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Open Source-Friendly Smartphones For the Small Office?
Thunderstruck writes "I work in a small office with just two computers. Both machines run long-term-service releases of Ubuntu, with Gnome, and Evolution for scheduling, contact management and electronic mail. We plan to stick with Linux long-term. For telephone service, we're using smartphones. In order to keep everything straight, we need phones that can synchronize easily with the calendars and contact data on each owner's desktop machine. We cannot use cloud based services for this function due to ethics rules, and for security reasons. Right now, we do all of this with older Palm phones, but these are a dying breed. What options are out there right now for phones that will sync with Evolution (or another good Linux PIM suite) which do not require data to go through the cloud first?"
The short answer is "there ain't none". You may be able to hack together an in house solution with some N900 devices, but they will probably be discontinued next year. After that who knows. As for the rest, all require using proprietary sync tools (ala iTunes) or syncing to remote servers (Driod, PalmPre, Blackberry).
Where would we be if Wheel had hid her round rock in a cave instead of showing everyone how it rolls?
Consider, though, the following.
Android, in its current state, can talk to an Exchange server. If you have an option that will do this (Evo server, maybe?), use it.
Blackberry and Windows Mobile are both syncable on Linux in general. Do searches in the Ubuntu package manager.
Nokia Symbian, I believe, will function similarly.
This sig no verb.
http://syncevolution.org/ Looks fairly promising using your current setup. A brief look give the assumption it's compatible with evolution, and will connect up to anything that talks syncml, and there's a syncml client for nearly any smartphone out there. And some dated info found at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=398113 gives info on someone setting up evolution to talk activesync, which would allow for windows-based phones to sync up...
I sync Evolution with a Samsung Epix running Windows Mobile 6.5. Works fine, at least with the USB cable - I haven't tried Bluetooth.
I'm running Debian Squeeze.
--saint
It won't do it out of the box, but as an open platform it should be possible to make it happen. Might require an a custom OS patch though... As an Android developer myself, I might look into this and release something if someone else doesn't beat me to it.
The Bolachek Journals
As much as I like Android the most open source friendly current smartphone I know of is the Nokia N900. I would poke around some of the N900 focused forums, they may already be capable of what you're looking for and if not someone may have figured out how to add it already.
It's basically a Debian box with phone functionality.
Add blue tooth keyboard & mouse, plug the video out into a decent monitor and I'm not even sure you need a desktop or laptop.
Deleted
I recommend using Zimbra. It's free, is an excellent mail server similar in functionality to Exchange, and will easily install on either Debian 5.0 or any version of Ubuntu. You can use any mail client, and they even have their own client, as well as a feature-rich ajax-based web client. I sync it to my Android phone via MAPI, and it works very seamlessly.
I've never used it, but if you set up a zimbra server, then you can use the connectors available for the 'droids. That should give you the services you need on a box that you control.
- doug
If you're already using debian-based products, why not use Maemo for the phones and apt-get debian-ARM .debs? Even if regular syncing doesn't work, you could automate an rsync over SSH with passwordless pke.
Multisync appears to be dead. The same people are working on Opensync which does seem to have current activity.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
To be a hint more accurate...
The reason Android can be relied upon to play nice, is that, as the only one of the platforms with open code access, you can write the app you need to get it to sync correctly with Evolution - or worst case, convert your Evolution files to what the Android's syncing functionality uses. Either of these solutions, which are not currently possible on a majority of other mass-market smartphones, should work to fit your needs - possibly with the hiring of a handy coder or two or paying someone to write it for the Evolution project.
The other nice part about Android is that there's a fair array of sets - great way for the boss to show off his boss-ness by getting a recent top-of-the-line while your group handles (surprisingly cheap for a smartphone!) sets from last year, WITHOUT losing compatibility with the key app you need.
I believe that Blackberries can also support custom apps, though if your business does FOSS for the sake of Freedom, as opposed to simply cost, the Android OS, being GNU GPL (even if the specific implementation in many phones isn't), may better suit your wishes anyhow.
Omeg La. Rofl Leh.
Most of the mobile world I know of is slowly moving away from direct synchronisation with the desktop. Instead, the desktop and the mobile device sync with the mail/groupware server.
I suggest taking a look at Zimbra as it supports most devices out there. You can go at it both ways too, with either a server sync or a desktop sync.
