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An iPod system for Linux - Part 1

7 October 2006

We have an iPod, and Linux. So what now?

For Mac OS X, iTunes is the way to relate to your iPod. While some people just install a Windows or Mac binary of iTunes on Linux, that is no fun.

Last time we talked about one KDE approach. Now we will develop a Gnome approach.

What would Apple do?

iTunes has four main functions:

  • To rip songs from a CD.
  • To organise music in a library and transfer it to an iPod.
  • To play music from the library, for example to try it out before you put it on your iPod.
  • To download podcasts.
Tux and his ipod

It probably does a few other things but we only care about the iPod right now.

What would Ken Thompson do?

Rather than doing many things badly and keeping its data to itself; the Unix way is for a program to do one thing well, and for the program to hand on the data to another program to take next step.

So we are going to have four programs and will attempt to get them to work together. Here are the programs and what they will do:

  • **Sound Juicer **- Ripping songs

    System Message: WARNING/2 (<string>, line 38); backlink

    Inline strong start-string without end-string.

    System Message: WARNING/2 (<string>, line 38); backlink

    Inline strong start-string without end-string.

  • gtkpodder - organising music and transferring it to an iPod

  • xmms - playing music from the library on the computer.

  • gPodder/juice - downloading podcasts

Now you can replace any of the above with your favourites, but these are the ones that I will try to weave into an iTunes replacement.

What do you have to say?

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About

Hello, my name is Zeth, I'll be your host here.

Command Line Warriors is about taking control of your own technology, it looks at our experiences of computing; especially using GNU/Linux, the Python programming language, the command-line and issues such as techno-ethics, best practices and whatever is cool now. If you take control of your technology then you are a Warrior too!

This site is your site too which means that you can contribute and get involved. You can leave comments using the facility provided. For me, the comments and discussions are by far the best part of the site. So please do have your say!

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Zeth

November 29, 2009
Hi Jordan, yes that URL is gone now. I have a new contact form on this site.
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Jordan

November 29, 2009
Zeth attention! Your form, http://zeth.me.uk/contact/, is not working The explorer says connecting ..but nothing happens Sorry for my poor English: I am Spanish Regards
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Jordan

November 26, 2009
Sorry: tell me , not tellme (I'm spaniard) And http://zeth.me.uk/contact/ don't work
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November 25, 2009
Your mad skillz are too l33t! for me. I specifically switched to Google Reader so that I could show people what blogs I read. But I couldn't work out how ...
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Brian R. Hickey

November 20, 2009
Symantec picked it up too.
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Zeth

November 17, 2009
Thanks djm, I am the moose here. Christian, assuming one actually does Internationalise the countries, it should still work I guess, as the gettext stuff will happen before the list ...
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Phillip Temple

November 17, 2009
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djm

November 17, 2009
Am I being a moose or did you mean: from whatever.countries import CountryField instead of from whatever.countries import CharField ? Good post though, cheers.
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Christian Joergensen

November 17, 2009
Wouldn't the ordering get messed up after i18n?
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Steve - Electronic Cigarettes Fan

November 17, 2009
Very well done. Is your blog just you writing? Nicely done, Steven.
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November 15, 2009
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November 4, 2009
I am transferring some files using psftp to other device's FAT partition. But the filestamp of the file being transferred is modified to that of FAT device, after the transfer. ...
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iki

November 2, 2009
or simpler: socket.gethostbyname_ex(socket.gethostname())[2]
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iki

November 2, 2009
local_ip = set([ i[4][0] for i in socket.getaddrinfo(socket.gethostname(), None) if i[0] == 2 ])
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November 2, 2009
testing rst ------------- - point 1
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October 27, 2009
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Ken

October 21, 2009
Stumbled in here at lunch. This is the best find of the week. Thanks.
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Jim

October 19, 2009
Thanks for the rtsp:// post - that's something that has been bugging me for a while!
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Zeth

October 18, 2009
Thanks for the comments guys. Great to see the all the gang are still here!
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Bubba

October 18, 2009
Is there any way psftp can return the true transfer rates oberved during the actual transfer?
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