins/

Now all of the skins will appear in the gdeskcal skins window.

Adding an event

Upon first glance you will not see any obvious means to enter an event. Don’t worry, it’s a simple task.

Enter an event

Figure 2

Double click on a date and a new window will open. This new window is where you add events. As is you can not do anything in this window until you click the “New” button. Click that button and the window widow will change so that you can enter the details of the event (see Figure 2).

It should be obvious what you need to enter for an event. After you enter a date you won’t see anything change on the applet. If you hover your mouse over a date, however, a small popup will appear showing you the details of the event.

Final thoughts

Gdeskcal is one of those applications that you will come to rely on – especially if you are en Evolution user. It is a seamless application that takes up little space and little resources.

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With a little preparation this setup will go quickly. Without preparation, it will take some time for Bogofilter to learn SPAM/HAM.

Your preparation

The easiest way to train Bogofilter is to have a collection of SPAM and HAM ready (approximately 200 each for training purposes) for it to use in the training process. These will be placed in SPAM and HAM folders (respectively) to be used once Bogofilter is installed and ready. But before you get to that point, you need to install Bogofilter and the Bogofilter Evolution plugin.

To install the necessary items open up your Add/Remove Software tool. Within this tool do a search for “bogofilter” (no quotes). You should see two particular pieces of software to install: bogofilter and bogofilter-evolution. Mark both of these applications for installation and click Apply to install them.

After they are installed you are ready to set up Bogofilter.

Bogofilter setup

The first thing to do is to enable the Bogofilter plugin in Evolution. Click on the Edit menu and select the Plugins entry. In this new window that opens click the Bogofilter check box to enable to plugin and then close the window.

Figure 1

Now that the plugin is enabled, it’s time to configure it within Evolution. Go back to the Edit menu and select Preferences. When the Preferences window opens up click on the Mail Preferences button and then the Junk tab (see Figure 1).

From within the Junk tab the first thing to do is to select Bogofilter from the Default Junk Plugin dropdown. Now go back to the top and make sure “Check incoming messages for junk” is checked. Close this window after you have completed these steps.

Now you are ready to train Bogofilter.

Training

A lot of people complain that Bogofilter doesn’t work well. The main reason it doesn’t work well is because it hasn’t been trained. Remember those SPAM and HAM emails you collected in the SPAM and HAM folders? Now you are going to use them. First click on the HAM emails. These are all good emails (not SPAM). Select all of these and mark them as Junk. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s necessary. Now click on the Junk folder and you should see all of those emails you just marked as SPAM. Select them all again and mark them as Not Junk. Bogofilter just learned what you consider to not be junk.

Now click on the SPAM folder, select all of these messages, and mark them as Junk.

That’s it. Bogofilter should now be trained properly. And remember the more training you give Bogofilter, the smarter it will be.

Final thoughts

Bogofilter is a great tool for keeping SPAM out of your inbox. And best of all, it doesn’t require you to open up a terminal and issue a bunch of commands in order to get it working properly.

Related posts

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• Connect Evolution to Google mail and calendar (1)

In this article you will learn how to configure the open source groupware client, Evolution, to sync to your Google account so you can keep track of all of those calendars in one, easy location.

I am going to assume you already have Evolution installed. You will need an Evolution installation >= 2.12 in order to have both read and write access to your Google calendar. If your Evolution installation is pre-2.12 you will only have read access to your calendar. This does little good because you will not be able to add events to your Google calendar through Evolution. So if your installation is < 2.12 you will need to upgrade.

Setting up Google

Before you get into configuring Evolution, you have to make a small change to your Google account. You will first need to log onto your Google account (or Gmail account). Once logged in click the Settings link. Within the Settings window click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. For Evolution to be able to retrieve your email you are going to use IMAP to connect. Enable this by clicking the check box for “Enable IMAP”. Once that is finished click “Save Changes”. Now you’re ready to move onto Evolution.

Setting up Evolution for Gmail

We will first set up evolution to connect to your gmail account. Go to the Edit menu and click on Preferences. From within this window you will see the Mail Accounts “tab”. Click this tab and then click the “Add” button, which will open up the mail account wizard. This should be fairly straight forward. Here is the pertinent information you will need to configure for Evolution to be able to work with your Gmail account:

• incoming server: imap.gmail.com
• outgoing server: smtp.gmail.com
  
• username: use your full gmail address
  
• outgoing serer authentication type: Login

Outside of the above configurations, everything else will be configured as you would for your standard account. Once the wizard is complete you can make your Gmail account your default if you choose. By doing this, all outgoing email will default to this address (unless you select a different email address from the From dropdown.

Setting up Evolution for Google Calendar

Figure 1

Configuring a Google calendar is just as simple as is the email account. The first thing you need to do is right click the area that contains the listing of your calendars. When you do this you will see a new pop up menu.  Click “New Calendar” from this menu (see Figure 1) will open up the calendar wizard.

The first thing you will want to do is select Google Calendar. In this same window there are a few items to take care of (see Figure 2):

Name: Just a name for this calendar.

Username: Your Gmail address.

Calendar: Here you will want to click the Retrieve List button to get a list

Figure 2

of your available Google calendars. You will need to supply your gmail password for this to complet. Once it is complete you can select which calendar you want to add from your list of Google calendars.

