On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 10:20:30PM +0000, freeslkr wrote:
> I'd like to get a Pearl 8220 working on a Fedora 10 x86_64 installation.
> The most important needs are to have reliable backups of the device and to
> manage the calendar and contacts on the laptop while syncing back to the
> Blackberry. Ideally the calendar and contacts applications would be
> KDE4's, but I understand there are currently problems with this, and I'm
> willing to use something else (evolution?) in the meantime. Once set up,
> this needs to be as stable and hassle-free as possible as it will be on a
> work machine for a non-technical person.
Hi freeslkr,
You may have already made your decisions, but for the benefit of others
reading the list, and just in case you're still working on this, here's
my response.
Considering that you are looking for rock-solid stability for a
non-technical end user, there are a number of stumbling blocks in your path.
This is how I see it:
1) Fedora 9 and 10 are based on an old / new version of opensync,
based on the middle of the 0.3x devel tree. It is not
suitable for use, either with Barry, or in general,
in my opinion.
2) opensync 0.22 is stable, but you'd have to install or compile
it yourself for Fedora 10, and even though it is stable,
it does have its warts. The GUIs are just a little
lacking, as far as I've seen, and even if you're using
the command line msynctool, you can get into situations
where you have to debug your sync.
That sounds more scary than it needs to be... there are lots
of people using 0.22. And there are a wider variety of
plugins that work.
3) opensync 0.4x is not out yet... I think we're at 0.38 + SVN trunk.
This means that not all the XML schemas are quite finished and
not all the plugins are up to speed. It also means that
work continues on the GUI side of things... I've seen some
posts on the opensync-devel mailing list, but haven't tried
the latest GUI code yet. It is good to see that people
are working on it though.
Version 0.4x is definitely where we want to be, but it's
going to take time to get there. Better features, and
better stability, and better handling of your device's
data. All in 0.4x.
Unfortunately that doesn't leave you with very many options for a solution
for the end user.
I'm tempted to recommend trying Mandriva, since Adam Williamson put a lot
of effort into that distro to make all the sync pieces work together.
He's now part of the Fedora effort, so I'd guess that by Fedora 12, he
may have worked his magic again. :-)
If you don't mind being chief compiler, debugger, and tech support for
your end user, you can always compile everything yourself. You will get
a working setup with some good features, but you may lose some hair in
the process. I tried to talk another Barry user through the process here
on the list, via email, and it was just too much for him. Understandably.
So that leaves 0.22 on a distro that supports it. And that's
Ubuntu, Debian, and Mandriva, to my knowledge. Fedora is off the list.
It is definitely on my todo list to make all of this stuff easier! From
custom binary package repos to dedicated GUIs to make syncing dead easy
for the Blackberry. But that takes time too.
In another email you asked:
> Do you (or anyone here) know anything about syncing with the Mozilla
> Sunbird calendar?
I did test against an early version of sunbird and opensync 0.22,
and I don't recall any wild issues with it. I haven't tried it recently,
but I'd guess that opensync 0.22 will give you better support for Sunbird
than the 0.3x devel tree right now.
Hope that helps,
- Chris
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