How can I use my Garmin device in Ubuntu?

Maybe these will help you connecting to your Garmin device.

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 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.