Open Source-Friendly Smartphones For the Small Office? 222
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?"
Yer boned... (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
Nokia n900 with Maemo? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Android is what you want (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
New palm OS. (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't there a new Palm version about to be released? I believe it uses WebOS.
Why not stick with Palm? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why not use the Palm Pre? It's similar in design to the new Blackberry Torch (slide out physical keyboard) and WebOS is great.
Re:New palm OS. (Score:1, Insightful)
There is a new Palm phone about to be released. The software it runs, WebOS, already exists in version 1.4.5 that runs on the Palm Pre/Pixi, is essentially the same stack of software you would have on a Linux box running GNOME, and in my opinion is the best smartphone OS/UI on the market.
Oh, and to answer the original question, it already syncs quite well.
Re:Windows Mobile. (Score:2, Insightful)
As strange as it sounds, sometimes even Microsoft software does what it's supposed to do.
Windows/Exchange (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Windows/Exchange (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, we're both going to get voted down because we are a bunch of MS sellouts, despite a full third of my servers/appliances running Linux and other OSS...
Re:Android is what you want (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Android is what you want (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:New palm OS. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Android is what you want (Score:4, Insightful)
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'.
wrong! (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Windows/Exchange - What? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Think about what you really need to sync... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Nokia Qt vs. Android (Score:3, Insightful)
How's Android any more open than Nokia?
Nokia just announced its support [nokia.com] for Qt [nokia.com] 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 [gitorious.org], too.
You can also contribute [nokia.com] mods/fixes to Qt, I'm not sure if that's the case with Android.
The advertisement is not reality (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Palm Pre (Score:2, Insightful)
Open Protocols (Score:1, Insightful)
The key is in the protocols. Pick open protocols that a variety of devices support. For example I use:
* iCal for calendaring (apt-get install calendarserver)
* imap for email (apt-get install dovecot-imapd)
* ldap for contact management (apt-get install slapd)