How to Use Your iPod Under Linux

Jon writes "For those lucky readers who received an iPod for Christmas I've put up an article on LinuxLookup.com on how I got my iPod working under Linux. I've given a little overview on the different options available, and which one worked best for my needs. All in all, I'm extremely happy with the outcome. I can transfer my music, create playlists, and add all of my contacts. The only thing missing is a nice GUI."

Comments

iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about you, but I was planning on being evil with my iPod. Pirating music, harvesting the Anarchists Cookbook, etc. Naturally I wouldn't do this under any other operating system.

Re:iPod

[cwill1004]

There's no better OS for taking over the world than MacOS. Welcome to anarchy.

"All that is missing is a nice GUI"

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that for Linux, or for the iPod??? ;-)

Re:"All that is missing is a nice GUI"

[mbbac]

Obviously for the Linux application(s). The iPod's GUI is slick.

No iPod

[Squareball]

I didn't get an iPod, I got an Archos 20 Recorder. Records directly into the devide through various inputs and it records into MP3! I love it!!!! Does the iPod let you record? I'm just curious.. I haven't used an iPod

Re:No iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

iPod can't record

All in all?

[jfreis]

What does this mean... "All in all"

Re:All in all?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the secret greeting of software/music pirates. They usually use it when talking to each other, but sometimes they let it slip in public.

"ALL IN ALL" means: "We want ALL software and music IN ALL our hard drives".

Quite shameful really, if these guys didn't steal software and music, prices would be lower and quality would be higher.

Re:All in all?

[L. VeGas]

It's a meta-recursive acronym. It means, "All-in-all In All-in-all".

Re:All in all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nirvana
All in all is all we are.

all questions have been asked before
dictionary

Re:All in all?

[the way, what're you]

"All in all" is slang for an orgy. You know, one with no holes barred.

Re:All in all?

[reptilicus]

---if these guys didn't steal software and music, prices would be lower and quality would be higher--- You mean like when MS put product activation into Windows XP and then with the savings they were able to lower prices? What's that, XP is the most expensive Windows yet? Even without pirating? Funny how that works. I haven't noticed lower prices on any copy-protected music cds either.

Re:All in all?

[shepd]

>You know, one with no holes barred.

You mean it includes nostrils and ears?

Man, I learn something new everyday on the internet.

Re:All in all?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's "No holds barred," as in wrestling matches.

Re:All in all?

[FeTrut]

There was a time when cd burning and downloading and mp3's didn't exist. CD's cost the same then as they do now.

Re:The investment in an iPod warrants the followin

[MisterFancypants]

Did you fail reading comprehension in school? What this guy did was get Linux to transfer files to/from his iPod. He didn't make Linux run on the iPod. Dumbass!

iPod again?

[Anonymous Coward]

20GB iPod: $499 20GB Nomad Zen: $299 (w/rebate) Apple is smoking crack on the iPod pricing. The 5GB one should be no more than $99-$149. How much can a 5GB hard drive cost these days? $15 on eBay?

Re:iPod again?

[rigga]

Wow, Ill bet you just saved Apple millions. They prolly never thought that they could purchase the hundreds of thousands 5GB drives needed for iPods on Ebay. Stupid Apple, Why buy drives directly from manufactures at huge discounts when you can purchase them from Frank in Winsconsin who has 3 5gb drives for sale. Hmm, now they just need 999,997 more. Any more brilliant ideas?

Re:iPod again?

[Toraz Chryx]

Find me a 5GB >>>1.8" Toshiba harddisk on ebay (or otherwise) for $15 and I'll eat my hat.

The price/capacity is even worse for the IBM Microdrive, but I'd rather stick one of those in my camera than a 120GB WD1200JB

Re:iPod again?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure Apple buys all of their hard drives off of Ebay.

Re:iPod again?

[Anonymous Coward]

EXACTLY! 5GB hard drives cost them practically NOTHING to buy from the manufacturer in bulk. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say $100 new. The 5GB ipod is still $299. $199 for mp3 player circuitry?

Re:iPod again?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet Apple seems to be selling about as many iPods as they can make. Demand determines pricing, and if iPods have stayed that expensive all this time it's probably because the market will bear it. Too bad, it's not the mp3 player "for the rest of us".

Re:iPod again?

[rigga]

I woudnt even guess at how much the components cost Apple. I would think its safe to say quite cheap. But look at the iPod it is clearly the best Mp3 player out there(IMO). People are willing to pay a premium price for a premium product. Look at all of apples products, highly sought after, higher prices. If they are selling successfully why lower the price. However I must agree with you that it would be nice to buy one cheaper.

Re:iPod again?

[t0ny]

Apple's pricing has always been way over what sensible people will pay. Why else would someone pay $2000 for a 1GHz iLamp, when you can get a PC that is twice as powerful for under $900? Apple is all about the sizzle, not the steak, all about the alternative lifestyle type thing. Apple and Volkswagon are targetting the same demographic.

Re:iPod again?

[NightWhistler]

Apple and Volkswagon are targetting the same demographic.
Funny you should say that, because Volkswagen has nothing to do with alternative lifestyles over here in Europe... Must be why the New Beetle is selling like crap here. They are known however for the extreme durability of their cars... (the older models at least) Get my drift? ;-)

Re:iPod again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the equalibrium of supply and demand determines price (in a perfectly informed perfectly competitive market that is). You can have piles of demand, but high supply will still bring price down. ;-)

Re:iPod again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the same reason Tom Magliozzi hates the BMW M Roadster and loves the Mazda Miata In other words, some sensible people would rather have a silent, featureful, attractive, small footprint machine for $1200-2000 than the world's fastest diesel for $900. Speed is not the only component of "the steak." BTW, the iLamp doesn't come in a 1Ghz model, only 700-800Mhz.