We are using Exchange right now with the Evolution MAPI conduit. We are moving away from this solution in favor of Zimbra which will work across desktop and mobile platforms.
I guess I'll take the bullet.
My iPhone works wonderfully in Ubuntu nowadays. Not jailbroken, just works.
That's not to say the iPhone is OSS friendly, just that Ubuntu has... overcome.
Isn't there a new Palm version about to be released? I believe it uses WebOS.
As pointed out by Harald Welte (he's as good an authority on the subject as any), the Samsung Galaxy S is a good candidate. Samsung makes all of its source open and there probably isn't firmware locking, AFAIK.
If you have employee information in your phone contacts, you are bound (in the UK) by the Data Protection Act to protect that data. If it's being sent to some cloudy server that might be hosted in a foreign country, then you are breaking the law.
Not to mention that the N900 has a PalmOS Garnet emulator available, so you might still be able to run some of your other legacy palm apps:
http://www.access-company.com/products/gvm/index.html
I myself recently made the move from a Palm TX to an Android phone (purely because I'm a Google Maps Mobile addict), but still find myself carrying the Palm TX around for a lot of legacy apps that I haven't been able to find "modern" equivalents for...
Anyway, I too am quite interested in where all the hardcore Palm users have migrated to (evidently it wasn't WebOS, if only for the lack of SD storage :P )
You should ask yourself during this trial on how many more business-specific applications you're going to have to dig around for and come up with hobbled-together solutions when you could have very well done this easily with Windows SBS/Exchange and been done with it. In fact, you'd be already most of the way finished doing this if you just used SBS.
Your boss can focus more time on actually conducting business and less time trying to come up with "OSS" ways to do it.
Remember, IT works for business--not the other way around. Sometimes you need to make concessions on this.
As long as we're on the topic, anyone have any success connecting the Android 2.2 Mail app to a courier-imapd server? I'm not having any joy, though it works with mutt / thunderbird / etc.
Though I suppose it would be better to connect to something with a full PIM suite, like Evolution... but haven't convinced myself to migrate there from JPilot + PalmOS beyond an occasional one-way sync.
The N900 is great. I'd be very careful recommending it to a Windows/Mac user without Linux experience, but if they are technically competent they should be able to get it working fine. The main problem is that, like so many recent Nokia products, it seems to lack the last two months of beta testing polish which makes the real difference. However, if you already know Linux you can really benefit from it.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
If you have ethics and security issues with storing data in the cloud, then shouldn't you also be looking for a device or application that encrypts sensitive data?
Do any Android phones do encryption natively? I've heard that the upcoming Droid Pro claims to. I know the iPhone has encryption support, but I don't know how whether it encrypts all application data or only data that Apple deems 'sensitive'.
Android is not hardware. Hardware (and firmware, I suppose) is what's blocking this. Not Android itself. Locking down a phone is not a requirement for Android, and there will never be a day when all Android phones are completely locked down.
Quite contrary to the public's belief. Android is not very friendly to standard open source projects, to usual OSS programming languages and lacks basic development means in general. Of course you can "publish" nearly anything on the store, but that anything must come from one development scenario only - the Java app.
One can't even use even basic canonical open source projects and libraries.
Developers are pretty much forced to use Java everywhere - language that is not very popular in the FOSS community and that is falling further down in popularity every other day now.
I use SyncEvolution with my Nokia E71. Works flawlessly. Will also work with the Nokia N900 and I'm guessing any Symbian S60 phone. http://syncevolution.org/
that's not an office, that's a closet ...
My blog
Actually, much as it pains me, I think they want iPhones.
If they run Zimbra (open source groupware) as their mail server and use iPhone 4s they can sync email over imap, calendars over caldav and contacts over carddav.
Zimbra has an open sourced evolution connector too, if they don't want to change their desktop software.
Correct. I jut bought a new LG Android phone and had no trouble upgrading the custom 2.1 Android OS that it came with to stock google 2.2. If that had not worked, I would have immediately returned the phone as 'defective'.
