PDA Connectivity


SUSE Linux provides programs and clients you can use with your Palm-style personal digital assistants (PDAs). Sync up your PDA data with your PC, send and retrieve mail, keep your calendar in order, and more.

Command-Line PDA Software for SUSE Linux

The most popular PDA-related applications are bundled in a single package, called pilot-link. You can organize and work with your Palm OS-compatible PDA directly from your shell prompt no GUI required. Among pilot-link's amazing capabilities are

  • Extracting and uploading addresses from your address book(s)

  • Installing datebook information

  • Transferring text memos to and from the PDA

  • Managing your to-do lists

  • Managing user settings

  • Sending and retrieving email documents

  • Installing new PDA programs

  • Backing up, synchronizing, and restoring the contents of a PDA

  • Acquiring expense-account database information

The suite has 31 tools for you to use, and after you've connected your Palm cradle to your PC, you should be able to use any of them to manage your information. For example, to back up the contents of your Palm device to your Linux system, type this command at the shell:

pilot-xfer -p /dev/ttyS1 -b backupdirectory 

This command creates a directory called backupdirectory, and then downloads and saves the contents of the PDA to backupdirectory. Explore the range of pilot-link tools in the suite's man page, or visit http://www.pilot-link.org to connect with the pilot-link community.

Connecting with Your PDA in KDE and GNOME

If you want to know how good a tool pilot-link really is, all you need to know is that all the GUI tools mentioned here are just different ways of putting a pretty face on the underlying command-line tools offered by pilot-link. KPilot and Gnome-Pilot are the "official" Palm interfaces for their respective desktop environments (although KPilot is considerably more powerful than its counterpart), and a third, J-Pilot, also works well.

J-Pilot will manage, retrieve, install, back up, and sync any information for your Palm-compatible PDA. Click the Date Book, To-Do List, Address Book, and Memo Pad buttons to perform related tasks. Use the Sync and Backup buttons to update or preserve a copy of a PDA's data. KPilot integrates with the Kontact personal information manager for KDE, allowing you to quickly transfer mail and contact information between your devices.

Note

If you need to sync up information only periodically, the GNOME-based Multi-Sync and KDE-based KitchenSync may be just what you need.


Managing Your Finances

For even the most rabid Linux fan, financial software was (and maybe still is) the final frontier for the Linux desktop. Many people keep Windows around just to run Quicken (and maybe a couple of games).

Now there are two open source projects that want to make you feel comfortable managing your (or your business's) money in Linux. GnuCash is the veteran, with KMyMoney the upstart challenger. Both are set up to do standard double-entry bookkeeping and can import Intuit Quicken QIF files.

GnuCash 1.8 has a very nice account setup wizard and handles QIF file transfer very well. GnuCash supports creating accounts in nearly every currency imaginable. After you've set up at least one account, the opening screen gives you a list of your accounts, a description, and your current balance. To open an existing account, select it from the list and click Open.

Quicken users will be very comfortable with the register interface, seen in Figure 9.8.

Figure 9.8. The GnuCash register screen is very similar to Quicken's.


Organizing your income and expenses into categories is a little different in GnuCash than in its Windows counterpart, however. Both Income and Expenses exist as separate accounts alongside your bank account, and you must create subaccounts for each expense. Quicken categories may transfer over, but you might have to create subaccounts manually. GnuCash does not have any defaults, but that means you can identify as many categories as you want to track.

KMyMoney works pretty much the same way as its counterparts do, but it is definitely a work in progress. This should be a fine application by the time it gets to v1.0.

When you open KMyMoney for the first time, you see a template screen with just one (Blank) template. You must select this icon before creating your first account. You must first identify the Institution this account falls under and then set up the account. The wizard to do this is straightforward, and though the terminology may be a little off-putting at first, it is easy to get started.

The Ledgers screen that displays your data is not as attractive as GnuCash (see Figure 9.9), but manually entering transactions is less confusing. KMyMoney will automatically add a new payee when you enter it in the Edit box. Categories are not fully implemented in version 0.6.4.

Figure 9.9. KMyMoney's Ledgers screen displays your account information and lets you enter transactions manually.


Both tools support scheduled transactions and will alert you to bill-sending due dates.

Neither tool does direct online banking, but this is in the long-term plans. For financial institutions that allow customers to download account information through QIF files, these can be easily imported into either application. Intuit is now encouraging its partners to switch to a new format, one which the open source tools do not yet support.



SUSE Linux 10 Unleashed
SUSE Linux 10.0 Unleashed
ISBN: 0672327260
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 332

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net