Re:iPod again?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, the caps use you!

i am such an ass. i did the stupidest thing yesterday. live and learn.

Stephen King, author, dead at 55

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.

but i did find $30 wrapped up in a grocery store receipt that i forgot about. cool.

BCWOTD(TM) : "pelican." sample usage: "I wonder if pelicans taste like chicken. If so, shouldn't pelicans be called 'Chicken of the Sea'? I mean, tuna fish don't have feathers."

If you feel like it, mail the url, and where ya came from to pater@slashdot.org.

bleh. i have a headache.

i have this nagging feeling that Jared from the Subway commercials is an Elvis fan. what do you think?

Re:iPod again?

[jmorris42]

There are laws against selling used parts in 'new' equipment. And remember that these drives aren't big assed 3 1/2" drives. They ain't even 2 1/2 laptop drives. The iPod uses tiny little PC Card drives that aren't cheap.

Re:iPod again?

[plastik55]

Funny, over in the states they are well known for distinctly crappy automotive electronics.

Re:iPod again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost is not just the sum total of components; they do have to cover research & development too (and the associated salaries).

slashdotted?

[kernkopje]

Site appears to be slashdotted already? What's the point in submitting your self-authored article
to a community that you can expect to hammer your server into oblivion?

Sigh.

Re:slashdotted?

[linuxlover]

well reading WHITE font over BLUE background was hard on eyes. Thank God for Opera's 'author-mode' :-)

Can you get it to take ogg files under linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read that Apple doesn't like ogg and so they won't support it on their systems, but this is on linux where ogg is quite prevalent. Does this (non-apple controlled) software let you upload oggs to the ipod for playback?

Re:Can you get it to take ogg files under linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read that Apple doesn't like ogg and so they won't support it on their systems, but this is on linux where ogg is quite prevalent. Does this (non-apple controlled) software let you upload oggs to the ipod for playback?

Why, I bet it does! Of course, since the iPod can only play mp3 files you're shit out of luck now aren't you? You might as well upload jpegs.

Re:Can you get it to take ogg files under linux?

[pyrros]

The problem is not getting oggs in the ipod, the problem is getting the ipod to play them. This would require a firmware upgrade from either apple, or some very smart people.

Re:Can you get it to take ogg files under linux?

[MacDaffy]

> Why, I bet it does! Of course, since the iPod can only play mp3 files you're shit out of luck now aren't you? You might as well upload jpegs.

It also accomodates WAV and AIFF files...

Re:The investment in an iPod warrants the followin

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey buddy, I think you misread his post... he said he can get his mixer to run UNDER linux... not run linux... meaning, controlled by Linux (I assume?). Before you flame... learn to read yourself.

Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[Spencerian]

There was a time, not long ago, where Apple made interesting, even innovative technology--but designed it so it worked only with its Macintosh hardware.

It's great for the industry and many others that Apple is slowly crawling out of the mindset that all of their products must work strictly with a Mac. Their move to Mac OS X would be contradictory to such a philosophy since *nix is a widely supported and tinkerable OS.

The iPod is mostly a glorified FireWire drive, so this software doesn't impress me as much as the relative enthusiasm of developers to make it work. Even if you don't use it, Mac OS X and the iPod is a nice catalyst for a drab, uninventive computer industry at the moment.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[IamTheRealMike]

There was a time, not long ago, where Apple made interesting, even innovative technology--but designed it so it worked only with its Macintosh hardware.

So.... just like the iPod then, which works on other platforms only due to 3rd parties reverse engineering parts of the on disk format?

It's great for the industry and many others that Apple is slowly crawling out of the mindset that all of their products must work strictly with a Mac

No it isn't. Otherwise why are Apple buying up app vendors (I don't recall the name of the product i'm thinking of, some graphics/music program), and scaring all the customers silly because they think Apple will make them Mac only?

Their move to Mac OS X would be contradictory to such a philosophy since *nix is a widely supported and tinkerable OS.

Except OS X isn't tinkerable at all. Practically all the code Apple has written is closed source, and the Mac parts of MacOS are generally only capable of doing things one way. Unlike every Linux and Windows, MacOS is still not capable of being themed by 3rd parties (unless you consider a grey version of the default a "theme").

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[nullard]

So.... just like the iPod then, which works on other platforms only due to 3rd parties reverse engineering parts of the on disk format?

Here is proof to the contrary. It took them a while, but Apple did release a Windows compatible iPod.

Even Dell sells them.

You must have missed the announcemnt a few months ago.

Anyway, the Mac version just uses HFS. There are 3rd party HFS readers for *nix and Windows. I don't know if they were reverse engineered or created from Apple specs.

Except OS X isn't tinkerable at all. Practically all the code Apple has written is closed source, and the Mac parts of MacOS are generally only capable of doing things one way.

If you ignore the fact that you can recompile the kernel and change most OS variables using XML plists and NetInfo, you are absolutely correct. If I ignore my need for oxygen I can breathe in space too.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[Eravau]

Sure...Apple doesn't publish anything else but a gray version of aqua. They're proud of their interface and want everyone to use it. So what? You can download/create your own themes if you'd like.

Check out the 3rd-party utilities and web sites to get what you'd like:

• ThemePark : Theme design utility
• Duality : A theme changing and checking utility
• Catalyst : A theme creation utility (recommended for use with ThemePark)
• MetamorphX : Another theme switching utility
• ThemePark : Theme design utility
• ResExcellence Themes page : Get your OS X appearance themes here

Are the themes as varied yet as something like Kaleidoscope allowed on pre OS X? Of course not. But the appearance themes aren't near as limited as you think.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[bogie]

" There was a time, not long ago, where Apple made interesting, even innovative technology--but designed it so it worked only with its Macintosh hardware."

