It turns out that Palm Desktop itself is the application that in not responding when trying to do a hotsync. A custom installation where you select not to install the Palm Desktop mostly works.
Hotsync will sync via wireless - still no success on USB or serial.
Documents-to-go mostly works, but won't import XLS files created with OpenOffice Calc. That is a file compatibility problem, not an execution problem.
Palm Quick Install works, but the file names added are blank.