Palm shakes hands with Linux

I decided that I needed the Palm back in my life. I can maybe steal a minute or two hear and there to write, and if I use pen and paper, chances are whatever it is will never make it into print/online because things change and what I wrote is no longer up to the minute.

My Palm Tungsten E had gone totally dead. I had to restore everything with a sync, and by some kind of magic, my Palm infrared keyboard suddenly started working again.

So it was time to get the Palm and Linux talking to each other.

The usual suspects are J-Pilot, Kpilot and GNOME-Pilot, the latter of which works with the Evolution mail client.

I'd had bad experiences before in Ubuntu with J-Pilot -- it's hell just to get the Palm to sync with the Linux box.

This time it was different.

I began with GNOME-Pilot in Debian. I managed to add Palm to the GNOME panel and turn it on. Then all I did was hit sync on the Palm, and the transfer began. All my data flowed to the box, and much of it was accessible via Evolution. I really only need to access the Memos from the Palm, but it was a bonus to have Addresses and Calendar there, too. My Word-compatible files from Documents to Go are probably in there, too, but I'm in no hurry to find them just yet.

Now that my Palm and Evolution were talking, I figured it was time to give the mail client a try. Previously I had problems configuring Evolution, but not this time. I programmed my IMAP account and was reading mail in about three minutes. Turns out I like Evolution. I've already given up Sylpheed for Thunderbird and Seamonkey, and at this point I like Evolution. I can't say whether it's better or worse than Thunderbird at this point. It seems about the same, except that Evolution has the aforementioned Palm hookup.

However, I also tried J-Pilot in Xubuntu, and after some frustration, I did a little Googling and found out that I needed to open a terminal and type:

sudo modprobe visor

I already had /dev/ttyUSB1 as my device, and after the modprobe command, it started working. I can hit the J-pilot sync button, then the Palm's sync button, and the data begins flowing.

J-Pilot has a nice interface, and it's less complicated than Evolution, because it's devoted to the Palm.

P.S. I tried awhile back to install the Windows version of Palm Desktop under WINE, and that didn't work. Palm Desktop may be old, but it's ultra-quick and efficient.

Back to the Palm and Linux. Now that I have the Palm working in Debian and Ubuntu/Xubuntu, I'm pretty happy, and I'll probably be using my Debian-equipped 233 MHz Compaq laptop a bit less. There's something about hitting a button on the Palm and being able to write within a half-second that totally works for me.

So even though I see some promise in the new iPod Touch, but I hope it makes the Palm people think that maybe everybody doesn't want their PDA to have a phone in it. A new Palm is long overdue. And a native Palm client for Linux is equally overdue. But for now, J-Pilot and GNOME-Pilot are doing the job pretty well.