Let’s face it, with a large bunch of files/folders/playlists/documents etc all over the places in different computers, USB drives, various Web servers, it can really be a tedious task to get everything synchronized and put them all in places. Conduit makes it simple for you to do so.

Conduit is a synchronization application for GNOME. It allows you to synchronize your files, photos, emails, contacts, notes, calendar data and any other type of personal information and synchronize that data with another computer, an online service, or even another electronic device. There is no command line required. You are good to go as long as you know how to drag and drop. Follow along as we show you how to install and configure Conduit in your Ubuntu machine.

Installing Conduit

The latest version (as of this post) of conduit is 0.3.14 while the version found in Ubuntu repo is 0.3.6. To get the latest version working in your Ubuntu, you can do either of the following:

• Download the deb file from getdeb.net

Download the latest version of the Conduit deb file to your desktop. Double click to launch the Gdeb installer.

• add the following repo to your sources.list (alternative method).

In your terminal, type:

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following lines to the end of the file

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/conduit/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/conduit/ubuntu hardy main

Save and close.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install conduit

Running Conduit

Open Conduit (Applications->Accessories-> Conduit Synchronizer)

You will see the screen below:

The left pane shows a list of data providers that you can use for synchronization while the right pane shows a blank canvas where you can use to create synchronization rules.

Not every entry in the left pane allows two-way sync. You will have to familiarize with the three different kind of options that are represented by the blue arrow.

– This data provider can only act as a synchronization source. You can’t write file into it.

– This data provider can only act as a synchronization destination. You can’t pull data from it.

– This data provider can perform a two way sync.

Once you are done, let create our first rules:

In this example, we will illustrate how to synchronize your photos from the Picture folder with Facebook, Picasa and Flickr.

On the left pane under the Files and Folders entry, drag the Folder item to the right canvas.

Double click on the folder to display the folder configuration option. Select the Picture folder and click OK.

Next, we drag Facebook, Picasa and Flickr to the canvas

Similarly, double click on each entry to enter your login credential

Once you are done, right click on the canvas and select “Synchronize this group“. Synchronization will start. The whole process will depend on the number of files, the file size and the speed of your Internet connection.

The above steps can be repeated for any form of synchronization that are available in the left pane. You are free to mix and match and choose the way that best matches your usage pattern. There are plenty of things that you can do with Conduit. You can sync your Youtube videos to a local folder or to box.net, backup your Tomboy notes, sync your Google contact with Evolution etc. It is really up to your imagination how you want to utilize it.

Although Conduit is still under heavy development, it has already show great potential as the next killer app. Let’s hear your comments, what extra features do you hope to see in the future version?

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