Syncing Linux/KDE with Android

[Tom_ZeCat]

I got myself an Android phone finally. One of the main reasons is I miss my days using a Palm Tungsten E and E2 to carry my schedule around with me. When I worked at my desk, I would sync it with my Windows XP machine and continue working on my PC. It worked great.

I'm using Kubuntu 14.04, which comes with some terrific PIM applications, KOrganizer, KAddressbook, and some others, with Kontact that pulls them all together in one interface. I've been googling around for ways to sync this KDE PIM system together and have turned up some rather old links, from 2010. What's more, it seems rather complicated.

I can access my Android with a cable. KOrganizer will export to an iCalendar file (ics) or to a vCalendar (vcs) one. It it possible to somehow just copy one of those files over to some Android app and for it to be able to use it?

Everything seems to be twisting my arm to achieve a sync via Google. The thought of handing my data over to Google makes me gag. Plus, I don't always have Internet access. My cell phone plan has very little data, and I like it that way. I use wifi when it's available. I don't want to have to go online to look at my schedule. Sometimes I'm in the boonies with no wifi and crappy cell reception anyway. I shouldn't need it for my calendar. I should have already copied it over from my laptop to be able to use in my handheld.

In anyone knows how I can copy my calendar and address book data over to and from my Android (Moto G) without Google, I would be most grateful. I'm surprised this feature isn't in very high demand. Has everyone just surrendered to Google?

[grahammechanical]

I can access my Android with a cable. KOrganizer will export to an iCalendar file (ics) or to a vCalendar (vcs) one. It it possible to somehow just copy one of those files over to some Android app and for it to be able to use it?

So, to be clear you are looking for an Android phone app that will read ics or vcs files? We might not want to trust Google with our data but it is useful for other things. I do not have a phone but I searched for "android ics vcs app" and got this as an example of what might be useful to you.

http://ntbab.dyndns.org/apache2-defa...seandroid.html

Regards.

[SeijiSensei]

Personally, I don't any problems with Google knowing when I have my next dental appointment. I find Google Calendar a very nice tool since I can see everything from a browser or my phone. I can't imagine the data demands are very high either. It's likely just syncing a small text file.

[gifford]

Yes, I have surrendered to Google. I have the Moto X and find that using Google and Ubuntu together has made everything much easier.
I use Thunderbird with Lightning and it syncs seamlessly with Google calendar and my Android phone.
The data used is very little and the syncing is mostly done over wifi.

There are many other advantages as well. Google Keep is one and Motorola connect is another. Great applications that truly make doing
things much easier.

[Tom_ZeCat]

So, to be clear you are looking for an Android phone app that will read ics or vcs files? We might not want to trust Google with our data but it is useful for other things. I do not have a phone but I searched for "android ics vcs app" and got this as an example of what might be useful to you.

http://ntbab.dyndns.org/apache2-defa...seandroid.html

Regards.

Precisely, thanks. I’ll give that app a try.

Personally, I don't any problems with Google knowing when I have my next dental appointment. I find Google Calendar a very nice tool since I can see everything from a browser or my phone. I can't imagine the data demands are very high either. It's likely just syncing a small text file.

I know the NSA/FBI, etc. probably aren’t interested in my dental appointments either, but I’ve had enough bad experiences with privacy violations that I don’t want to make it easy for anyone to spy on me. The crazy neighbor lady has a vivid imagination that she shares with the local cops. One day my roommate and I loaded up a bunch of camping gear into a trailer. Her conclusion: We were trafficking drugs, and she called he cops. My roommate was driving his truck on a country road one morning with poor visibility and accidentally hit a cow, but did not kill it and it walked away. He reported everything that happened to the police in a full report. The next morning he was out in our driveway fixing the dent. Her conclusion: He was involved in a hit and run and was hurriedly trying to cover it up by fixing it real quick. One day he was fixing some problems on his car via welding, which he’s an expert at. Her conclusion: He was installing hidden compartments for drug smuggling. One day I came home with some plastic storage boxes that I bought at Target. Her conclusion: Terrariums for growing marijuana. She’s reported all of her absurd conclusions to the cops. She looks like someone’s nice grandmother while we’re middle-aged men, meaning people’s inclination is to believe her over us. Now we’re labeled a problem house and the cops come by all the time looking us over. We feel like we’re living in a fish bowl. One day we caught her rifling through our mail. We’re going to have to get one of those locking mail boxes. That’s why I don’t want to make it easy for anyone to spy on us because that’s exactly what this crazy lady is doing. My dentist has a Hispanic last name. If she had my dentist appointment info, she would probably conclude his office is really a cover for a drug cartel. I’m not exaggerating. She’s that nuts. That’s why I’m very guarded about my privacy.