After you complete the configuration click OK. You should, almost immediately, see your Google calendar populate your Evolution calendar.

And that’s it. You are now ready to interact with Google mail and calendar with Evolution.

Final thoughts

Evolution is one of the finest PIMs available. And if you are a Gmail/Google Calendar user, Evolution is just the solution to keep all of your accounts easy to manage.

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Kontact is the KDE entry in the groupware client race. It is the proverbial tortoise in a race with one giant hare, but as the race continues, Kontact improves and evolves at a faster pace than any of its competition. Does that mean Kontact is ready to usurp your current groupware client? Probably not, but it is definately worth a long, hard look. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the features it offers.

Tools and features

Kontact has the usual suspects when it comes to groupware clients: Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and todos. But along with these tools are a few surprises you might not expect but will gladly welcome.

• Summary: Overview of everything happening in your Kontact including: Upcoming events, new email, news feeds, etc.
• Notes: An infinite book of digital sticky notes. You can also drag and drop your notes into emails!
• News: Collect your RSS feeds in one place.
• KitchenSync: The universal syncing component.
• Journal: Keep your own digital journal within the confines of Kontact.
• Time Tracker: Keep track of time spent on projects and work.

Kontact can also communicate with many groupware servers. The list includes:

Kolab

SuSE Linux OpenExchange Server

eGroupware

OpenGroupware

Citadel

Microsoft Exchange*

* Support for Exchange is only partially implimented at this point.

Novell Groupwise

Obviously the single most important groupware server work must be done on Exchange. Once Kontact can fully commnicate with an Exchange server, Kontact will find far more support in the Enterprise level.

As far as features are concerned, the list is impressive. Outside of the usual groupware client features, Kontact also includes:

Mail

• GnuPG support built in
• Out of office replies
• Favorites folder
• Certificate manager
• Anti virus/Anti spam/Filters managers built in

Calendar

• Publish calendars
• Timeline/Time spent/What’s next views

Contacts

• Distribution lists
• Crypto settings for individual contacts
• Custom fields

Why you should use Kontact

If you are looking for a groupware client that offers more than the standard features, enables you to keep your life well organized (and Thunderbird isn’t enough for you) then Kontact is for you. You will enjoy the stability Kontact offers as well as the outstanding anti-spam tool (SpamAssassin) and anti-virus tool (ClamAV).

Why you should not use Kontact

Figure 1

If you need full Exchange support look the other way. It will be a while before the Kontact team manages to pull off full support for the most-deployed groupware server. You should also avoid Kontact if you prefer a less-is-more approach to your tools. You will understand completely when you first open up Kontact and see it’s “tools aplenty approach” (As you can see in Figure 1 to the left.).

Final Thoughts

I have used Kontact on and off for a number of years. I’ve seen it grow from an unstable, barely usable afterthought to a full-fledge, business-ready groupware client. Until recently I wouldn’t have recommended Kontact to anyone but the biggest KDE afficionados. Now, however, I think most people will find Kontact on par with most groupware clients. Outside of the lack of Exchange support (which is a deal breaker for many) I can’t see a reason not to give Kontact a try.

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Evolution offers the following features:

• Email
• Shared (and private) calendars
• Tasks/Todos
• Contact management
• Support for S/MIME
• Pidgin integration
• SpamAssassin integration
• Fully GNOME integration
• Offline IMAP support
• Integrated GPG
• Support for Groupwise and Evolution built in
• Multiple account support

As you can see, Evolution offers everything you would want/need in a groupware suite. To top that off, the interface is very user-friendly.

To open up Evolution look in the Internet entry in the GNOME start menu. In that entry you should see the Evolution shortcut. When you fire up Evolution for the first time you will have to walk through a very simple setup wizard. This wizard will set up your default email address. Don’t worry, once you have completed the set up you can go back into accounts and set up as many email accounts as you wish.

Evolution Mail client

Evolution will default to the Mail application. As you can see, in the image to the right, The Evolution Mail client looks very familiar. The Evolution UI was created in such a way that users would have an instant familiarity. If you have used Outlook, the learning curve is practically /dev/null.

And Evolution is very easy to configure. From the Edit menu you will find the Preferences entry. Click that and the Preferences window will open up offering you every possible configuration you will need. The Preferences window is also where you add new accounts.

Evolution Preferences Window

In order to set up a new account you only have to click the Add button and proceed through the setup wizard again.

Another feature unique to Evolution is the plugin system. If you open the Edit menu you will see the Plugin entry. When you click on this entry you will open up the plugin window where you can enable/disable various plugins included with Evolution. But don’t think you are limited to only the included plugins. Doing a Google search you will see that there are quite a few worthy plugins to add. One such plugin is an RSS reader for Evolution. Some of these plugins (like the RSS reader) can be installed easily. In Fedora I simply run yum install evolution-rss and the plugin is automatically installed.

RSS Reader

The image to the left shows the gHacks RSS feed in Evolution. An outstanding news feed read in an outstanding groupware client.

Final Thoughts

I have been using Evolution since it’s beta release days. It was an incredible piece of software from the beginning and remains an incredible piece of softare. If you are looking for an open source groupware suite, it is time you evolved.

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