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That's a non-sequitur. However, to answer both questions:
http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/06/12/how-to-play-flac-files-in-itunes/
So you can move to a different lossless format that is supported by most hardware and has an open source reference implementation, or you can use a kludge to make flac (which isn't really an accepted container, just an encoding) work in OS X natively.

I'm guessing you don't have enough space to split a backup on the original storage medium and then mirror the splits onto each drive?

Given the size requirements, it seems that might be prohibitive, but it would make things easier for you:

How to Create a Multi Part Tar File with Linux

It may not be the stock OS, but it still has official support from the manufacturer, which is a similar situation. And even with that, the install and setup process isn't totally user-friendly. I'm looking at these instructions.

You have to do the partition setup twice. Once in MacOS to resize the existing filesystem and create a new partition, and again in the Windows installer to select the new partition as the install destination. Select the wrong partition, and you wipe out your data.

Then it comes up in low graphics mode. Connect to the Internet, let Windows Update run and reboot for the graphics driver. Then put in the Mac OS disc, run the install program and reboot. If sound isn't working, download drivers from realtek.com and reboot.

If Apple put the same effort into supporting Linux that they put into Windows, you wouldn't need the MacOS-side app at all. They'd upstream everything needed, so you can just boot the install disc. The partition setup done in the Ubuntu installer is essentially the same screen as the Boot Camp partition setup, except it directly leads into the install process without a reboot followed by a re-selection of the install partition. After the first boot of the installed OS, you'd have at most one more reboot to install a proprietary graphics driver in the case of nVidia/ATI graphics.

So you'd do partition setup once instead of twice, you'd reboot 0-1 times instead of 2-3 times (after OS install), and there'd be no "insert this disc and run setup.exe" or downloading from specific websites. Everything needed to run well (sound, power management, etc) would be integrated into the install disc (except proprietary graphics drivers, and Windows is no better on this matter).

So let me clarify my original statement: Any OS is likely to not run well on a system if there isn't official support for the OS from the system's manufacturer. Linux isn't immune to this rule, but it's far better at operating without official support than any other OS out there. To convey this as a failure on the part of Linux devs is absurd. If you want a system that runs an OS well, buy from a competent manufacturer that officially supports the OS.

Not even remotely true. there are any number of alternatives to iTunes on a mac.

http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/07/08/10-alternatives-to-itunes-for-managing-your-ipod/

http://crenk.com/list-of-the-best-free-itunes-alternatives/

http://tuxgeek.me/2008/11/29/itunes-alternative-on-the-mac-songbird-vs-banshee/

Ubuntu can have Amarok, which can sync with an ipod. Although I don't suppose it can play DRM'ed files. Then again they are crap anyway.

http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/07/08/10-alternatives-to-itunes-for-managing-your-ipod/

They also missed a few others like EphPod:
http://www.ephpod.com/

A few minutes on google will find you a decent depth of choices on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Sorry if I sound like I'm bashing your personal choices, but wait, you find an iPod Touch complicated for music, and THEN YOU DECIDE TO GET AN ANDROID DEVICE FOR MUSIC?

Have you seen it before? http://www.simplehelp.net/images/android_music_windows/android_music_windows17.png

Christ, just looking at the thing gives me nightmares! Compared to the same screen on an iPod Touch or iPhone... http://www.question-defense.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/iphone-playing-music-through-windows-7.gif

I hope your future experiences are better.

instructions for chrome & firefox:

firefox

chrome

Um, I was under the impression that it was trivial to install Windows 7 on a Mac even without official boot camp support (per http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/01/15/using-boot-camp-to-install-windows-7-on-your-mac-the-complete-walkthrough/) whats the difference between the tutorial and what you would do normally?

Hmm. I'm on Google search page 40 and there's been only one mention of how cell phone radiation may make rats more susceptible to the "ooh, shiny..." phenomenon. I did however manage to find articles on:

• How the cell phone is driving health IT innovation in the developing world
• How mobile phones are the most cherished thing to come out of the Iraq war
• Stanford has a mobile phone orchestra
• 20 Ways to tweet on my mobile
• Someone is making a rather disturbing "When cell phones attack..." type movie.
• They make cell phones for your pet

I'm not dismissing you entirely but if you're going to make specific claims it'd be a good idea to include citations. Doing a more specific search will net a number of hits but the best you can say from them is that a number of groups are looking at the subject and while some preliminary results are in with some very vocal advocates, there are conflicting data and definitely no consensus.

P.S. you must have a pretty sucky search engine as I got 387,000,000 results.

http://www.simplehelp.net/2009/09/28/how-to-partition-your-androids-sd-card-to-install-apps-on-it/ - I've not tried this but it sure looks simple enough.

Have you tried one of these?

to punish all of a company's users for the "crime" of making it possible for its customers to buy Apple's digital music products.

Luckily, as a Linux user, I need not worry about it, jpilot or kpilot are plug-and-play on Palm OS products.

I just lost my own Palm PDA after years of satisfactory performance. Since I mainly use it for e-books and mp3s, I was considering buying an iPod Touch to replace it for these purposes.

I think I'll look up a discounted price on another Palm PDA instead.

For Palm users who made the mistake of buying Apple, here's a tutorial on installing Linux apps on OSX.