Yes, I have surrendered to Google. I have the Moto X and find that using Google and Ubuntu together has made everything much easier.
I use Thunderbird with Lightning and it syncs seamlessly with Google calendar and my Android phone.
The data used is very little and the syncing is mostly done over wifi.

There are many other advantages as well. Google Keep is one and Motorola connect is another. Great applications that truly make doing
things much easier.

If the other app sucks, I could do this as a last resort with a fake name and hope that Crazy Lady doesn’t find it as yet another way to stalk me.

[shaunthesheep]

Google = NSA. Ditto Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo and all the other big Silicon Valley tech companies that offer "free services". As US companies, they are all obliged to cooperate, willingly or otherwise, with US laws and the mega-snoopers and dragnet surveillers at NSA.

If an online service is "free", you can safely assume that you and your data are the "product". Your data is harvested and distributed to government surveillance agencies which in turn store it permanently and make it available to the army of private surveillance contractors like Booze Allen Hamilton and Startfor. We know this because of Snowden's revelations. He worked for Booz Allen, the NSA and the CIA at various times.

There is almost certainly a lot more of Snowden's revelations that Glenn Greenwald (whom I greatly admire) is not publishing because it has been made clear to him by the NSA that if he does publish it, he will live to regret it.

I too put off getting a smartphone because I was conscious of the fact that they are tracking/spy devices that also make phone calls and perform other useful tasks. However, I was recently gifted an Android phone by a friend which is full of Google and Samsung apps that I don't trust. I have very mixed feelings about this device: fascination at the clever technology and the "cool" features and uses to which it can be put combined with horror at the privacy nightmare that it represents. Snowden revealed recently that any intel agency anywhere in the world can hack into an iPhone (or any other smartphone) once they are connected to a network and exfiltrate the data.

See this recent NBC interview with Snowden in Moscow about the ability of intel agencies to exfiltrate data from any iPhone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=743u0pdikbM

Android is open source and can be audited--it is the least worst of the mobile phone OSs. iOS is proprietary and closed source as is Windows. But Android is customised by Google, a tech company that collaborates with the NSA. "So what", you might say: after all "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear." But that assumes that the governments we live under are benign. I don't believe that to be the case. My government, the UK, has a long record of colonial repression of the most brutal kind and predatory warmongering. The UK government does the bidding of the corporations, especially the arms and oil companies. Anyone who is opposed to this is a potential target for surveillance.

And the intel agencies attempt to blur the line between "activist" and "terrorist". Witness the case of Greenwald's partner who was arrested at Heathrow airport on the grounds that he was a supposed "terrorist". Thus, people working as a courier for a newspaper can be dubbed "terrorists" at the whim of the UK border agency.

So, what to do with Android? I know there are various alternative open source ROMs like CyanogenMod or Replicant but I lack the expertise to flash them at the moment and I do not want to repay the kindness of my friend who bought me the phone by bricking it a few weeks after receiving it!

So, I am currently casting around for half measures like replacing the Google and Samsung apps with open source alternatives. But that is not so simple as they appear to require root access to get rid of them. I have F-droid installed and have installed Orbot and Orweb (the mobile version of Tor browser).

Can anyone recommend open source software that is an alternative to Samsung Kies that will sync Android to Ubuntu or at least allow me to transfer videos to my Ubuntu desktop computer to free up space on my phone's SD card?

[impliedconsent2]

Not sure if this will fix your complete solution, but I found KDEConnect (via Google Play for device, download for Kubuntu DE). I'm using it without issue on 14.04LTS. It is not integrating KOrganizer and I'm still looking for something similar, but for all others, KDEConnect is fantastic (no, I don't work for them).

[pwabrahams]

At one time I had a Palm Pilot and was using kpilot (of blessed memory) to sync the two over a USB cable. It worked beautifully. When support for kpilot vanished -- it simply doesn't work with newer Ubuntus -- I switched over to jpilot.

But technology moves on. I now have an Android phone that I want to sync with some KDE calendar/addressbook app, again over USB. I don't want to do it via Google for two reasons, one being the usual privacy concerns and the other being that since I live in the sticks I often don't have a reliable cellphone connection.

I discovered to my surprise and disappointment that KAddressbook is feeble compared with jpilot. For instance, there's no obvious way to sort the names in last-name order rather than first-name order. So I'm now looking for a way to sync my jpilot database with my Android phone over a USB cable. It ought to be easy, but it doesn't seem to be.

I'd be willing to switch to a different contact database if need be, but whatever it is, I still need to be able to (a) work with it under Kubuntu and (b) sync it with my Android phone.

Does anyone know how to do this?