[TriLUG] kpilot (Palm Pilot under KDE/Linux)

[Tanner Lovelace]

Quoting Christian J Hedemark <chris at yonderway.com>:

> I downloaded the latest available binary and source RPM's from
> ximian.com as
> of last night and this morning.  I am running Red Hat 7.2 on x86.  I
> have
> applied Red Hat updates for any of the packages already installed on
> this
> system by Red Hat, but the updates are no newer than one month old.  If
> it
> will help, I can privately email the output of "rpm -qa"
> 
> The griping doesn't feel good.  None of this feels good.  My complaint
> is
> that this is a whole lot more difficult than it needs to be.

I absolutely agree.  Package dependencies seem, to me, to be
the biggest problem facing distributions today.  Debian users
have been telling us rpm types for years the advantages of apt-get.
Know what?  They're right!  Absolutely.  The thing I think Redhat
needs the most is something like apt-get.  Conectiva Linux (out
of Brazil by the same people that brought you first Afterstep
and then WindowMaker) has actually ported apt-get to work with
rpm.  Mandrake has gone a different direction (but working to
solve the same problem) and created the tool urpmi that does
pretty much the same thing.  I can only assume (and, please
if someone from Redhat can set me straight, *please* do so)
that since Redhat has apparently decided to focus on the server
market and let the desktop market go by the wayside (which, btw,
is a valid market decision), and that servers will often 
go for years using the same software (as long as it's working
why change, unless there are security problems) that this is why
Redhat has not addressed this problem before.  Distributions
that focus more on the desktop, like Mandrake, because of the
fact that the linux desktop tools are in such a state of flux
right now absolutely must have a tool that automatically
figures out dependencies and installs needed prerequisites.

Note that this is absolutely not meant to be a criticism of
Redhat.  I am very much in awe of what they have done for
linux and have the utmost respect for them.  I also realize
they can't do everything.

[...] 
> This was part of the point I was trying to make.  This is insane... to
> install one application you have to hunt down and download upwards of
> 20 others.

Like I said above. Right now, linux desktop tools are in a great
state of flux.  When gnucash 1.0 came out, people had this
same problem.  Unfortunately, without a program to automatically
download needed prerequisites, I don't see an easy solution 
to this problem.

[...]
> Well I am not giving up (have been working 24 hours straight on this)
> but I
> am very disappointed.  Recently we have been talking here about how to
> appeal more to business users.  The first executive that tries to get a
> palm
> pilot working on Linux is going to go running back to Windoze.  I value
> the
> time and help you are offering but I sit here with my 56K dialup
> modem,
> looking at around 100MB of downloads to get a 1.0 mail client working
> with
> Palm support, and wonder if it is worth it to try to nurse my modem
> along
> for the day or so it will take to download it all.  All for what,
> email?
> 
> In the meantime, the Palm software that ships with Red Hat hasn't been
> updated in almost 2 years.  It is broken.  The KPalm daemon sometimes
> starts, sometimes doesn't.  When it does start, it starts to sync and
> then
> when it kicks off the KPalm desktop app, both the PC and the Palm sit
> there
> and wait for the other one to say something and the Palm times out
> first.
> Funny thing is, it worked flawlessly one time.  No changes to the
> configuration, just added some more addresses to KAB and *boom* it went
> into
> this state where it starts the sync job and then hangs.  The KPalm
> daemon
> becomes very unresponsive after that.  It has no documentation,
> according to
> the developers web site, and there is not really any useful help feature
> in
> it either.
> 
> The frustrating thing is, I've been an IT professional for 8 years now
> and
> working with UNIX heavily for 5.  This shouldn't be this difficult.  If
> it
> is this hard for me, how in the heck can I evangelize Linux to other
> people
> and recommend it as a desktop replacement?  Sorry if constructive
> criticism
> about Linux makes some people uncomfortable or even angry, but this is
> going
> to hold Linux back until the big distros stop focusing so much on the
> kernel
> and start improving the userland experience.  The kernel works.  Now
> take
> that elite army of coders and fix the things that have been neglected
> for
> years in userland.  :-)
> 

And I believe they are, in fact, doing just that.  It's just 
that the distributions haven't yet caught up with it.  I
also think that, since Redhat seems to be concentrating on
the server to the, apparent, detriment of the desktop, that
you might have better luck with a distribution more geared
toward the desktop.

Tanner Lovelace
--
Tanner Lovelace | lovelace at wayfarer.org | http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
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