As for digital tracks themselves, I recommend buying them from a company that has not reinvented itself as a "cooler" version of Microsoft.

Yep. There's absolutely no way to use an iPod under Linux

Now, don't you start your whining about your precious Ogg and FLAC or-anything-else-support neither!

Now STFU, you fucking Troll...

Some useful sites I've found are:

• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx
• http://www.nirsoft.net/
• http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/10/31/portable-wscc-simplifies-access-to-sysinternals-nirsoft-utiliti/
• http://portableapps.com/
• http://portablefreeware.com/
• http://www.getusb.info/55-portable-apps-for-making-a-usb-super-stick/
• http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/portable-software-usb/
• http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/09/02/24-killer-portable-apps-for-your-usb-flash-drive/2
• http://www.emergingtechs.com/posts/35-portable-applications-every-tech-needs/
• http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/07/21/15-portable-apps-to-help-troubleshoot-pcs/

Using mostly these sites, I've come up with a very useful collection of apps and utilities totalling under 2Gb, which easily fits on a flash drive with room to spare for data. One example is winaudit, which will generate an extensive report when run on a pc. You can save the reports on various pcs to your flash drive in various formats (pdf, html, text, csv), bring them home, and go over them in more detail to see what needs to be fixed or updated on the various pcs you encountered.

but I honestly know very few people who would disagree with my position on iTunes being a downright awful, abomination of a piece of software.

As is often said, the plural of anecdote is not data.

Well clearly, based on the fact that I was modded down, People don't want to have an honest an open discussion on this subject ... iTunes being a downright awful, abomination of a piece of software. It's really one of the most embarrassing software products that anyone, anywhere is still actively developing.

And nothing says 'honest and open debate' like hyperbole.

But of course, you want me to write a 10 page thesis on the subject or my claims are invalid? You want a point by point feature analysis and cpu/ram/disk space usage charts and graphs? Honestly? You think that's a necessary burden of proof? Becuase frankly, if you're the one defending iTunes I think you're the one making the "extraordinary claim" in need of extraordinary proof.

I suggest you take a logic class.

1) Comprehensive Codec Conversion. Every other mp3 player sync software out there

You're talking about video codecs, but then you mention 'mp3 sync software,' making it somewhat unclear as to what your comparing iTunes to. Are you talking about software that manages a media library and syncs it with a personal media player such as a Nomad, iPod or Zune?

Itunes can basically convert one resolution of quicktime to another -- slowly. It has limited support for a few other codecs, like mpeg -- but basically support for NONE of the major codecs or containers that media is actually distributed on in the internet.

iTunes' purpose isn't to convert video files from one type to another; its purpose is to play files from the iTS. It's a bonus that it does anything else. And the beauty of it playing any Quicktime file is that it's very easy to add codec support e.g. for Ogg Vorbis or http://www.free-codecs.com/download/3ivx.htm. I'm not sure if you're aware that Quicktime itself isn't a codec, but rather a container that supports a whole bunch of Codecs. iTunes isn't intended to take care of your video conversion needs.

When it comes to watching videos on your iphone/ipod -- you have two options: Buy it from itunes, or buy a third party piece of software to do the conversion for you. Ridiculous? I think so.

Ridiculous because it isn't true. There's plenty of video out there that is in Quicktime or MPEG-4 format, plenty of free conversion utilities and plenty of free codecs to add to Quicktime.

2) Codec Support. Hi, I'm FLAC, why won't you play nice with me?

iTunes already has a perfectly good lossless format in the form of Apple Lossless. And taking a niche format that mass market consumers haven't heard of, let alone ever used as an example of lack of codec support is laughable. If you're on a Mac, it's possible to get iTunes to play FLAC anyway, though I don't know of any method to do so on Windows.

Instead of the very basic features that every other competing piece of software supports and people DEPEND on, iTunes gives you crap you'll never use like Genius playlists and some funky visualizer. Thanks Apple, that's great bloat.

You contend that more people will find FLAC support useful than the Genius playlist or the visualiser? You're living in a bubble. FLAC support is not a basic feature, but a niche one, which few if any people 'DEPEND' on and iTunes has perfectly adequate alternative in the form of ALE. As for video codecs, it supports plenty and isn't intended to be your main video-

I agree that iTunes has a bunch of features that the other players don't have that are more important than the "missing" features he listed. But one might also point out that iTunes isn't even really missing these features.

It's missing, extensions, monitor folders, and themes?

Then how come I'm listening to an Ogg Vorbis file in iTunes via xiph, while watching it in the Ultragroovalicious iTunes Visualizer?

Re: watch folders- OSX has folder actions, and comes with Automator. Making a watch folder for any application is trivial. It took me less than 30 seconds to turn a random folder into an iTunes watch folder. You can make as many of them as you want for as many applications as you want in seconds.

And you may want to explain the fact that iTunes doesn't have themes to some of the guys who write iTunes themes?

OK, on the last count, it's not fully them-able and there aren't many themes out there, but seriously, this is OSX. User interface consistency is (supposedly) a hallmark of the platform- hardly anything has skins, instead they have standard looks and user-interface guidelines, and that's supposed to be a feature.

Hope that helps.