OK, I'm looking how to sync my N900 in an Open and Sourcey kind of way. (I'm not too sure whether this should be in General or Off Topic, but hopefully I won't be screamed at for putting this in here...)

I planned to go away from the Apple OSX/iPhone/Gmail route and couldn't find a phone to complete the job straight away, so my move away from evil was:
Stage 1: Find OS to replace OSX: I looked at Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSolaris, Linux Mint and Archlinux and decided upon Ubuntu as whilst I did like Arch and the rolling release nature of it, it was too much hard work for home.
Stage 2: Bought Nokia N900.
Stage 3: I created a VM with Zimbra Community Edition and so far it seems quite nice, but is too heavy to run in a VM for me and as it's at home, I can't really use it instead of gmail just yet.

At the moment, I have exported my gmail contacts and imported them on the N900, merged all the contacts with those created when logging into VoIP and IM services. Now, this isn't ideal, as I would really prefer OTA syncing of my contacts and calendar.

Another upside of moving to the N900 was that I can sync my media (avi video mainly) without having to convert it, which is a pain. Although, having the option of rsync opens up a whole other can of worms.

So what I'd like to see is how others sync all of their data and whether anyone hosts their own email.

Thanks in advance,

Steve

You are a very lucky person. Syncing contacts and calendar with Google using the built-in MSE of the N900 only succeeds with me when it is full moon or spring tide. This is not surprising, because this is not officially supported by Nokia.

Syncing with one of the Linux PIMs like those of KDE or GNOME is not possible, unless, again, the moon is full, the Sun is in the second house and you have one foot in a bucket with prune brandy. Of course you have to distill the prune brandy yourself, which may be the only enjoyable part of the proceedings.

Seriously: I am very curious how people sync (really 'sync', not just copy files) their calendar and contacts with a N900 and a Linux PC. I have searched for months for a working solution, but no luck so far. I am stuck with Google, which at least works perhaps once a week.

A shame, really.

Paai

I sync my calendars and contacts with Google using Exchange. It works fine.

for calendar I use syncevolution (on extra) with work's funambol
for music I use amarok on xubuntu
for movies I just use cp or a file manager or unison (bi directionnal rsync) depends of my need
for my contacts I just export them in vcard for backup purpose.

I use Nokia PCsuite on Win 7 for Everything

And of course i copy movies directly to the UMS-drive

I sync cal/contacts like this:
http://doitdifferent.wordpress.com/2...r-with-google/

though as I added (and merged manually) IM data, MfE no longer works for contacts, so cal only. Not that bothered, as I only have the device a few weeks.

I sync photos like this:
http://doitdifferent.wordpress.com/2...-be-like-this/

Which rocks. The same techniques would work for any data mind.

that how to is awsome, be a hell of a shame if it werent packaged in to an app this is exactly what ive needed for ages

I have no problems syncing contacts and calendar through www.neuvasync.com which offers a free service to sync up with google - I only got m.google.com to sync a handful of times before I got errors! Never had a problem with neuvasync though, works perfectly!

Another option for syncing (its free but not open) is the microsoft synctool which is very simple to use and does a pretty good job. Once you configure the folders you want to sync and the sync technique it does exactly what it is supposed to do!

www.neuvasync.com

That link is not working.

I'm quite sure that's : http://www.nuevasync.com/