When comparing Lightning Calendar vs Calendar, the Slant community recommends Calendar for most people. In the question“What are the best calendar apps for UNIX-like systems?” Calendar is ranked 1st while Lightning Calendar is ranked 8th.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
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 GNOME native integration
Pro Currently in active development
GNOME Calendar is improved with every release cycle of GNOME.
Pro Simplicity
Calendar for GNOME aims to find the perfect balance between features and usability.
Pro Synchronisation
It has online accounts integration.
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 Cannot print
Con Extremely buggy
Con Poor interoperability with online calendars
Does not connect to Fastmail.
Con Far too simple
Con FAR too tied into the GNOME infrastructure
The UI and configuration presume you are running GNOME, and has the ugliness of a GNOME application. Configuration, as is usual for any GNOME application, is pretty much nonesistent.
Con Can't read 'all-day' events with dark theme
Text is white on light blue with dark themes. The workaround: assign all-day events to just one hour.
Con Can't import ics files
Con Continues to pop-up reminders that are turned off and they cannot ever be removed
The GNOME Calendar displays pop-ups from an old Google Calendar that was used. That Google Calendar has long since been removed from GNOME, and even with the notifications turned off on the GNOME Calendar, the pop-ups still happen.
Con Incorrect appointment times when importing .ics calendars
Con No support yet for WebCal
No support yet for WebCal, such as those offered by Facebook events.
A workaround exists. Since this application uses the same background services as Evolution, installing it and adding the WebCal calendars there, also adds them to GNOME Calendar.
Con Only works on GNOME
