Comments on: An iPod under Linux

By: Josh K

Josh K — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:45:44 +0000

Great article! I’m loving your website;

By: Francisco Dalla Rosa

Francisco Dalla Rosa — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 02:34:20 +0000

Hey man, thanks! you saved my life. Been with this ipod for a long time and didn’t try gtkpod thinking it didn’t work with video.

By: master gladious

master gladious — Sun, 27 May 2007 23:56:08 +0000

The rockbox interface has a cooler look to it and looks more like a Creative Zen Vision. It also is easier to use gnome or the KDE interface with. The ipod linux has a more first made, cruddy look to it. It is a bit harder to use with any linux/unix system though. This is my opinion, but you have yours.

By: Charlie Head

Charlie Head — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 19:43:21 +0000

I’m using Amarok 1.4.4-r3, and it has been very, very fragile when working with my iPod. It feels like there’s always a good chance something will go wrong every time I try to do something. It has borked my iPod’s disk twice due to crashing while writing a new iTunesDB, and I’ve given up on it.

GtkPod is obviously the best solution right now. That’s not much of a surprise since it is developed alongside libgpod, the library that almost everything iPod-related on Linux uses at the moment.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 02:54:03 +0000

Just use gtkpod — it can do this quite easily.

By: mike

mike — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 17:47:27 +0000

As far as the amarok home page goes it looks like it is an podcatcher. My real question – I use a mod of BashPodder to d/l the podcasts. How do I get the iPod to play them. I DO NOT use Windoze (iTunes). Is iut possible to have the iPod play mp3 files without all the extra crap?
(gotta be yes – so How?)

By: Michael Wheatland

Michael Wheatland — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 09:41:31 +0000

iPod Linux does not support video on the new 5g iPod Video.
It is able to do simple uncompressed video on the older iPods but is unable to play MP4 or any other iPod format video on any model, and currently not able to play ANY video on the iPod video.
Maybe soon.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 06:05:11 +0000

They do in fact support the 5G; some portions of their wiki just lag behind others. The [url=http://ipodlinux.org/Project_Status]Project Status[/url] page indicates that the 5G has all the important features supported, namely LCD, Input, Hard Drive, and Audio Playback. Just download and run the [url=http://ipodlinux.org/Installer_2]installer[/url] to set up a dual-boot configuration. If something goes wrong, just uninstall, or in the worst case use the Apple Firmware Restore Utility. This procedure will not brick your iPod; you may want to back up your music in case you need to restore, though.

By: mike

mike — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 00:33:00 +0000

i think they have beta-support for the 5g. anyway, the 4g has been in beta state forever also. nevertheless, ipodlinux has worked very well for me for about a year now on it. give it a shot.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 21:08:54 +0000

Unfortunately, that project does not yet support my iPod model (5G/video).

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 19:32:37 +0000

You might consider trying out [url=http://ipodlinux.org]ipodlinux[/url], which has become quite solid nowadays. It supports video and audio, and will additionally play Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and other formats. By default, ipodlinux installs itself in a dual-boot configuration with the standard Apple proprietary firmware.

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 17:25:15 +0000

Just as a sidenote, several players like cowon’s etc. have been able to do the camera thing for quite a while.

By: Eric Cooper

Eric Cooper — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:37:39 +0000

Instead of mounting /dev/sda2, which might refer to some other USB device, you can use this udev rule to create /dev/ipod:

BUS=”scsi”, SYSFS{model}=”iPod”, KERNEL=”sd[a-z]2″, SYMLINK=”ipod”

Then use /dev/ipod in /etc/fstab.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 14:18:44 +0000

For many things, probably. It doesn’t play video yet, though, and I have no idea if it works with the camera connector and FM tuner.

By: John Goerzen

John Goerzen — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 14:17:03 +0000

It was 1.4.0a, according to Debian.

By: Kari Oikarinen

Kari Oikarinen — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 12:04:09 +0000

You did not tell, which version of Amarok you tried. If it wasn’t 1.4, I think you should have another look at it.

From changelog: “Reworked media device system, the Apple® iPod® support has been improved enormously in the 1.4 series”

I can’t verify this with my own experience, because I can’t afford iPod :(

I’m not too happy that you wrote about it, now I want it even more :)

By: glandium

glandium — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 11:23:44 +0000

Isn’t rockbox better than linux on an iPod ?