Ubuntu

remind – the sophisticated reminder service – how can I open it

Asked by Costas

I have installed using synaptic the remind program, hoping to be able to use it as a calendar reminder. I know it is installed since it can be found in File System/usr/share/menu and in various other places. Also I did a sudo apt-get install remind command and it shows that it is installed and updated.
The question is that I cannot find how to open it and use it. It shows no where in the lists of installed programs (not even in the add/remove. I even tried to add it to panel using the custom application launcher and pointing to usr/bin and selected the executable remind, nothing happened the new icon is dead. Maybe as the title says it is a very sophisticated program and my two weeks exposure to Ubuntu are not enough. But I can follow detailed instructions if they are available.
Any help will be appreciated.
Costas

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Alli
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Best Alli (alzeih) said : 		#1

I'm not sure remind is exactly what you are after. Took a quick look at it.

It is certainly installed. Open a terminal and type (no quotes)
$"remind"
It will probably spit back "Can't access file: `/home/username/.reminders'."
You can make this file
$"cd /home/username"
$"mkdir .reminders"

It won't show up in the menu as it is a command line app, and they don't have menu entries by default (there are so many command line apps it would be hard to show them all in a menu)
When you run "reminder" from the command line, it just exits if it has no switches, try:
$"man remind"
for an idea of what you can do with remind.

however I think you want a front end to it, or another calendar app. It will integrate a lot better and will likely just show up on your menu.
I run kde, and would recommend kontact
$"sudo apt-get install kontact"
but there are other calendar programs for gnome (Im sorry I just don't know of any)

Look under the "office" category in add/remove or search for calendar or pim

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Alli (alzeih) said : 		#2

oh yeah the $ sign is just what I used to show its a terminal command , and on its own line. So don't enter it in the terminal.

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Costas (coslaz) said : 		#3

Hello Alzeih, thank you for you comments, I did try your suggestions and I agree with you that remind is not what I need. I guess I will remove it to free some space. I installed Kontact and I am going to try it over the next few days. I have the hunch that this is not what I need. In Windows I was using a free program called ClickTray Calendar and it was very good in terms of automatic reminders. Anyway I will close this question for now and may come back if I find something better to report. Thanks to all for your good efforts.
Costas

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Costas (coslaz) said : 		#4

Thanks alzeih, that solved my question.