As you probably know EteSync is now supported natively by both KDE and GNOME. This means that you can now add EteSync accounts directly to GNOME, KDE and apps in their ecosystem such as Evolution, GNOME Calendar, Kontact and the likes.

This has been possible for a very long time using the DAV bridge, though with these integrations, the bridge is no longer needed.

As we said in the original announcement, the integrations will be released and packaged in distributions following the next GNOME and KDE releases. However, a lot of you have been asking about starting to use it now, and we can't blame you, as we wouldn't want to wait either! :)

Thanks to some hard work by daftaupe, sjolly, and others, there are now easy to use packages available for multiple distributions!

For the most up to date packaging information, please refer to the GNOME user guide and the KDE user guide. We are working on packages for more distributions every day. However at the time of this writing there are already packages for Arch (AUR), Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, OpenSuse and Mageia depending on whether you use Evolution or KDE. In addition, if your distribution isn't listed above, you can always just build the plugins from source.

Do you know how to create packages for your favourite distro and are willing to help? Need any help with setting up the modules? Please join us at the chat (IRC/Matrix/Web) and let us know!

As usual, we would like to remind you that we rely on your feedback and contributions to make EteSync better. Do you have any suggestions or  are experiencing any issues? Please send patches, report issues or just contact us.

Come chat with us on IRC/Matrix, or follow us on Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, reddit or RSS for the latest updates and privacy-related content!

Google Summer of Code 2020 has now ended and the results are amazing! We can't believe it has already been four months since the projects were accepted into GSoC, but here we are. There are now native EteSync integrations for both GNOME (e.g. Evolution) and KDE (e.g. Kontact).

What is EteSync?

EteSync is a secure, end-to-end encrypted, and privacy respecting sync for your contacts, calendars and tasks. Easy to use and open source - it seamlessly integrates with your existing apps so you won't even notice you are using it! Think CalDAV but encrypted in a way that no one but you can access it. Not hackers getting access to your servers or you server admins!

For an introduction to end-to-end encryption please take a look at our related blog post. For more information about EteSync, please head to our website.

Using the new integrations

Thanks to these new integrations, you can now use EteSync accounts directly with any apps that use the GNOME or KDE personal information management systems (Evolution, Kontact and many more), without the need for the DAV bridge.

In addition to it being much easier to setup, it's also a lot faster, more efficient, and in general just works better.

The integrations will be released and packaged in distributions following the next GNOME and KDE releases, though until then you can either build them yourself from source, or use one of our pre-built packages if you distribution has them.

To get started, please check out the respective user guides:

• The GNOME user guide.
• The KDE user guide

Thank you

Huge thanks to both Shashwat Jolly (sjolly on IRC) and Nour E-Din El-Nhass (nourmat on IRC), the two GSoC participants who did all of the work and made it happen. To the mentors from GNOME (Milan Crha), and KDE (Daniel Vrátil, Volker Krause and Adriaan de Groot). To the GNOME and KDE GSoC admins who made GSoC sucha breeze. To the GSoC team for running this great program. And last, but definitely not least: to all of the testers from the community who helped make sure everything works as smoothly as it should, and is ready to be merged and used.

As usual, we would like to remind you that we rely on your feedback and contributions to make EteSync better. Do you have any suggestions or  are experiencing any issues? Please send patches, report issues or just contact us.

Come chat with us on IRC/Matrix, or follow us on Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, reddit or RSS for the latest updates and privacy-related content!

We are very happy to announce that two EteSync related projects have been accepted to this year's Google Summer of Code, one with GNOME and one with KDE!

In case you are unfamiliar, GSoC is a paid summer internships focused on introducing students to open source software development. The program just started and will end in August. During this period, each student will work on a programming project with a mentoring organization.

The first project is an EteSync backend for Akonadi, the KDE personal information management server, and will be worked on by Shashwat Jolly (sjolly on IRC). The second project is an EteSync module for Evolution data server, the GNOME personal information management server, and will be worked on by Nour E-Din El-Nhass (nourmat on IRC).

This means, that by the end of the summer, EteSync will be natively supported in both the GNOME and the KDE and applications using their personal information servers such as Evolution, KMail and many others. What does it actually mean? It means users of these applications will no longer need to use the EteSync DAV adapter for syncing their contacts, calendars and tasks, and can just add their EteSync accounts directly!

On related news: as you may remember, we have previously announced a similar effort being worked on for Thunderbird. Unfortunately, the effort is delayed due to COVID-19, though we hope John will be able to get back to working on it as soon as possible, and hopefully have it ready in the next few months.

As usual, we would like to remind you that we rely on your feedback and contributions to make EteSync better. Do you have any suggestions or are experiencing any issues? Please send patches, report issues or just contact us.

Follow us on Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, reddit or RSS for the latest updates and privacy-related content!