I have set out to write this article two or three times now in the last year, but always get distracted before it gets finished. Today though, Mason County schools were out and I had to stay home from work with Camryn (age 9) and while I was bored, I ran across the first two editions of this article. I quickly scratched them both and started over, partially because I already had the software working and then wrote the articles from memory...but since then I have had a hard drive crash and I could start from scratch. This resulted in this article written today - 01-18-2006!

Introduction

First things first, the hardware I am using in this article is my Toshiba Satellite 6100 Pro running Gentoo Linux 2005.1 with a custom kernel version 2.6.14-gentoo-r5. I am also using a Motorola V600 cell phone and an optional USB cable for it (those of you using only Linux do not need to purchase the cable with the Motorola Software $100, you can get the cable alone for around $30).

The software I will be covering in-depth includes:
kmobiletools - a KDE-based application that allows to control mobile phones with your PC.
moto4lin - a file manager and seem editor for Motorola P2K phones

Additional software for linux that I won't be covering because its not compatible with my hardware includes:
bitpim - a program that allows you to view and manipulate data on selected cellular phones.
wammu - front-end for gammu (Nokia and others mobiles)
gammu - a fork of the gnokii project, a tool to handle your cellular phone
gnokii - user space driver and tools for use with mobile phones
OpenEZX - Motorola EZX phone platform (mainly the A780, E680 and E680i phones).
A760 - GPL'd sources of Motorolas A760 Linux smartphone.
startalk - read/write the entries in your Motorola StarTac phonebook
Probably others too since this list is not intended to be a complete list of all linux software available for mobile phones.

Connection types in this article:
I will only be covering connecting my mobile phone via USB cable. Many other mobile phones support additional connection methods such as iRDA, Bluetooth, etc.

Compatibility of other phones:
Your best bet in finding out if your mobile phone works with linux is to do a simple google search for linux brand_of_your_phone + model_number. In an example of someone looking for my motorola v600, They would type linux motorola v600 and press the search button. You could also try here - http://tuxmobil.org/phones_linux.html



This article is Copyright, &copy 2006, Ed Wiget. All Rights Reserved! Permission to reprint and distribute this article is granted as long as the copyright remains on the article.

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