Many of us geeky folk have been longtime Palm users. I personally own a Palm T|X, and even though I’ve been frustrated with some quality issues, it seems that the hard truth is that if you’re going to sync with Linux, Palm is the way to go. But even then, syncing is sort of flaky business.

You basically have three options: the Pilot panel app for GNOME, Kpilot for KDE, and Jpilot, a gtk Palm Desktop clone.

Pilot Panel App
Integration is the strong point for this application. It works great for syncing between Evolution (the default email client in Ubuntu) and your Palm. In the GNOME environment I thought this was pretty much flawless. Then I realized there was no gui for installing apps. That’s circumventable, but annoying. In addition, I recently had to perform a hard reset on my Palm, and the restore function failed half-way through. Good thing I made multiple backups.

Kpilot
I’ve never been able to hotsync using Kpilot, although it does look like it offers a comprehensive set of tools. If I could get it work at all, it might be nice.

Jpilot
Jpilot is simple, stable, and while not nearly as well integrated into the desktop environment as the Pilot panel app or Kpilot, it just seems to work. Restore & backup work well. My only complaint with this application is that it’s hard to use it for calendar planning, and there’s no way to sync the calendar with Google cal. In addition, I can’t figure out a way to overwrite the username on the Palm with Jpilot. I’ve always used the Pilot panel app for that.

Conclusion
Using a Palm device with Linux is possible, but don’t expect it to be a walk in the park. Use Jpilot if you can, and if you’re connecting via usb, make sure to specify usb: in appropriate place in the preferences for each of these applications.

Filed under: Hardware