pocket pc sync in linux

So i decided to look for ways to sync my PocketPC powered XDA IIs in linux. Sure I could sync it in windows if I wanted to use Outlook as an email program (which I most certainly don’t). I found that it is relatively easy to sync with KMail. I personally prefer Thunderbird, but as there is not that much between the two, I will happily use the KDE offering in return for the ability to sync to my PDA.

So what is needed?
I installed synce-kde which allows you to connect your pda, along with syncekonnector which has the synchronising mechanism to sync with KMail.
Running it all was a bit odd, first off I had to select a serial port (their wording, not mine) of ttyUSB0 (which is the USB hub, and not the actual ports. Then launching Raki (a part of synce) allowed me to start up a daemon to launch the thing, yet it didn’t work. Googling revealed that I have to run synce-serial-start (I had to do a synce-serial-config ttyUSB0 too) and then the device came alive. Tick a few boxes and my contacts, tasks and calendar are all in the base KDE apps!

Excellent!

Just be careful with recurring entries. At the moment syncing a recurring entry from Kmail to your pda causes the calendar to crash (and on mine this caused a memory leak which killed the whole pda!).