In this article you will see how this calendar is used so you can continue making your decision if Xfce 4 is the desktop for you.

Features

The Orage calendar won’t blow you away with features. But it does have a nice set:

• Runs from notification area.
• Import/Export iCal files.
• Alarms.
• View selected date/week.
• Archiving.
• Popup notification for alerts.
• Daily event listing.

Installation

Orage does not automatically install with Xfce. Instead you have to install it manually by following these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “orage” (no quotes).
3. Mark orage for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. Once installed you can start Orage by clicking Start > Office > Orage. When you start Orage you might be surprised at the size of the main window (see Figure 1).  Figure 1 shows Orage with the Event Window. Even with both panes, in comparison to  the rest of the desktop, the application takes up little screen real estate. And, if that is still too much for you, you can run Orage from the notification area.

Setup

Figure 2

To set up Orage so it will run in the notification area (or system tray…or systray), you have to open up the Preferences window. To do this click Edit > Preferences. In the Preferences window click on the Display tab and make sure Show in systray is checked (see Figure 2).

There are a few other preferences you might want to take a look at. In the Main Setups tab you can set your Archive threshold. What this will do is automatically archive your calendar when it reaches the set threshold. So if you set your threshold for 3 months, every three months you calendar will archive. If it is set to 0 auto archiving is turned off.

Import/export

One of the features that made me decide to cover this tool is the Import/Export feature. Before I get to far with this, there is not auto-publishing feature for Orage. All of this is done manually. But if you are migrating from one calendar to another, it is helpful.

Figure 3

Orage allows you to Import and Export .ics calendars. This means you can import/export to Google calendars (if you use them). It’s very simple to do. Click File > Exchange Data and then (from the Exchange Data window – see Figure 3) you can import and export your .ics files.

Now you may notice the Foreign files tab in the Exchange window.  This is different than the Importing feature. The import feature actually imports your .ics files into your main Orage calendar file. The Foreign files feature allows you, basically, to add new calendars so that Orage is reading multiple files. This way you don’t have to combine calendars. If you think about it, this would also allow you to share out calendars with other users. What you would have to do is have those other users’ calendar files set as Foreign files and add them from a shared directory. You can set these caledars as read-only if you like.

Final thoughts

Orage is a nice little calendar application. It won’t blow you away with it’s features and tricks, but it will work and work well for you. The ability to import/export ics calendars add “external” calendars is quite nice as is its tiny footprint. If you are looking to use Xfce, you will want to take a look at Orage and consider it as your calendaring application.

In this article I will outline a few of the possibilities that can be used to replace the beloved applications often used in Mac. In some cases their may be equivalents that are nearly identical. In some cases, however, there may be equivalents that miss some features, or even offer better features. Either way, after this article, you should feel much more comfortable about migrating from OS X to Linux.

In the previous article I already mentioned using Songbird as a replacement for iTunes. Personally I prefer Songbird to iTunes. The only downfall is that Songbird can not yet communicate to either the iPhone or the iTouch. Yet. There is another tool that is currently in development that will most likely change that. But for now – you can use Songbird as a replacement for iTunes – just don’t expect Songbird to communicate with your iPhone/iTouch.

Garage Band

For those looking to compose music on your Linux machine, a good replacement for Garage Band is Jokosher. Jokosher is a simple, powerful multi-track recording studio. With this outstanding tool you can import music, record instruments, mix down, set tempos, and more. You will not, however, find a large collection of pre-recorded instruments and sounds to add and manipulate. But, if you have a Freesound account, you can import anything from their. Unlike Garage Band, Jokosher is really more a user-friendly multi-track recorder. So don’t expect to just open up the application and start piecing together music without picking up an instrument.

For more information on other audio creating software take a look at Linux-Sound.org. In my humble opinion, if you are looking for mult-media creation, your best bet is to download Ubuntu Studio which will include so man pre-installed applications for media creation/editing.

iWork

This one should be obvious. If you’re looking for an office suite to take care of all your office needs, look no further than OpenOffice. Although OpenOffice may have a different look and feel, you will find it just as easy to use AND it includes more features and applications than iWork.

iCal

If you like Apple’s stand alone calendar (that also integrates with other applications) you can install the stand alone Sunbird calendar. Sunbird was created by Mozilla so it has a very Firefox/Thunderbird feel to it. Sunbird is very close to a feature-for-feature equivalent to iCal.

iPhoto

My wife uses a Mac and she HATES iPhoto. But it is the standard for Mac photo management. For Linux there is the F-spot photo management tool. F-spot not only manages your photo collections, but will work with your digital camera as an import tool. F-spot is actually easier to use than iPhoto and will not have you fighting to try to get a piece of software to do something you KNOW it should do, but won’t.

Final thoughts

It’s not an exhaustive list, but it will help you get by with the main applications one would use on a modern Mac computer.  If you have a Mac-based application you are looking for a Linux equivalent, let me know what that is and I will attempt to locate an equivalent for you.