I guess if Apple was actually in the habit of coming up with cool gadgets year after year you might have a point. But the only possibly crossplatform gadgets I can think of that Apple has even innovated in the past 15 years are the newton and the ipod. So while it may be all well and good that the Ipod hasn't specifically been designed so it won't work in Windows or Linux, Apple mostly continues to be a computer maker not a inventor of new technology for all platforms. So again I'm just not sure what your point was since Apple really only makes computers, not hardware for every platform that we can all benefit from.

"It's great for the industry and many others that Apple is slowly crawling out of the mindset that all of their products must work strictly with a Mac."

One product (the ipod) doesn't mean much. Especially when you consider its not Apple themselves making it work with other platforms.

Sorry if I seem negative about this, but your whole post seems to try to give Apple credit for something they haven't earned. What you said is akin to sending congrats to MS because their mice are cross platform. Now you may be able to do so, but A) this wasn't intended and B) it represents a minority of MS's product line.

Just something to think about.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[IamTheRealMike]

The windows compatible iPod is simply an iPod with a FAT32 harddisk iirc, they didn't release any official Windows software for it, nor do they support it.

HFS is not what was reverese engineered, the on disk catalog format was not documented. You can't just add an MP3 to the iPod disk, you have to update the database as well.

If you ignore the fact that you can recompile the kernel and change most OS variables using XML plists and NetInfo, you are absolutely correct. If I ignore my need for oxygen I can breathe in space too.

plists and NetInfo are hardly customization tools. They are minor tweaks at best. Even the Windows registry does much better than that, and of course this is nothing compared to what can be tweaked if you have the source, or can replace layers of the OS at will.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[mbbac]

So.... just like the iPod then, which works on other platforms only due to 3rd parties reverse engineering parts of the on disk format?

No. The iPod for Windows is distributed by Apple. It comes with MusicMatch software that Apple helped bring iPod functionality to. Linux isn't a big enough market for the iPod for Apple to worry about it, so of course it is going to be up to 3rd parties.

Except OS X isn't tinkerable at all. Practically all the code Apple has written is closed source, and the Mac parts of MacOS are generally only capable of doing things one way. Unlike every Linux and Windows, MacOS is still not capable of being themed by 3rd parties (unless you consider a grey version of the default a "theme").

You can tinker with the interface of most OS X applications with Apple's Developer Tools. You can change icons of files and folders with a copy & paste operation. There are third party theme managers for OS X.

Windows XP doesn't support 3rd party themeing. I thought that it did until I messed around on my brother's XP eMachine over Christmas. Themes must be digitally signed by Microsoft.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[SensitiveMale]

So.... just like the iPod then, which works on other platforms only due to 3rd parties reverse engineering parts of the on disk format?

mmm, go to www.dell.com and buy an iPod for windows by ..... wait for it .... Apple. Or buy an iPod for windows by Apple. Or do you consider the manufacturer of the iPod a third party?

Except OS X isn't tinkerable at all. Practically all the code Apple has written is closed source, and the Mac parts of MacOS are generally only capable of doing things one way. Unlike every Linux and Windows, MacOS is still not capable of being themed by 3rd parties (unless you consider a grey version of the default a "theme").

I could list half a dozen OS X theme managers AND a few dozen themes. Sure, there a lots more for windows but OS X has been around much less time than Stardock.

As for the "OS X isn't tinkerable at all' look at the hundreds of programs that 'tinker' with OS X. Fruitmenu, XSounds, WindowShadeX, ASM, CeePeeYou, A-Dock, Synergy, and tons of other cursor, menu items, haxies, and other enhancements.

And if you want a full cocoa Finder you can get Path Finder from cocoatech.com.

Just because you don't have the source code of OS X doesn't mean that you can't tinker with it to your heart's content.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[mbbac]

I think he was talking about the general trend of Apple using (*and creating) standards where possible nowadays: Java, USB, FireWire*, IP, 802.11, ZeroConf*, IDE, ADC*, MPEG4*, WebDAV, FiberChannel. I'm sure there are many more examples of Apple's support of standards, those are simply off the top of my head.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[Anonymous Coward]

The windows compatible iPod is simply an iPod with a FAT32 harddisk iirc, they didn't release any official Windows software for it, nor do they support it.

They didn't release that FAT32 iPod until they had a company lined up to handle software and support for it. It makes perfect sense for them to not want to deal with support for a competitor's system. This way everyone wins. Apple sells more iPods but doesn't have to waste money supporting them for PCs, consumers get iPods on whatever platform they want.

Obviously the Linux support is a different issue, but I can understand Apple not supporting it. Apple isn't a software company, they're a hardware company. Their software development exists purely to sell more hardware.

As for plist/netinfo not being enough, download the source to darwin and play around. The only thing really missing is Aqua. But again, Apple is a hardware company. If they opened Aqua up it would only be a matter of time before it was ported to X86, cutting into their marketshare. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot opening it all up. Opensource is nice, but there are times when it won't help (and would in fact hurt) a company.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[fidget42]

...they didn't release any official Windows software for it, nor do they support it.

Actually, Apple did release "official Windows software" for the iPod and it is supported.

The really nice thing is being able to plug the iPod into a Mac, transfer files to the iPod, then plug it into a PC and transfer files from the iPod. It is this kind of flexability that made be buy the Windows version , even though my primary machine is a Mac.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[Jaysyn]

Have your brother get a program called StyleXP. XP is very themeable once you replace a certain .DLL file.

Jaysyn

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[Phroggy]

No it isn't. Otherwise why are Apple buying up app vendors (I don't recall the name of the product i'm thinking of, some graphics/music program), and scaring all the customers silly because they think Apple will make them Mac only?

