Of all of these utilities, you will likely use pilot-xfer the most. Pilot-xfer allows you to install programs on your Palm device, make a backup, and restore that backup.

To install a program, type the following at the command prompt:

To backup your Palm device, type the following at the command prompt:

This will copy all of the databases on your Palm OS device to a directory called "backup-directory", creating it if it doesn't already exist.

To restore data to Palm device, type the following at the command prompt:

Generally, you will only need to do this if your Palm device loses power or if you have to do a hard reset.

To list the programs on your Palm device, type the following at the command prompt:

Choose your desktop
While the utilities in Pilot-link are handy, you'll want to duplicate the Palm Desktop environment on the Linux desktop. While 3Com doesn't provide desktop support for Linux, there are a few open-source alternatives that fit the bill nicely.

J-pilot, which is by far the most complete, can be obtained from http://jpilot.linuxbox.com/. Like Pilot-link, you'll want to download the source code and compile it for your Linux distribution. J-pilot uses the GTK toolset and libraries (which is also used by the GNOME environment), so you'll want to download them from http://www.gnome.org if you don't have them installed on your system. Red Hat Linux 6.0 comes with GNOME and GTK installed by default.

J-pilot works very much like the Windows and Mac versions of Palm Desktop. Many of the applications look similar to the Windows program. For example, you can see the Address Book, shown in Figure A.

FIGURE A


Edit your address book in J-pilot. Roll over picture for a larger image.

The Date Book, shown in Figure B, is pretty slick-looking, too.

FIGURE B


Here's the J-pilot Date Book. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Figure C shows J-pilot's Memo Pad section.

FIGURE C


Here's how the Memo Pad application looks in J-pilot. Roll over picture for a larger image.

If you make your To Do List entries in J-file, it'll look something like Figure D.

FIGURE D


Here's how your J-pilot To Do List will look. Roll over picture for a larger image.

J-pilot cannot backup your Palm unit's databases, nor can you export data from it to other applications. For that, you'll need KPilot, shown in Figure E, which runs in KDE, the competing environment to GNOME.

FIGURE E


You'll need Kpilot to export data to other applications or to backup your Palm device's databases. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Luckily, with most Linux distributions, you can run KDE and GNOME apps side by side without leaving the desktop. Red Hat Linux 6.0 comes with KDE 1.1 and KPilot pre-installed, several other distributions such as SuSE and Caldera use KDE as the default GUI. If KPilot isn't already installed as part of your distribution, you can get it from http://www.slac.com/pilone/kpilot_home/download.html.

Like J-pilot, you synchronize, view and modify Address Book and Memo entries on your Linux desktop, and export Address Book and Memo entries to text files.