[SOLVED] KDE and Evolution or other PIM

[aguador]

I have been using Magiea with the KDE desktop since the release of Mageia 3, having worked a bit longer with Linux Mint MATE on my netbook. Having flirted briefly with E17 and just taken a look at Cinnamon 2.0 running off a USB stick, it is clear that, while KDE offers more than I want (I do not use social networks or even chat for that matter -- and my needs seem straightforward enough that I do not see how "activities" can help me much), I have now worked with the DE long enough to consider it the "best" for my needs and way of working in general.

HOWEVER, as someone who has been self-employed for many years and has a variable schedule, I have come to rely on MS Outlook-style PIMs and need to find a Linux-based one to synchronize directly with my admittedly old Palm. That basically means Evolution or Kontact. (Thunderbird with the Lightening extension might be a possibility if direct sync were possible.) Under KDE the logical choice would be Kontact, but I was not thrilled with my brief test of it, have seen too many complaints about Kmail, and object to a program that provides no easy way to export e-mails for use in other applications.

I run Evolution on my netbook, so know it serves my needs well. However, the program really needs to be on my main computer. (This would also free me to put KDE on the netbook as well.) The problem is that despite accumulating a series of articles with various tricks on how to run Evolution in KDE (most problems seem related to Gnome keyring), I have not been able to get it to run in Mageia KDE.

So, my question is two-fold:

1) Has anyone succeeded in getting to run Evolution in Mageia 3/4 KDE?

2) Barring a positive answer to the first questions, can anyone either a) suggest a non-web-based alternative with similar functionality or b) allay my concerns about Kmail and Kontact?

Thanks for putting up with a long post and for any and all suggestions!

[doktor5000]

1) Has anyone succeeded in getting to run Evolution in Mageia 3/4 KDE?

Why do you think it makes a difference if you run evolution under KDE or GNOME or whatever other desktop?
Have you tried running it yet, any issues you came across?

[aguador]

Oops, I see my syntax failed on that question, but I did note above that I cannot get it to run (at least not the email client).

Evolution hangs in KDE. This problem has appeared on numerous forums (Fedora, openSUSE, and more). Most of the posts I have seen have said that the problem is that Evolution needs gnome keyring running and hangs up if it is not running. I have the keyring installed and have modified the gnome-keyring-pkcs11.desktop file to include KDE (per this post: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=289447). I have also tried this script: http://geek.co.il/2011/04/25/using-evolution-under-kde-gnome-keyring-issues, and added this file: http://dave.lyonmania.com/2013/01/03/getting-gnome-keyring-to-work-under-kde-and-kdm/.

None of these have been effective. Evolution loads, but the e-mail client hangs up. I can open and use the calendar, notes, etc., but e-mail does not work and will not allow me to close the program. In fact, the only way I have found to kill the process is to reboot.

[doktor5000]

Well, I've just installed evolution under KDE and set it up with one of my accounts, and it's happily dowloading all the mails there (~500)
Although I didn't add the password to the keyring.

[jiml8]

I have been using kmail/kontact for about 12 years now, since the late days of KDE 2.

I have found it more than satisfactory for most of that time.

About a year ago, forced by circumstances, I finally reloaded my Linux OS for the very first time, migrating from my 32 bit system that started as Mandrake 7.2 and had been continuously upgraded (and never reloaded) to Mandriva 2010.2, to a new Mageia 2 64 bit installation using KDE 4.8. This migration moved me to a version of Kmail/Kontact (kmail2) that depended on nepomuk and akonadi.

It was almost unusable, and shortly I was investigating ways to get off of kmail2. From that investigation, I concluded that there was no good way to get off of kmail2; exporting my extensive mail history was going to prove difficult.

I waited with quiet desperation for Mageia 3 to arrive, hoping it would improve my situation. In fact, it did improve my situation, making kmail2 again usable although it still is not nearly as reliable as I would expect.

In KDE 4.10, kmail2 is quirky and immature, but usable. I have learned the annoying little things I need to know to get it running again when it screws up, I am careful to keep my mail directories and my kmail configuration files backed up, and so far I have been able to restore functionality on those occasions (there have been several) where it gets confused.

I cannot recommend the kmail in KDE 4.10, particularly for someone who hopes for a trouble-free installation. However, another year has passed, KDE 4.11 is in use in Mageia 4, and I have high hopes that kmail2 will be better in that version than it is in this one.

[aguador]

Thanks for the feedback on kmail, jml8. It fits with what I keep seeing from users -- and is one of the reasons I want to use Evolution which, for whatever its quirks, generally gets better feedback

Doktor5000, I don't know what to say. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Evolution (more than once), but I suspect the uninstall is incomplete. I say that because any Evolution data I have restored from a backup file from my netbook reappears after the uninstall-reinstall process. I can and have deleted all those data before the uninstall, but have not chased down where all the files may be hiding. Given your success in running Evolution I am ready to resort to a completely fresh install of Mageia, but have not found the time to tackle that as yet. In the meantime I will post a message to the Evolution mailing list to see if there may be a less radical option. Many thanks.

[aguador]

Thanks to Doktor5000 and others who responded. I seem to have a functioning system now!

After some consults and attempts to debug with the help of those on the Evolution mailing list, I solved the problem with the simplest steps:

Uninstalling and then reinstalling gnome-keyring

I have no idea if a) gnome-keyring itself did not install properly, b) one or more dependencies were missing, or c) I inadvertently did something along the way to mess up the keyring.

I admit to being a relative newbie to Linux (about 1.5 years using Linux Mint 13 MATE and 8-9 months with Mageia KDE) -- and will confess that I have not used command lines much since the days of MS-DOS. So, I have learned a bit more about Linux through all this -- even though the debug output did not yield anything useful.