You may be thinking of Shake.

Except OS X isn't tinkerable at all. Practically all the code Apple has written is closed source, and the Mac parts of MacOS are generally only capable of doing things one way.

Hogwash. Just because it's closed-source doen't mean it's not tinkerable. Perhaps not to the extent you'd like, but really, how many end users hack the source code of their GUI? OSX has a ways to go, but it's quickly becoming more hackable than OS9 ever was, and if you don't think OS9 was hackable, well, you haven't known many Mac users.

Unlike every Linux and Windows, MacOS is still not capable of being themed by 3rd parties (unless you consider a grey version of the default a "theme").

Hogwash. I'm using a third-party theme right now. It happens to be an imitation of the Platinum theme from Mac OS 9, because that's what I happen to like, but there are others. Not a huge number of themes available, but it's a relatively new OS. They'll come.

And yes, this Platinum theme is a little quirky - it's got a funny little piece of something at the top of the scrollbar, no window borders, and a few other details aren't quite right. And, I've combined it with the Mozilla Classic theme from Mac OS 9, which is even quirkier with the OSX version of Mozilla. I'll probably go back to Modern. Anyway, like I said, give it time.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to put a * next to FireWire (IEE1394), Rendovous (ZeroConf), and the QuickTime 6 file format (MPEG4), you might as well put them next to USB (USB!) and AirPort (802.11a), since Apple didn't create any of these, but simply gave them funny names and used them first, or at least committed to them early. Also don't forget PCI, SDRAM, and finally, AGP and DDR RAM (most of which Apple adopted a bit late in the game).

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[geek]

Umm, they pushed USB and they made Firewire to name just two. Think a little harder on that and then post again.

To compliment their achievments in hardware they open or offer freely a lot of software now as well, Darwin and Rendevouz not to mention the quicktime streaming server.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[Mike610544]

why are Apple buying up app vendors (I don't recall the name of the product i'm thinking of, some graphics/music program), and scaring all the customers silly because they think Apple will make them Mac only?

I think you're referring to Emagic, the company that makes Logic Audio (a digital audio recording program.) And I believe they already have announced that the PC version will be discontinued. Pro audio is the one of the few area s outside of graphic design dominated by the Mac, and this development will only strengthen their position.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[bogie]

Umm Intel was pushing USB long before Apple used it.

Also Apple gave away Darwin so they could get free R&D, and talk to me when a quicktime client is available for Linux.

I guess I won't bother mentioning that Apple is as suit happy as Disney as well. Oh well I did anyway. ;)

Think a little harder on that and then post again.

I'm not expecting Apple to go completely OS anytime soon. But I'm sure a hell not going to forget their proprietary, suithappy past and start slapping them on the back just yet.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[reallocate]

OhMiGod! No 3rd party themes for my iMac!!!

Now there's a problem I'll stay up nights fretting about.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[geek]

Show one example of Intel pushing USB. Not one PC came with USB before Apple made it standard on the iMac.

As far as that pathetic argument of apple wanting free R&D I think you need to take your head out from where the sun doesn't shine. Apple has put as much or more into Darwin as any open source developer. That stupid comment about quicktime for Linux is just what i would expect from a linux bigot. Quicktime is not a codec, there is no reason open source developers can't implement mpeg4 and the other codecs with the exception of sorenson (note sorenson not apple) on linux.

If you want to be anti-Apple then do so with at least a moderate amount of intelligence and evidence.

Perhaps you can define suithappy. I'm thinking you pulled that one out of your ass as some sort of wannabe argument against Apple.

Better luck next time.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[SensitiveMale]

Even the Windows registry does much better than that

Well, that is the first time I have ever read anyone praising the registry.

That damn registry is the worst thing ms ever came out with, including Bob.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[questionlp]

My old Pentium 233MHz computer came with USB ports in a bracket that I could screw into one of the expansion slot covers. That machine was purchased before the iMac was made. Several motherboard manufacturers had USB controllers on their motherboards, but either did or didn't have it as part of the ATX backplane.

I think it's more appropriate to say that the iMac was the product that brought USB devices and peripherals into the mainstream market. The USB spec was worked on by Intel, Microsoft and other companies before the iMac came out... what Apple did was to make that the device connector and bus of choice, replacing SCSI, parallel, serial and ADB ports/busses with a simple and hot-swappable standard.

Now if you had replaced "USB" with "FireWire" (or IEEE 1394) in your first sentence, I would wholeheartedly agree.

Just my thoughts and my US$0.01.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[Spencerian]

Umm Intel was pushing USB long before Apple used it.

Intel pushed USB, but Microsoft didn't, and that was all that mattered, pre-1998. USB had no backers because the PC industry is resistant to change for fear of affecting the bottom line adversely.

I remember in 1997 when dozens of Compaq workstations appeared at my workplace with USB cables--but no operating system that supported it. The USB drivers in Windows 95 OSR2 were busted and practically unusable. There were very, very few USB devices.

In comes Apple, who didn't create USB, but just took an otherwise useful serial bus and installed it in all Macintosh systems since, starting with the iMac in 1998. That very act alone lit a fire under the computer industry's ass, and USB has been commonplace every since.

Also Apple gave away Darwin so they could get free R&D, and talk to me when a quicktime client is available for Linux.

OF COURSE Apple is giving away Darwin to make Mac OS X stronger. Does that make it or other operating systems that do the same thing (giving itself away) any less worthy? I would think not.

As for something that can run QuickTime: you can start here. It ain't official, but many software projects in the *nix world aren't anyway. Besides, why would Apple make a QuickTime client that competes against their own OS? Duh...!

