How to Change from any PDA to a Linux PDA

A survey of applications and conversion tools between a conventional PDA operating system (only PalmOS yet, WinCE/Pocket PC and Epoc will follow hopefully) and a Linux PDA (COMPAQ iPAQ, SHARP SL-5500 Zaurus, Samsung YOPY).

Any PDA	Linux PDA	Conversion Tools
Calendars/Addresses/ToDo
Palm: Standard PIM datebk, Agendus (aka ActionNames)	Standard PIM KOrganizer, tkcSuite, Opie	p2z, most 3rd party software on the palm uses the standard databases - only extra information, e.g. icons may be lost on the above approach 3rd party software on Zaurus may use its own database? KDE Pocket PC Contacts Import lets you import your Windows CE (or PocketPC) contacts into KDE's address book.
Password Managers
Pocket PC: e-wallet	SafeDee (commercial)	SafeDee (commercial) has the same function as ZSafe and keyring . SafeDee (commercial) can also import text files
Palm: strip and many others	ZSafe keyring	Strip2Zsafe, both Zaurus tools have an import function for textfiles so if your Palm tool supports export to text a conversion should be easy
E-book Readers
Palm: Plucker, various AportisDoc readers iSilo	OpieReader, Just Reader	both Zaurus tools can read AportisDoc, OpieReader, supports some more Palm formats including Plucker (iSilo is proprietary and currently not convertable)
Databases
Palm: List, ThinkDB, JFile, HanDBase	mySQL, SQLite, tkcRecall (mySQL Frontend), PortaBase, kGrog, l2pb Perl script to convert csv files generated by listdb to portabase csv files.	All Palm databases support some kind of export (CSV, Microsoft Access(tm)...), so it should be easy to insert this data into the Zaurus tools kGrog seems to be closest to the GUI databases on Palm?
Calculators
Palm: NeoCal, EasyCalc	NeoCal, zTi85emu, GraphIt!	shouldn't be needed?
Syncronisation
WinCE/PocketPC: Microsoft-Outlook, Microsoft-Exchange	SynCE,
Memos
		This script will convert tkcmemo entries into a valid gjots file.

Not yet Tested

Csv2vcard is a program for converting CSV (comma separated values, as exported by software such as MS Outlook) files containing contact information to the industry standard vcard format, which can be imported by most mailers and PIM software (optimized for Evolution). It's based on a Perl script by Michael MacDonald of Ximian. Csv2vcard can be used to convert any CSV format, not just the English Outlook output.

MrProjext is a MrProject database extractor and converter. It can search (extract) the tasks belonging to a specific time slot or recource. As a converter, it can rewrite the extracted result as a MrProject, Evolution, Yank, or Pilot file. It's a tool for doing those jobs which are a little bit out of the scope of the MrProject developer.

Java iCal Group Scheduler enables several users to get together for a meeting, by using JICAL to translate their iCalendar files into their available free/busy time and post it automatically to your Web server. This project enables Ximian Evolution desktop users to book meetings with each other (and Outlook users) via a Web server storing their 'Free/Busy' information as specified in RFC 2445.

Other Resources

• The Unofficial Zaurus FAQ II (Migration from PalmOS)
• DataConv.ORG
• Linux Migration Project - information on how to migrate smoothly and painlessly from a Microsoft-Windows environment to Linux
• pilot2qtopia is a small program that converts information from Palm Pilot databases to their QTopia counterparts (e.g. for the SHARP Zaurus). Currently supported are todos, datebook and GNU keyring, but others might be added in the future.

Credits

• Andreas Gohr splitbrain.org
• Martin Stricker