When comparing Lightning Calendar vs California, the Slant community recommends Lightning Calendar for most people. In the question“What are the best calendar apps for UNIX-like systems?” Lightning Calendar is ranked 8th while California is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Lightning Calendar is:
Lightning Calendar (just as Thunderbird) is completely free and open-source meaning that anyone can use it as well as look through the code or even use the code for their own projects.
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Pros
Pro Free, open source
Lightning Calendar (just as Thunderbird) is completely free and open-source meaning that anyone can use it as well as look through the code or even use the code for their own projects.
Pro Easily keep track of tasks
Bundled in with the calendar options is a tasks option that makes for an easy way to keep track of tasks in the same location as ones events.
Pro Cross-platform
Wherever Mozilla Thunderbird can be installed, the Lightning calendar can follow:
Windows
Linux
MacOS
Pro Integrates with the desktop in order to provide notifications
California offers desktop notification on most major DEs in Linux, which is great to know when events are happening while not having to have the app open in the foreground.
Pro Events can be added using natural language
The application allows natural language input for events. For example, typing in "Lunch with Stuart Kearney at 2 pm" will set the appointment.
Cons
Con Available only as part of Thunderbird
No standalone version of the calendar app is available. And if you're just interested in Lightning Calendar and not Thunderbird, the app will have additional functionality and interface elements that will get in the way of using the calendar.
Con Does not always clear old events from the display, even when the event has been deleted
When accessing Google Calendar, every check shows that the event does not exist anymore.
Con No full CalDAV support
CalDAV support is more hackish than working reliably. E.g. certain fields are not supported, or alarms can lead to duplication of events or changes being reset. As CalDAV support is not truly built-in, and the extension does not have a high quality.
Con Requires third-party gmail integration
And it's not supported in 60+. Use the old versions if you want anything to work.
Con Not for all the versions
You have to downgrade Thunderbird just because Lightning didn't upgrade to the last beta version.
Con Long term availability/ support
Although Thunderbird has an impressive track record and many years of reliable service, its continued existence has been doubtful more than once). For now, all seems good, but it would not be surprising if tomorrow it turns out Thunderbird "has left the building".
Con GUI makes you feel like it's 1995, and not in a nostalgic way
Con Currently not in active development
Yorba, the group that developed California, is no longer actively developing software.
While Geary (Yorba's mail client) has been adopted by the elementary teams as "Pantheon Mail", both elementary and Gnome have their own calendar projects and it is unlikely that either of them will contribute to California in the future.
That being said, California uses evolution data server for all backend/sync/storage related tasks, which should hopefully make it possible to use it even if 3rd party vendors change their APIs/protocols etc. As long as EDS does not introduce backward incompatible changes or any major California bugs occur (it has been working fine for me so far), the current state of California should remain usable for quite a while.
Con Currently no drag and drop support
There is no way to drag events in the app for easy switching, it all has to be done manually which can be a lot of work to move many things around.