You can also stream QuickTime for free from Linux. Reviews indicate this is the best streaming server out there, even compared to MS and Real.

I guess I won't bother mentioning that Apple is as suit happy as Disney as well. Oh well I did anyway. ;)

Think a little harder on that and then post again.

I'm not expecting Apple to go completely OS anytime soon. But I'm sure a hell not going to forget their proprietary, suithappy past and start slapping them on the back just yet.

A little food for thought: Compaq is a proprietary box. They make proprietary drivers that work only in specific models. They may run Windows, but not without a lot of help from Compaq.

You throw around the "p" word as if owning something or the sole right to change it makes it less worthy. Everything worth something has a proprietary component. Even Linux. Your nose is bleeding from sitting so high on your horse.

Apple is a business, and it is not out there to impress you or cause a revolution. If it can give away something to help their bottom line, great. If it can leverage its technologies to get more computers sold, that's fine. Can it still benefit you, presumed Linux user? Sure. Could Apple lapse back to its own ways? Maybe, but the market forces would destroy it.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[pi radians]

Show one example of Intel pushing USB. Not one PC came with USB before Apple made it standard on the iMac.

Incorrect. I know that IBM's Aptivas (my buddy's Pentium 133 had two ports) shipped with USB onboard. Of course Microsoft didn't have drivers for USB until Windows 95 Second Edition.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[mbbac]

Yes, I know. However, being able to hack Windows XP to support third party themes isn't the same thing as Windows XP supporting third party themes.

Were that the case, you'd have to say that Mac OS X supports third party themes.

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[mbbac]

Yeah, maybe I should have used a # to represent standards that Apple didn't create, but did establish.

I knew my list wasn't exhaustive, so thanks for adding those others. Wouldn't it have been SCSI*?

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[Anonymous Coward]

> But the only possibly crossplatform gadgets I can think of that Apple has even innovated in the past 15 years are the newton and the ipod

Strangely I type this from a dell notebook, running freebsd, connected via an Apple Airport...

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[Anonymous Coward]

Here ya go. Granted, it's heresay, but it works for me. Googled a couple other links I can't be bothered to cut and paste. I had no idea who came up with it before today, so I'm happy either way. To sum it up:

USB is really Intel's baby

PC manufacturers wouldn't include USB until the software was there

Apple was really the one to put it on the market with the i* series

Re:Goodbye "Not Invented Here" days

[jmorris42]

> You throw around the "p" word as if owning something or the sole
> right to change it makes it less worthy. Everything worth
> something has a proprietary component. Even Linux. Your nose is
> bleeding from sitting so high on your horse.

It does make it less worthy in my eyes as a buyer of technology. When I see the "p" word in ad copy I cringe. I might still buy, but the "p" is always a negative. It means more expensive, harder to maintain and usually single source products. All bad things from the perspective of the buyer. Name the positive virtues you associate with the word; from the point of view of a CUSTOMER. Bet you can't.

As for Linux having a proprietary component, huh? Some distros do, such as SUSE and Mandrake and Redhat used to flirt with the dark side, but Linux itself has no such attachments. RedHat != Linux.

I lived through the PC revolution and saw great systems, innovative software and countless products die because of being proprietary and therefore incapable of surviving the death of their manufacturer. Never again will I walk into the trap of depending of a proprietary product for anything important.

Nifty, but...

[Badge 17]

Kneejerk response #1: Yeah, but what good does that do me if all my files are .OGG?

Although I'd seriously consider going through and re-ripping all of them if I had the money... The iPod is just one of the coolest little gadgets I've seen in a while - especially the clean interface.

Has Apple indicated any wish to support alternate compression? A quick Google didn't find anything.

I suspect Apple should start researching OGG, as it seems much more likely than MP3 to remain un-DRM-contaminated... and Apple seems to be placing itself in the position of "use our computers - no stupid DRM!"

I also wonder if Apple could be persuaded to issue a release of iPod software for Darwin... that way it could more easily be converted.

Re:Nifty, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

actually if i remember correctly, the ipod does support ogg. it was in an article from just a week or so ago. i'll try to dig it up (it may have been in Linux magazine or linux journal too)

Re:Nifty, but...

[tbmaddux]

Apple should start researching OGG, as it seems much more likely than MP3 to remain un-DRM-contaminated...

MP3 is already un-DRM-contaminated. For it to become contaminated, it would have to be changed, at which point I would argue it's not really MP3 anymore. And all the old MP3 files and codecs would still work just fine, unless Apple starts playing games with our software. And as you noted, Apple's cultural position is opposed to that.

It's my understanding that OGG is a good format, but my gut says is you're more likely to see MP4 support on the iPod first.

Re:Nifty, but...

[SomeOtherGuy]

The moment you spent all your time ripping your colletion to OGG -- you setup a lock and chain to your PC. I am all for the idea (and quality/openess
) off OGG, however -- I for one like to listen to tunes away from my PC. Don't feel bad -- somewhere out there someone who transfered all of their family films to betamax knows just how you feel.

Re:Nifty, but...

[skt]

MP3 is just a file format.. it won't go away because of DRM. DRM has to start at a much lower level, like the hardware you have in your computer/cd player and the CDs and movies that you buy in the stores. Even if all of that took place, mp3 would still be available to you, but it would be very difficult to encode the latest CD that you purchased into an MP3 file.

The gripe that most people have around here with mp3 is more of a legal problem rather than DRM.. the mp3 encoding/decoding technology is still owned by a single corporation and that means royalties I imagine. MP3 won't go away anytime soon, but it will probably die a very slow death like GIF.

Re:Nifty, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Quicktime 6.02 just now supports .OGG files as per two articles on /. So, it seems iPod support of .OGG will be around the corner and ready possibly for the next iPod Firmware update. However, this is just wild speculation on my part.

