Is KDE Connect what I need?

[Tom_ZeCat]

I've been googling and googling and asking questions on the Ubuntu board about this, but still haven't gotten where I want to go. I miss the days when I used a Palm Pilot and a Windows XP PC and I could sync my calender and address book with my Palm and my PC. For the PC you had the option of using MS Outlook or Palm's Windows-based software. I chose the latter and it worked great.

Today it looks like everyone is using Google Calendar, which is what I DO NOT want to do for a couple reasons. 1. I'm on an inexpensive cell plan without much data. I don't want to have to use up data every time I want to pull out my phone and look at or set an appointment. 2. With all the NSA spying and corporate spying and Facebook spying going on -- my polite response to giving my appointments up to some huge corporation is: **** that ****.

Is KDE Connect the answer to my needs? If so, what Android-based software do I use it with?

So far I've been underwhelmed by the Android experience. It has some cool apps, but in some ways it still isn't as good as a Palm Pilot. Progess. Sigh.

[claydoh]

Kdeconnect only works on wifi at the moment. It is not a sync tool like you are seeking, as what it basically does now is send android notifications to your desktop, adds a send-a-file-to-desktop-folder Share option, and adds an ssh connection so that you can browse the phone file system.


I know they just added a couple new things I haven't had time to look at

[whatthefunk]

KDE connect will not help you there. I havent read all of this, but mybe it could get you going in the right direction: http://flailingmonkey.com/moving-con...alendar-google

[SteveRiley]

I'm doing something very similar to what's in the article whatthefunk referenced. I'm running my own Debian 7.5 server with:

• Postfix for SMTP email
• Dovecot for LDAP email retrieval
• Roundcube for web mail
• DAViCal for CalDAV calendar and CardDAV contacts
• TT-RSS for news feeds
• Ampache for music streaming
• Apache web server

The beauty of rolling your own means you can use software that's completely standards-compliant across many devices. KMail, KOrganizer, and KAddressBook all support standards for mail, calendars, and contacts. You can add such support to Android phones using the apps in the article. I've been extremely happy with my setup.

Feathers is running a similar configuration and has documented much of it on his blog.

I intend to replace Apache with Lighttpd. Apache is a pretty heavy server, and way too much for one person's need. Lighttpd is much easier to configure. I also intend to replace DAViCal, TT-RSS, and Ampache with OwnCloud at some point, mainly for consolidation and simplification.

[Tom_ZeCat]

Thanks for the info, guys. Setting up my own server, huh? Neat idea. I actually have an extra computer I could use. I have a netbook I'm not using for anything in particular. It used to be a Windows 7 PC dedicated to phone service via Magic Jack, which I no longer use. Now I've just been throwing Linux distros on it just to try them out. (Mint with Cinnamon impressed me favorably, but I'll stick with Kubuntu.) I'm planning on setting up a web site, and my own server could host it.

In any event, I've located this app, but have not installed it on my Android yet (which is charging):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d....icssync&hl=en

Looks like it's ICS-based, which KOrganizer can easily export to. In fact, ICS is how I'm backing it up to a thumb drive (for transferring to my other netbook -- I'm a laptop cat lady). Someone else on the page doesn't like this one and recommends a product called Nexxus 7 -- will try that out too.

Btw, I found a solution to there being no LibreOffice for Android yet. There is an OpenOffice for Android, but that's not my solution, as it's not very good yet, in my opinion. I went with SoftMaker Office for Android. It's dirt cheap and its word processor, TextMaker, reads Libre/Open Office Writer files directly. Alas, it's spreadsheet does not read Libre/OO Calc files directly, so I must convert to Excel/xls files. So far I've just been copying my files in with a sync cable, but owning my own server could make it easy for me to beam them in. Thanx for the idea.

[woodsmoke]

It also has a remote control for your media player!

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

KDE Connect is going to soon have a slew of new features.

I have on my ANDROID phone now the app for "mousepad", Ping, Remote Control for Amarok.

a) I easily control Amarok from quite a distance, and it displays the song, album, etc. the normal Amarok display for a song.

b) Ping works immediately and both ways.

c) Mousepad is on the phone but not on the computer so it does not work.

d) an incoming call on the phone is displayed as a "popup" on the computer

e) File transfers work just fine, (and I was wrong about bluetooth connect, it does not so do as I posted elsewhere, it is wireless, I just happened to have bluetooth dongle in and thought that bluetooth was doing it. )

The following link describes some other items that are presently in the pipeline as of 14 Jul 2014, the person mentions iOS so I imagine that the work is being tested on it first and then moved to Android.

http://blog.yangqiao.fr/kdeconnect/n...or-kdeconnect/

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

What's interesting to me about KDE Connect is that it seemed to have appeared with little fanfare, garnered a lot of interest quickly, and now offers more phone-desktop integration than just about anything else you can find -- including between Windows and Windows Phone. I can't wait for the telephony integration to add answering/replying capability.

[bendy]

Has anyone found a ppa for the latest kdeconnect? It's just what I need, but I stopped compiling from source when I left gentoo......

[vinnywright]

Has anyone found a ppa for the latest kdeconnect? It's just what I need, but I stopped compiling from source when I left gentoo......

you could look hear http://xmodulo.com/2014/01/integrate...x-desktop.html

VINNY

[whatthefunk]

Kubuntu backports has pretty recent versions of KDE Connect.

[woodsmoke]

This little appy is tres kewl! since I installed it, if a message of any kind appears on my Android, it can be laying on the other side of the desk, and...given that I have bluetooth enabled, the desktop computer pops a simple square notification window and I can quickly decide if I need to interact with the phone or just dismiss it by clicking the X.

There are a LOT of things going right in KDE about integrating apps and hardware.

woodsmoke

[bendy]

I followed whatthefunk's advice and got the version from backports which is much newer than the one in the standard repositories:

sudo apt-get install kdeconnect/trusty-backports

This is a seriously cool piece of software. If you use kde and an android phone you must try it.....