[Ciurlo]

I know that RIM has never supported linux and there are other possibilities to manage our BB with it.
I use windows 7 (dual boot) to sync, update my BB but I was wondering if the upcoming BB10 release would finally bring an "official" version of DM with linux support.
I think that it can also be a great opportunity to increase the number of "blackberrians".

What do you think? anyone has any rumors/idea or something?

[bmercer94]

i would love that, my BB is one of the reasons i don't run a linux system. No DM or AppLoader for those that run hybrids

[Omnitech]

I don't know of any other popular smartphone platform that has an "official" Linux desktop app. Perhaps it might be more likely for Android which is based on Linux - but AFAIK there is no "desktop app" for Android on any platform.

All the other Linux syncing tools I've ever seen for smartphones were reverse-engineered things written by private individuals, though I haven't been keeping up with the latest Linux stuff for a while.

And what would you be interested in doing in particular? Certainly not syncing with MS Office for Linux. :P

[Ciurlo]

I don't have any particular desire, I simply would ike to be able to sync and update my blackberry without the use of dual-boot (or virtual machine).
I know that what you're saying (Omnitech) is and was true, but I thought that with a new platform with a lot of important changes (eg BB fusion ) a linux support can be a killer feature.

[Omnitech]

Well I agree it could be an interesting "perk", but I could understand if their motivation for such a thing weren't high due to one of the key reasons gone (no MS Office) and small demographics.

Then you'd have to decide what you would do with it. For example, you can't easily build a link to sync with OpenOffice or LibreOffice because those are changing all the time and you never know what will be installed or where it will be installed on a particular distro.

If you want to do multimedia sync, there must be tons of things on Linux that you *might* sync it with, but I'm not sure any one of them is popular enough to make it "the" sync target, and then you have the same version/location issues.

I agree that just basic backup would be nice, but it appears there are already some tools that could accomplish that (and I suspect they will eventually get updated for BB10):

Linberry – Blackberry Phone Manager for Linux | OMG! Ubuntu!
Syncing your BlackBerry on Linux | Linux.com
Charge & Backup Your BlackBerry With Linux - BerryReview
How to backup Blackberry on Ubuntu (linux) | Black God


One thing that it doesn't look like is yet available for Linux is an OS update/apploader functionality.

[xSt0rmTroop3Rx]

I don't have any specific reason why I would want my PlayBook to adopt Linux other than to boast that its just one more thing the darn thing can do...

[Omnitech]

I agree. Might be able to leapfrog both iOS and Android with the techie and/or hipster crowd, if you introduced something that had unique capabilities on Linux.

But you also have to be careful about all the chaos in that platform, and potential for tarnishing your image if people try to install it and end up with compatibility issues, driver issues, etc.

But if they limited it, ie only support BB10+ and Ubuntu to start, that would help.

Then right after that, announce the Blackberry Blade... ;-)

[stexf]

They would get one more customer for sure.. I went from blackberry to android out of frustration for their unwillingness to support linux. Would gladly return if there's a change.