Re:Nifty, but...

[tbmaddux]

if I remember correctly, the ipod does support ogg.

Pretty sure you're thinking of QuickTime and/or iTunes through the plugin that got posted about twice.

Re:Nifty, but...

[Eamon C]

I haven't read the article (still /.ed), but I imagine that it outlines a procedure that starts with MP3s on your PC and ends with MP3s on your iPod. Since we're using Linux tools, it seems that it would be trivial to add a step (probably near the beginning) that will transcode your OGGs to MP3 before you send them to your iPod.

OGG may be a better format, but when you're listening to music through tiny earbuds while riding the bus or walking around downtown, it's unlikely that you'll notice any loss of quality. I don't have a "proper" portable MP3 player yet, but I do have one of those portable CD players that will play MP3s on CD-ROM -- and this is *exactly* what I do.

Re:Nifty, but...

[LoudMusic]

This was posted just a short while ago. http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/25/ 1532236&mode=thread&tid=141 Perhaps what you're asking for isn't all that far away.

Re:Nifty, but...

[geniusj]

This could be informative, if it were correct. I don't know why it was slashdotted, but there has been a plugin available for a while to play OGG files in Quicktime and anything that uses the quicktime frameworks (e.g. iTunes). It's not a plugin made by apple nor is it supported by apple. It's just a 3rd party plugin and therefore doesn't really affect Apple's support of it.

Cheers,
-JD-

Re:Nifty, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

mp4 is video. I doubt you'll see it on the iPod anytime soon.

Re:Nifty, but...

[mbbac]

I wish Apple would give me a firmware update to enable playing Ogg files on my iPod as well.

Hopefully, we'll get that on January 7th along with official Ogg support and Rendezvous streaming in iTunes. I have a feeling the AAC codec is more likely, though.

Re:Nifty, but...

[Anonymous DWord]

What it does do is give you the same quality at a better bitrate, so you can have more songs. That's the advantage I see.

Re:Nifty, but...

[Eamon C]

Good point, although I wasn't implying that OGG support was a bad idea. I was simply suggesting that an MP3-only player would still be useful to Linux users who prefer OGG. I wouldn't mind one!

Re:Nifty, but...

[Cyno]

Alternatively the moment you developed a portable audio product that did not incorporate my open audio standard, ogg, you lost a potential customer. I have no problem listening to my music across various platforms, devices and networks. And I have no problem not paying corporations who develop products without putting even the slightest amount of thought into them or their customer's needs.

Actually I'm in the process of transferring all my family films to ogm, the ogg media stream format. Ever heard of it? Not surprised. Its better than avi, wmv, quicktime, and rm, but you'll probably never use it until its "the next big thing", kinda like xvid. There's a huge difference between an audio/video codec and a phsyical product that relies on capitalism to perpetuate itself. Ogg will replace mp3s in the near future, its only a matter of time. Hint... people like me aren't supporting, sharing or using mp3s anymore than we have to.

Re:Nifty, but...

[Cyno]

Yeah, iPods are nice, but I've decided long ago I won't purchase products that don't do exactly what I want. They'll figure it out sometime soon.

Re:Nifty, but...

[tbmaddux]

mp4 is video.

Cmon now. You can do MP4 audio-only files, just like an MP3 file is really an MPEG-1 (or is it 2? whatever), audio-only file. People have even started to compare them since QuickTime 6.0 came out.

Re:Nifty, but...

[SomeOtherGuy]

I will be the first in line to buy the first portable to support OGG. Until then I am not going to give up the perks of being a consumer just because the people building these devices can't get with the codec program. (The only thing that peaks my curiousity is the fact that there is not some big company behind the mp3 format that is holding a gun to their heads with a threat to pull the trigger if they move on to other codecs --- Now would not that be a nice "/. interview" -- 20 questions with the head engineer/president ceo of some of these companies like Iriver, Sonic Blue, Creative, Frontier Labs, etc....

Re:Nifty, but...

[TheCrazyFinn]

Keep Dreamin'.

Ogg is pretty much dead in the water, as is ogm. Simply put, Joe Average ain't going to use it because MPEG-4, AVI and MP3 are already here and work fine. To get people to change you need a killer app that's not possible oehrwise, not a better mousetrap, especially when the better mousetrap is 5 years late.

People like you may not be supporting MP3, but there's a lot more people like me who are, and we aren't going Ogg anytime soon. We're also the target market, not the Open Source fanatics who use Ogg.

The only thing missing is a nice GUI.

[digitalsushi]

"The only thing missing is a nice GUI."

*avoids smart alec temptation to link to apple.com

Re:The only thing missing is a nice GUI.

[optikSmoke]

The funny thing is, there is a nice-looking gui, available here. It's called GUIPod, and is actually based on gnupod (the software this tutorial discusses). I haven't tried it myself, but I assume its at least half-decent, being based on gnupod.

Since I can't read his article...

[notque]

I am about to purchase an mp3 player. Any suggestions on what to get, and why?

Re:Since I can't read his article...

[snitty]

It is all a matter of what you want.

If you aren't looking to put all of your music on it at anyone time, and therefore save some money, I would go with a Nomad Muvo, just because Creative makes hands down the best flash Mp3 players on the market, as far as size, sound quality, and price go.

if you are looking for a hard drive player you have a lot of choices. But make sure it has IEEE 1394 (firewire, iLink). Even if you don't have that on your computer it will be worth buying the PCI card (or PCMCIA) for the speed jump over USB (1.1 or 2.0). From there it is really a question of two things: Size and style. Hands down, if money isn't an issue the smallest and best looking HD Mp3 player on the market is the iPod. If you don't mind lugging something a little larger there are many choices: Any of the Nomad Jukebox lines or the Zen are good products. I would be wary of any company that is comming on the market with a large MP3 player with lots of flashy features though. Chances are they don't have good battery life or track record.