The Bolachek Journals
Agreed that N900 is excellent depending on what you want. I have used many PIMs, and allow me to give you this golden advice: FUNAMBOL. My current is N900, Ubuntu desktop/laptop, and then a speckling of many other systems. I use a cloud, BUT it's easy enough to setup your own funambol server and synchronize to that. Before the N900, I easily synced to several win mobile PDAs using funambol as well. If you want details on setup, feel free to pm. tarek : )
For a long time Palm has worked incredibly well over the wire with Linux and Linux sync tools. I cannot speak about the latest and greatest of this. but if they use the same backend protocol then it should be the same. In a newer sense there have been no tools to do a over the wire sync with android yet. which is ironic as it is a Linux smartphone OS. However there are a number of over the air solutions that exist. one of which is actually provided by Ubuntu in the Ubuntu one service. this is based off of funambol's technology which works very much like RIM's technology. However some things allready exist. If you have a mailserver that is compatible with activesync then you can connect that way directly to your mailserver (i do not know off the top of my head about this) but in a simpler way you can get email and connect it via IMAP directly so email synchronization with email on the server is easy. contacts and appointments are now the harder issue. however if your company is willing to go that direction zimbra appears to work with windows mobile active sync, and may be an option for you. this it would seem is your best option to keep it all in house. http://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Mobile_Device_Setup the only other option is to find out how much data is on their servers with funambol
As a sysadmin, you first obligation is to your employer, not your principles.
Wrong, before being a sysadmin, one is a person, and as a person, the principles should be above what the employer demand. Of course, one of the basic principles is also not harm the company you work for :)
example: i would never send spam or do false advertising, even if that would help the company, but of course, i would not force OpenOffice.org to the accounting guy and all his (excel) scripted spreadsheet files. On the other hand, most of the people would be forced to use OpenOffice.org, because they don't really need MS Office, the same way i would not give a Ferrari, unless someone really needs it or the boss order it.
Higuita
It's likely a firewalling issue. I used to work at a web hosting company that mostly used Courier on shared/dedicated/and vps machines, although a few (like my personal vps) ran Dovecot. It was necessary to tweak the firewall rules on a few of the shared machines to get BlackBerry phones to work with their push-pop mail. Not having an Android phone, I don't know if they support push pop from a secondary location like BB does, or not. However, I don't think that the issue is Courier itself, assuming all your authdaemon settings are correct.
Really, I must ask... What part of "the two computers use Evolution" did you not understand?
What part of "two computers" did you not understand?
Now, what phone are you recommending?
There was no complaint about services, costs, or anything remotely resembling a question about installing MS SBS.
But, since you brought it up -- a copy of MS SBS costs $1,089 (http://www.microsoft.com/sbs/en/us/pricing.aspx?pf=true) -- and something for taxes. And, of course, a computer to run it on, installation and training... call it $2000 (I'd go higher, but, hey, MS people are fairly inexpensive - normally, I'd figure $100/hour for installation and training, and a $600 + taxes for the server, $2000 combined, and a services budget of 10 hours so $3000 total. Feel free to quote less).
But wait! He still has to buy the smartphones! Doesn't save one single sou.
But wait! For this ABSOLUTELY RETARDED answer (because you didn't answer the question at all), you get a +5 moderation.
So there is more than one idiot involved.
Like I said in another post, I use a Blackberry (I get the one with the biggest keyboard), and I sync to Evolution with multisync.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
How do you load software on it without iTunes?
Where would we be if Wheel had hid her round rock in a cave instead of showing everyone how it rolls?
Unfortuntely, here in the U.S. [the N900] only works with one carrier, T-Mobile, whose coverage is a joke.
You mean it's only SOLD WITH THE SERVICE by T-Mobile, right?
When I signed up for GSM with AT&T (because only AT&T had a cell covering my Nevada place), they told me I could pull the SIM, put it in any other (US bands) GSM phone, and the service would work. The N900 has GSM on all the bands used in the US, according to its specs.
I haven't tried this yet (with a N900 or any other). But perhaps someone here has and can tell us if it works?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Looks like the iPhone is indeed supported reasonably well through libimobiledevice which ships with Ubuntu. Check the video on the libimobiledevice site. You can't go wrong with iPhone really: a lot of people have one which will ensure developer interest, it's on a relatively slow release cycle so the OSS people aren't continually outdated and is generally pretty good about keeping compatibility between versions.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
If you're a doctor, your contact list (if it has any patient contact info) and appointment schedule may fall under HIPAA, making it sensitive information that must be protected.
As long as we're on the topic, anyone have any success connecting the Android 2.2 Mail app to a courier-imapd server? ...
No, but I am successfully connecting against a dovecot imap server over SSL. Works like a champ.
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If your answer is Microsoft, you obviously didn't understand the question.
