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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?"
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 )
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/
While it's true that Nokia isn't providing much support for the N900, it shouldn't require much "hacking" to get a working sync solution because it's already been done. The Maemo community has really impressed me with their ability to provide functionality well beyond what's available on a stock N900.
Knowledge Brings Fear
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