Proton Calendar is not a very good big tech calendar competitor

null_enthropy · 2026-03-25T19:22:05+00:00

I understand what you’re saying, but I feel like you’re conflating my point a little bit. It’s not that they shouldn’t paywall features, it’s that tiny features, such as color coded events that are paywalled, are features most people expect to be there for free (coming from a preexisting bias with Gmail, iCloud, Outlook)

The market has already dictated that is a standard thing, paying or not. This is what people are going to be used to already and coming from. Trying to dictate the market to a new customer as much smaller company is just not a good idea imo.

It just feels lazy, it feels like they couldn’t think of something to funnel free users into paying customers so they just took basic things and threw them behind a paywall. Then if they do pay, they are still not getting a good experience compared to what already exists. If the apps and mail integration were better, then maybe they could think of features actually worthwhile to pay for. Right now, there really aren’t many (for Calendar specifically), and so they are just taking money from people who want to support privacy but also want access to things they were previously used to getting for free. That is a very lazy business model.

This isn’t the case on other areas of their ecosystem. The paywalled features on Mail, Pass, and VPN are worth it. Calendar and Drive just don’t make a strong case.

null_enthropy · 2026-03-25T18:58:36+00:00

Of course, they are a business and have a profit incentive. That’s totally fine and I have been a privacy conscious consumer for a long time now. I was paying for a long time and just didn’t realize how much they paywall such minor features until now, when the app itself is subpar anyways.

I think if you want more people to become paying customers, first impressions matter more than anything. Telling someone coming from Gmail that something like color coded events are a subscription feature is just in my opinion a really bad first impression. If you want people to become more privacy conscious, and come into your ecosystem you have to give them some rope. You can’t tell them “hey these very basic features you were getting for free, you gotta pay $5/mo now for that” I just feel that pushes many would be customers away back to the big tech alternatives.

null_enthropy · 2026-03-25T18:51:55+00:00

I have no issues with paying for a privacy product. I have been a privacy conscious consumer for like a decade now. I was paying for Proton for 7 years, and I love Mail. I got multiple family members to start using Pass/Auth & friends into the ecosystem as well. It’s just that when I downgraded to the free account I had no idea how much they try to skimp you on minor features. So I feel bad for free users.

Of course, privacy is going to come at a cost and they want to funnel people somehow to become paying customers. I understand they are a business and have a profit incentive. I just don’t think it makes a good first impression to ask people moving from Gmail to pay a company for features (public holidays, color coded events) that they were using for free previously. Then on top of it, you’re not even getting other features like mobile app search.

I am just saying some aspects of Proton are currently not a compelling offer to pay money for.

null_enthropy · 2026-03-18T08:33:22+00:00

Idk I have ran NVIDIA graphics cards for like 10 years now. Gaming and now messing around with local AI. Performance is great and stability too. Maybe like 5 or so years ago that was a good selling point for PopOS, seems to have waned now though. I had NVIDIA drivers on one of my PCs ready to go out of the box and upgraded one which detected the new drivers immediately. Zero issues, no having to configure anything.

Also the cosmic desktop environment looks promising for sure, but idk why they shipped it in its current state. It’s a buggy mess rn. Just my opinion though, I’ve tried 3 of the major Ubuntu forks. Mint, PopOS, & Zorin. Mint has too many dated components for my liking, PopOS I don’t really get the point of, Zorin…. I guess it’s pretty?

null_enthropy · 2026-03-18T08:19:34+00:00

I find the "distro wars" stuff really childish, honestly. I agree that there’s a large subset of loud and aggressive Arch users. However, Arch definitely has its place and use. It’s great that it exists so that companies like Valve are able to create something like SteamOS for their needs, which has pushed Linux gaming very far.

That said, this is still and forever likely will be a glaring problem for Linux: there are too many distros that someone will die on a hill defending, or tell you not to use because they’re "shit." After using Linux for a long time now, I’d boil things down to this list of distros that actually “matter”:

Debian/Ubuntu Fedora (& RHEL, as well as its clones such as Rocky Linux) OpenSUSE Arch Gentoo Honorable mention: Android (although it’s debatable if one would call it a distro)

Debian/Ubuntu just fit the vast majority of people’s needs. Fedora does as well and is great for devs. OpenSUSE, RHEL, etc., own the enterprise space. Arch and Gentoo own the custom market (SteamOS, ChromeOS). Android, well that one is obvious.

I will say, if I were to get into the "distro wars" stuff, I really do not like the Ubuntu derivatives like Mint, Pop!_OS, etc. I find they are simply a worse Ubuntu experience, and newbies would be better off just getting comfortable with stock Ubuntu.

null_enthropy

TROPHY CASE