Overall the best advice I can give you is once you've decided HD or Flash, go to Best Buy or Circuit City and play with the MP3 players they have. You want something that is easy to operate, not too heavy for you to comfortable cary around etc.

Re:Since I can't read his article...

[notque]

Thank you very much.

That was very helpful. I wasn't quite sure what I was even looking for in a device, and now I do.

Nice GUI !!

[vivek7006]

The only thing missing is a nice GUI.
Dude thats why its called LInux, and not MacOSX

iPod is great but....

[My_nickname_is_taken]

I just can't justify the price. Sure it's sleek and sexy, sounds great, has multiple interfaces for data transfer, but it's priced at least a couple hundred $$ above the competition.

For $229 (BestBuy $279 + $50 mail in rebate) I'm very satisfied with my Archos Jukebox Recorder 20.

It has 20GB HD, USB 1.1,2.0, and comes bundled with Music match Jukebox.

My wife uses it mostly, so it's only seen Windoze, but I'm sure it wouldn't take long for me to get it working with Linux. If someone hasn't done it already.

Re:iPod is great but....

[Toraz Chryx]

Musicmatch jukebox is so bad I wouldn't use it if I were being paid..
I'll stick to Ephpod and my Win32 ipod thankyouverymuch

Re:iPod is great but....

[MasterOfMagic]

It already works under Linux. It is accessed as a USB Mass Storage device using the ISD-200 chip with a VFAT filesystem. The driver is in the vanilla kernel, and the web site for it is here. Also, there is open source firmware (which Archos will be including on its CD-ROM with future players) located at this page. This firmware doesn't support recording yet, but it will very soon now according to the web site.

I have my whole MP3 collection on it, and it's great. Although I have to admit that it's not as visually pleasing as an iPod.

Re:iPod is great but....

[jx100]

Then don't. It's accessible as a Mass Storage Device, so you never need to install any of that crap on your computer.

and to the person below, it's an ISD-300 chip. The 200 needs a special driver to be recognized as an MSD, whereas the 300 doesn't. You just have to plug it in for it to be recognized.

Re:iPod is great but....

[yandros]

The Archos jukebox recorders are significantly larger and, in my limited experience, mch less sturdy than the iPod. The Nomad Zen is closer, but, by all reports, still too large.

This size difference can be *critical*. That's why, for example, Hawkins spent so much time carrying around variously sized blocks of wood -- to find the size that would kill the (far more capable, advanced, and already-in-stores) Apple Newton.

I've played with USB devices of this sort, and USB 2.0 is simply too slow for these capacities. I'm excited to hear that USB2.0 support works for linux; in the early days of the Archos Jukebox, the USB storage drivers would crash the linux box pretty regularly.

Yeah, in the end, it all comes down to taste. For me, the ipod is small enough to carry around, while the Archos is (while cheaper), too close to the size of my laptop (sony vaio SR27K) to occupy a useful niche.

Re:iPod is great but....

[My_nickname_is_taken]

"Yeah, in the end, it all comes down to taste."

Yes and No.
If you're Bill G. or one of his close realatives you probably don't look at price tags, but I'm just a cheap SOB (not Son of Bill). So, for me it all comes down to price vs. features. In the end I just couldn't justify the $$ for the iPod when all my wife wants to do is listen to music.

She's happy, I'm happy... Nuff Said..

Re:iPod is great but....

[tshak]

Ya, but I don't need a backpack with the iPod. You are paying a premium for the small size, the elegant UI, and the exceptional sound quality.

Learn to run a website

[Jeffrey Baker]

Totally unrelated to the iPod topic, but:

I think humans have lost the technology of hosting web sites. Here is a fucker who submits his own article for posting on Slashdot, and doesn't even prepare for the inevitable tens of thousands of concurrent connections. Let's examine the situation:

http://www.linuxlookup.com/modules.php?

The website is using dynamic content with PHP. Already we know the site isn't setup for high concurrency.

op=modload&name=News

Looks like the programmer decided to possibly load and compile some code on every request. Not good.

file=article&sid=381

It also appears that the main content is being loaded from a database by ID number. News flash: RDBMS do not scale.

Call me a relic, but I do miss the days of static content. Your PHP page is probably a spiffy blend of database connections, but nobody can see it. Try generating your content to a static file and serving that. Even Ye Olde Apache 1.3 can serve tens of thousands of static files per second.

Re:Learn to run a website

[statusbar]

Cool information.... But isn't it usually sufficient (and easier) to just stick squid in front of the web server?

--jeff++

Re:Learn to run a website

[deadleppard]

Ic, and what did you write to help the community today? None? Thank you!

Re:Learn to run a website

[PCM2]

Indeed, let's examine this situation:

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?

This Web site is using dynamic content with Perl. Already we know the site isn't set up for high concurrency. Plus, it's using open source software, so it can't possibly be up to the enterprise standard of robust scalable architectures.

sid=02/12/31/175213&

It also appears that the main content is being loaded from a database by ID number. New flash: Why not a flat file? Hell-ooooo, haven't they ever heard of CSV?

mode=thread&tid=106

And it looks like the programmer decided to respond to a user action on every request. Call me an old relic, but I do miss the days when every programmer didn't have to worry about some stupid "UI" and instead concentrated on what computers were intended for: outputting incessant streams of meaningless data.

If this guy expect this site to hold up to the Awesome Powers of the Slashdot Effect, he'd better think again.

