The Linux-Capable Organizer Suitland MD

Posted by : Eric Foster-Johnson

Buy a PDA or handheld device, any PDA. It will come with a CD-ROMdesigned for Windows. All the desktop software, drivers, and otherapplications are designed to install on and run on Windows. Even filesthat are meant to get transferred to the PDA will come in a format thatrequires you to first place the files on a Windows system. The simplestdriver seems to come with a Windows installation wizard, but you can'tjust use it to access the file you need. Instead, you need to run thesetup program, and you can only run the setup program on a Windowssystem. While the vendors may feel that this situation makes for abetter user experience, it leaves users of desktop Linux or Mac OS Xsystems out in the cold.

In this situation, Palm OS devices appear to be the most Linux-friendly.While Palm OS devices such as the palmOne Zire or Tungsten families also suffer from Windows-only desktopsoftware, Linux supports Palm OS better than other PDAs. If you'rewilling to perform a little extra setup work, you can make Palm OSdevices work with a Linux desktop system.

That's because out of the box, most Linux distributions include a numberof applications that can synchronize with Palm OS devices. For example,Evolution, the GNOME desktop e-mail and personal information manager(PIM) client, supports synchronization with Palm OS devices. Evolution acts a lot like a Linux version ofMicrosoft's Outlook. With very little setup, you can configure the GNOMEde...

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