How can I use my Garmin device in Ubuntu?

Maybe these will help you connecting to your Garmin device.

I have found that all my Linux systems will mount my Garmin 500 and I can access the device like a USB drive.

To import my activities into Strava, I just go to the device and within the Garmin/Activites folder there are all the *.fit files. The file names are in the format YYYY-MM-DD-XX-XX-XX.fit. I just select the file for that particular activity and upload it.

There is nothing magic about the Garmin uploader and it really is a terrible way to get data into Garmin connect. I don't particularly like that site, so I use Strave for everything. However, if you want to use Garmin, you can upload the files by following the instructions here

The manual upload is so much faster and way less hassle, even if I used Garmin to track my history, I would still do it manually rather than via Garmin connect.

I can highly recommend trying Linux Garmin Communicator Plugin. This is a "native" ubuntu solution and there is a ppa repository.

Having just got an Edge 500, I installed this plugin on Natty and it worked fine with Chrome and Firefox. The Garmin Connect upload button finds the device and uploads activities as requested.

I am also looking for a good pure Linux answer to this. I've owned a Garmin Edge 305 for 2 years and have been a full time Ubuntu user for 3-4 years. This is (sadly) how I do it:

Install VirtualBox, then create a windows virtual machine. From there it's pretty straightforward. Install your favorite drivers and software for dealing with your training data and use it from there. (This question has a bit more on the install step if you haven't used VirtualBox at all)

Some caveats: Once you have booted into your virtual machine and selected the Garmin device from the USD devices drop down to 'plug into' the virtual machine (shows up as an 'unknown device' for me), the Garim will not immediately work. It will show up in the device manager, at this point you need to disable it and re-enable it, then you are good to go.

Clearly this isn't a pure Ubuntu solution, but given my software of choice doesn't work under linux yet, I didn't have much choice. (Zone 5's SportTracks, though supposedly they are getting close to running under Mono) There are other solutions, but this has basically been the most efficient way to deal with training data from a Garmin I've found.

I wrote gols just for that, feel free to test it and send bug reports,

Long story short you install it like you would for any python package, then you create a systemd service that will automount your watch and launch the script on USB insert, as simple as that.

That blog post explains how it works, you'll find the link to the repo inside too.

https://medium.com/@euri10/gols-garmin-on-linux-sucks-f1f065f7529a#.sbwv5zqbk

• First, use Software Manager or sudo apt-get from the terminal to install the garmin-forerunner-tools package.
• Next sudo vi or sudo nano or sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/51-garmin.rules and add the content SYSFS{idVendor}=="091e", SYSFS{idProduct}=="0003", MODE="666" as detailed in http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=124627
• Reboot
• Plug in your garmin 305 and make sure it is powered on.
• Type garmin_get_info and you should see xml output
• Create a container directory for example mkdir garmin and cd into it
• Type garmin_save_run and it will create subdirectories for each year and the months under each year and finally track/workout files under each month, each in gmn format. You can convert each to gpx format if you wish by using garmin_gpx ... very nice.

Thanks much to txwikinger.