Birthdays & and Anniversaries in Evolution Calendar does not show in the Task Bar Calendar

General Help
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1

The issue is in the title.

This issue has been present for some time now.

I recently upgraded my office computer's internal storage and did a fresh install of Zorin 17.1 (which is up to date):

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uptodate
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I have Evolution set as the default for Mail as well as Calendar:

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Let's review an example.

For the purposes of this ticket, I created a fresh vCard in Evolution Contacts, called, "Broken Birthday," setting the birth date to March 18, 2000:

EvolutionTestBirthday
EvolutionTestBirthday1787×887 164 KB

As can be seen in the above image, the Event shows in "Birthdays & Anniversaries" which appears to be pulling data from the Contacts section of Evolution, and displays appropriately in Evolution's Calendar section.

Now, if we view the Task Bar Calendar:

TaskBarCalendarwithGnomeCalendar
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One can see the "Broken Birthday" event does not show up in the Task Bar calendar, nor does it show up in the Gnome Calendar pictured to the right the Task Bar calendar (more on this in a bit).

However, the event from March 6 does show in the Task Bar calendar, in the Gnome Calendar pictured to the right of the Task Bar calendar in the above picture, and finally, in the previously presented Evolution calendar.

Speaking of the Gnome Calendar, to get any of the calendar events in Evolution to show in the Task Bar, they need to be active in Gnome Calendar - which they are:

GnomeCalendarManageCalendars
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As can be seen above, "Birthdays & Anniversaries" is active in Gnome Calendar, but curiously it does not read, "On This Computer" as does both "Personal" and "calendar." instead, "Birthdays & Anniversaries" reads, "Contacts."

[ From all of the above, it appears to me the Task Bar Calendar pulls its data from Gnome Calendar, and in the case of "Birthdays & Anniversaries," Gnome Calendar pulls data from Gnome Contacts. ]

Looking at Gnome Contacts, it has no data:

BlankGnomeContacts
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I have personally experienced this issue since Zorin 15.x.

As indicated - I am currently experiencing this issue on my primary office machine, both on the previous installation (currently residing in an external USB enclosure which I am booting off until I complete the set up the new install) of Zorin 17.1 as well as the fresh install of Zorin 17.1 on a new replacement SSD. Additionally, the issue is present on another computer with an installation of Zorin 16.3 (which I plan on performing an erase and install of Zorin 17.1 on once this issue is resolved).

So, this issue is not user-specific. Not only is it system wide, but it can be replicated across multiple installs of Zorin in multiple versions.

Assistance toward resolving this issue is appreciated.

2

Anything from this discourse thread help?:

3

Thank you for your reply.

The version of Evolution I am running is 3.52.4. It is the Flathub version, which is what is bundled in with the installation of Zorin Core.

If one were to instead install the Zorin OS (APT) version, one would be installing version 3.44.4 - a much older version.

Per the referenced article, from Milan:

"As long as your distro provides up-to-date Evolution, use the native version of the Evolution."

The Zorin OS (APT) version is NOT the most up-to-date version of Evolution. The bundled Flatpak version - which as it is what is installed by default - appears to be what is indicated to use by Zorin to achieve the most up-to-date version.

Also, Evolution indicates this as well:

https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Evolution

" Flathub contains the latest stable version."

I am certainly aware of the sandboxing issues that Flathub applications have:

"the Flatpak (no matter whether Flathub or Fedora) version of Evolution runs in its own sandbox, fully isolated from the rest of the desktop, not sharing the data with anyone."

in the past (Zorin 15.x), I attempted to use Flatseal to resolve this issue. That took care of my personal calendars, but not the Birthdays & Anniversaries. In Zorin 16, I found the sandboxing issue to be ameliorated, no longer needing the use of Flatseal for the calendars, however - the issue with Birthdays & Anniversaries persisted.

From the article you quoted:

"The crux of my problem is that I cannot get Evolution to fully synchronise with my Google Calendars."

None of the calendars I am working with reside out on any server. All calendar events are created locally and stored locally on the machine. I manually synchronize everything between my machines; no sync server is involved.

[That said - once I get this issue resolved, I plan on using Syncthing to sync this data between my devices. One step at a time however - I don't want to introduce that variable into the mix until I get this issue resolved.]

So, again - thank you for your reply, but I don't see the article you listed as being relevant to this issue, unless other data indicates as such (for instance, there's sandboxing causing the contacts not being shared between Evolution and Gnome Contacts, if the issue is indeed that The Task Bar Calendar pulls its data from Gnome Calendar, and in the case of "Birthdays & Anniversaries," Gnome Calendar pulls data from Gnome Contacts. As of this writing, I don't know if this is even how this process functions - this is just speculation on my part).

4

Update - I have been testing this in Debian 12 (Bookworm) with Evolution, and the issue is not present. Birthdays & and Anniversaries in Evolution Calendar show appropriately in the Task Bar Calendar.

So, as far as I can tell as of this writing - the issue is isolated to Zorin.

5

I'd be curious to try this on an Ubuntu install and see if the issue is reproducible there. I would wager this would most likely be an Ubuntu issue as well, but I don't have a 22.04 install I can test with atm.

6

I agree - I'm guessing it's probably present in Ubuntu as well. I've had issues with anything installed via Flatpak/Snap.

While Evolution is bundled in with the Zorin install, it is the Flatpak version.

In the past, what I've experienced are sandboxing/permissions issues with anything from Flatpak or Snap.

Example - the Flatpak version of Firefox will not download anywhere but the ~/Downloads folder. Try to switch it to another location, it doesn't have permission to do so.

I've used Flatseal to overcome most of these sorts of issues, but I'm stumped on this one.

I've had issues with Zorin not working with some of my hardware, which are not present in other distros.

As much as I like Zorin - I recommend it to anyone interested in trying a Linux distro - sadly, I feel at this juncture it's time for me to move on to something different as a daily driver.

Zorin is incredibly easy to install and configure, and 99% of what I need is present and works out of the box. It's that last 1% that's a sticking point.

When I find another distro that gives me 100% - and it looks like Debian may be the one - it's time to move on.

7

You might want to take a look at Q4OS, it is currently based on Debian 12.0 Bookworm. I am running Aquarius 5.6 (Plasma 5.27).

Screenshot_20240913_205000
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But if you want the Windows look and feel, there are a lot of themes and walls that come pre-packaged:

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8

Thank you for the recommendation. I'm always on the lookout for a lightweight distro, especially ones which will run on 32-bit hardware (I've inherited a lot of old machines, and I like to repurpose them whenever I can). I'll check it out.

9

If 32-bit, not the Plasma version. You will need the Trinity Desktop Edition which is what KDE looked like before Plasma. You could also try 32-bit versions of MX-Linux.