FC4: Ways to use PalmPilot

[Christopher Browne]

On 8/30/05, pking123-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org <pking123-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Last night, I noticed that FC4 (Fedora 4) was able to read my
> PalmPilot m105 (the first one to do so after much on again/off again
> trying.
> 
> Now, emboldened, I would like to know if there are any Linux
> applications, similar to the Palm Desktop that can be used to add
> updates to things like the Date Book and the To-Do list?
> 
> Any suggestions? I would even accept suggestions on the level of
> using vi, emacs, or whatnot. The problem is that the To-Do list and
> the Datebook appear to have some kind of special format (upon
> checking it with 'less') that would make it seem that vi/emacs is not
> the way to go, except to add ascii files.

Unfortunately, the Fedora people have evidently been plucking versions
of JPilot and pilot-link out of the development streams that the
developers warn people not to use for production purposes.

The following came over the JPilot mailing list today...

http://www.jpilot.org/pipermail/jpilot/2005-August/005379.html

"This hollow laugh seemed worth sharing here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraMyths#head-60f1f50c131102346be18e1ea2b97f39de37a096

The Fedora Team's brave truth-squad states that, in fact, their
rapid-release cycle means "...that Fedora is often running in uncharted
innovative territory, but not that it is using too-new code. The programs
in Fedora are generally stable releases or well-tested pre-release
versions. There are guidelines behind the inclusion of pre-release
software, and thorough testing is always done prior to Fedora Core
releases."

I would have to say that the FC4/pilot-link/j-pilot case study pretty much
contradicts every substantive part of this statement.  As David reported,
they happily packaged -pre versions despite explicit warnings not to do so
because these versions were "too new", and their "testing" apparently
missed the fact that the distributed version failed to sync nearly every
Palm device.  I'm sure they have "guidelines", but these don't appear to
have anything to do with validating the integrity of important sub-systems
like PDA synchronization.

There's more happy-talk about FCX providing a stable, reliable platform
that is adequate even for "critical infrastructure".  This appears to
contradict the reports that the Fedora team repeatedly states that the
distribution is "not meant for production", statements that appear
intended to brush off the seriousness and urgency of some bug reports.

I suppose one could take an optimistic view: perhaps this statement
represents more than just self-deluding marketing noise.  Perhaps it is
actually a statement of the ideals that the Fedora people would like to
live up to.  If this is the case, they sure need a lot of help."
-- 
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