How's Android any more open than Nokia?
Nokia just announced its support for Qt as the main platform for all of its smartphones, whether Symbian or Linux-based. (Nokia owns Qt, and it's available as LGPL.) They're coming out with an XML-based GUI and HTML5 scripting, too.
You can develop for mobile, Linux, Windows, and Mac platforms. And you can use your choice of Lin/Mac/Win for dev, too, leveraging FOSS developers knowledge of Qt and Qt Creator.
There's an Android port of Qt, too.
You can also contribute mods/fixes to Qt, I'm not sure if that's the case with Android.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
"as the only one of the platforms with open code access,"
Maemo. N900.
If you are ethically solf on GPL/FOSS then it si about the best option (that actually works) right now. If you're hardcore then you can find a second hand Openmoko, but I'd advise against it.
The N900 is also an awesome phone and open by design, root access is granted with an installable app and not by a hack, the packing system and graphical software installer are apt based... it's a full linux. It rocks.
MS Exchange is not the simple well behaved beast you think it is. One trap for new players a few years ago was for it to install as a open relay be default. A *nix mail admin running MS Exchange IS in the wrong job without a bit of time to learn about the quirks of a new environment.
At least backups are now possible in MS Exchange without shutting down all of the services - but it's still not something that anyone coming from a different MTA would expect and it is very fragile so you don't want somebody learning on the job in a production environment with something so fragile and so difficult to backup and restore.
The advertisements lie when they say any idiot can run MS Exchange well without training or experience - for a start you need at least two servers to be really sure that users can send and recieve mail. It's a million miles away from just throwing sendmail, exim, postfix, qmail or whatever on a low powered PC and looking at the logs a year later to see it's happily handling 5000 emails a day without a hiccup. MS Exchange is a lot more than email and needs attention to keep it going. It's the only modern MTA in production use where people will actually tolerate lost emails - all the others moved past that point or were discarded in disgust years ago.
The n900 has syncevolution, that can supposedly sync with lots of stuff: http://syncevolution.org/documentation/compatibility
However, I'm not sure how reliable it is on the n900 at the moment.
I've been using syncevolution on the N900 for over six months now, and it's been working like charm, no problems whatsoever.
I regularly sync my old Nokia E61i with Evolution in my Fedora desktop. I believe the newer E70 series smartphones will also do the job.
Easiest solution: get a Palm Pre. There's a palm emulator called Classic for it. Run your old apps.
Sounds like you are using GNUmed where the patient schedule is done in your standard calendar app.
In this case I'm afraid you need to shift paradigms. Most modern smartphone OS's actually have no native PIM applications that you can sync to - unlike the older Palm and WinCE devices. Everything is designed to talk to and display information stored in the cloud or on a server.
In this case for the short term I'd get a large screened device like a DroidX or even a Dell Streak and either use web browser based display (via SSL of course) or setup a VPN (built into Android) and use VNC to view your desktop.
Long term - develop an Android app to do the above in a pleasing / useful way.
Also - Google's cloud recently won security certification for government use. I'm sure HIPPA isn't far behind. Maybe just hang on to the Palm devices a little longer and then a move to standard Android will become feasible.
BTW Kudos for being careful and doing your Due Diligence. I happen to work in health care IT and see jaw dropping breaches of confidentiality - especially by small offices - all the time.
"Smile, listen, agree, and then do whatever the fuck you wanted to do anyway." ~Robert Downey Jr.
Palm Pre is a solution too.
- it features a classic emulator too
- it can sync to servers speaking the Exchage protocol (like evolution)
So although it's not really synching directly over a USB/Serial cable like the question author wanted, the "cloud" in question could very well be their very own exchange-compatible evolution server, accessed over their own secured WiFi network. So i think most ethical problems won't be problematic anymore.
and if someone in the team is less ethically concerned and decides to use other cloud source, Synergy takes care to show contact which are the same person as merged.
also, the device it self is open-source friendly.
runs on linux
uses lots of free software components
lots of the rest has accessible javascript too.
has a simple (although sadly proprietary) interface based entirely on HTML+Javascript.
can run homebrew out of the box without any jailbreaking/rooting nonsense.
supports SDL and opengl based applications.
has also recently an alpha X11 server (it's not as complete as N900's - it just run a X11 server as an app card, if you need it - for example to quickly do some remote administration with a SSH X tunnel)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]