An iPod system for Linux - Part 0 - Why iPods are fantastic, two reasons why iPods are crap and how to mess with an old iPod
6 October 2006
iPods are fantastic
An iPod is a cheap audio player sold by Apple, you can often pick one up very cheaply through various hardware bundles. They are also very light and easy to use.
However, it has two major limitations.
Not drag and drop
Firstly, many other (better) products allow you to use the player like an external hard drive. Stick the player into a USB port and then drag-and-drop the files on. Then start the player which then adds the files to its database.
The iPod cannot really do this. It has a registry or database that needs to be updated by the computer for it to work.
There is a nice KDE program called ipodslave, part of the Kpod project, that allows to you drag and drop files using Konqueror, the file and web browser for KDE. This is surely the way forward. If you use KDE, then check it out.
I do not use KDE and do not plan on installing all the KDE stuff just for this, so we have to use another approach.
Restricted File support
Secondly, iPods support Apple's crazy format (don't touch it with a barge- pole) and mp3s. That is more or less it. The default Gnome format for sound files is .ogg, and while posher players can play them, the iPod cannot. All those Windows formats are unsupported too.
There is a nice little perl script called ogg2mp3 by Mark Draheim that will convert my thousands of creative-commons songs into mp3 if I so desire, so that is not a massive problem.
Making your iPod even more fantastic.
You can also install third party firmware to get more file support, games and who knows what else.
Rockbox is an open source firmware for many audio players, including the iPod, I think the idea is that you can dual-boot, allowing you to always choose between the Apple firmware and Rockbox's alternative firmware. According to the website:
"Rockbox is an open source firmware replacement for a growing number of MP3 players. Rockbox aims to be considerably more functional and efficient than your device's stock firmware while remaining easy to use and customizable. Rockbox is written by users, for users."
It has support for many file formats that Apple's firmware does not, as well as an optional voice-interface, image and text viewers and Doom!
Ipod Linux is a Linux distribution for your iPod, it turns your iPod into a tiny little Linux computer. It allows you to play games, access the command-line and many other things. If you are buying a new old iPod and want to mess up your old one then this could be lots of fun.
I love the idea of this. Might one day look for an old ipod on ebay to install this on.
1 Joseph Duchesne says...
"Secondly, iPods support Apple's crazy format (don't touch it with a barge- pole) and mp3s."
I presume you mean AAC, the open MPEG-2 Part 7 and MPEG-4 Part 3 extension which unlike MP3 requires no licensing to distribute files. Sure, it's not ogg vorbis, but it's a lot better than the licensing disputes surrounding MP3. The "apple crazy format" is simply the DRM that they're slamming on most of their songs.
Posted at 1:22 p.m. on April 8, 2007
2 Zeth says...
Thanks for that, yeah the DRM is the crazy bit, thanks for putting me right there.
However, Isn't that AAC still requires paying money to create and give away a program that supports it?
Posted at 2:49 p.m. on April 8, 2007