Re:Learn to run a website

[Doc Hopper]

If you're seriously expecting a ton of traffic to a web site, DNS round-robin to multiple web caches is an excellent idea. Akamai has a pretty good thing going, where people pay to put their content out on the proxy network that has convenient nodes all over the planet. Even just for a farm of web servers, though, putting a Squid cache in front of them and "pegging" certain URLs in memory makes an amazing speed difference.

Back when I worked for Excite@Home, we got to play with this on our E-Commerce sites. Usually it took ten web servers to handle peak load. We tried out transparent reverse proxy-caching, and were able to reduce that to *two* web servers. We could have easily gotten by with one if we didn't need fault-tolerance. It may seem unnecessarily complex, but IMHO any site that expects to handle massive web traffic should seriously investigate a front-end proxy-cache server. Virtually all of the very high-traffic sites do this (including Slashdot, though done in a slightly different way).

So, complex? Yeah, a little bit. But the performance benefits of using specialized products designed to do one job well (squid proxy cache, plus an apache-based cgi engine behind it) cannot be ignored by anybody expecting her site to get hammered.

Re:Learn to run a website

[tshak]

DNS round-robin to multiple web caches is an excellent idea

No, it's a cheap idea, but not excellent. A hardware loadbalancer is always the way to go if the funds are available. Round Robin's will blindly direct a user to A) an over burdened server (eg: each server has 5 users but server A's users utilizing much more resources), or B) a downed server.

And I definitely wouldn't use /. as an example - of all the sites that I visit daily, this site definitely has the worst uptime by a long shot.

Re:Learn to run a website

[Doc Hopper]

• No, it's a cheap idea, but not excellent.

Despite many efforts to create "worldwide hardware load balancing", every idea that doesn't use DNS round-robin in some form to distribute load across caches that do not share high-speed private networks between them has been a fairly unspectacular failure. Hardware load balancers like the Cisco LocalDirector, BigIP F5 (which also does reverse proxy-caching), and Arrowpoint (same) are very cool, and give you very nice redundancy, but don't scale to a globally distributed architecture at all. In those situations (sorry I wasn't more explicit), a DNS round-robin is the main choice if you're not going to attempt to do some sort of ARIN lookup to redirect people to the correct cache, or have a manual redirect to a more responsive country. Of course, behind each of those DNS round-robin entries, you should have an HLB so that that IP will not go unavailable.

• And I definitely wouldn't use /. as an example - of all the sites that I visit daily, this site definitely has the worst uptime by a long shot.

Good uptime is generally a side-effect of competent systems administration, not a direct effect of the architecture underlying it. Poor architecture can be worked around by good systems administration, and likewise good architecture made better the same way. However, the original question was about performance, not uptime. A reverse proxy web-cache in front of your web server is a sound decision for high-performance web serving. The uptime or lack thereof can be caused by other systems administration problems, or perhaps something as simple as having a single point of failure along the path.

That said, I should probably have pointed to CNN, Yahoo, or another heavy-load web site that uses reverse proxy web-caches to improve their site's responsiveness, rather than Slashdot.

Re:Learn to run a website

[tshak]

Most sites do not need a globally distributed architecture, but if it does both Cisco and F5 have respective products that add the functionality of geographic specific caching or traffic management. Check out the 3-DNS from F5. I'm obviously an F5 fan, but maybe that's just because I live 6 minutes from their corporate office :-). I believe that Cisco has left the LocalDirector to smaller installations, and has moved on to some Content Distribution somethingrather.

I still stand by my assertion that a hardware based load balancer is the way to go. I also disagree about your contention regarding the quality of sysadmins. Although the quality of a sysadmin is definitely a factor, a poor architecture that can't handle the load will fail no matter the quality of the sysadmin(s), and visa versa.

Been over this...

[djupedal]

I put up this iPod Comparison Chart/site for those looking to compare the iPod with other hd based players.

While it hasn't been updated since the 20gb units w/remote came out, it does allow for review of more elements than most buyers ever consider (also tips, links and related trivia).

Bottom line...FireWire is the only way to go (transfers and charging), and at 7 oz., an iPod will truly fit in your pocket. And yes, the new remote is backwards compatible...just be sure to update your iPod.

Re:Been over this...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Bottom line...FireWire is the only way to go

Why aren't there more USB 2 players available? Why is FireWire the only way to go for portable MP3 players?

It is irritating to have to support two different standards. Devices that use the standards can be divided into two categories:

Firewire/1394 - DV cameras and MP3 players
USB 2.0 - Everything else

I don't understand why Firewire is so great for anything other than DV (due to compatibility and industry support). Why don't portable music players use USB 2.0 like every other new retail device (external hard drives, external burners, newer web cams, scanners, etc.)?

It leaves us buying two upgrade cards for our "outdated" computers instead of just one.
</whine>

Re:Been over this...

[Anonymous Coward]

most of the new archos models are usb 2; although that new multimedia one requires a special 40 dollar adaptor which is total bullcrap. The 20GB archos recorder works fine on usb 2 and it is plenty fast believe me. So firewire is not 'the only way to go.' Don't drink the koolaid like all the steve jobs wanks - there are some other good options out there. The chart that fag referred to is biased as hell - it is missing basic and easily found info on all of the options except the ipod, and it has outright lies about the sound quality on the ipod.

Re:Been over this...

[Oculus Habent]

It's really too bad that so much effort was put into USB 2.0 when FireWire was available.

They have virtually identical practical transfer rates, so the additional capabilities of USB 2.0 go to waste - unless, I suppose, you find yourself doing huge amounts of simultaneous data transfer to multiple USB 2.0 devices on the same bus.

FireWire also sports two great benefits: more power (requires the 6-pin verion that is sadly not found on many smaller devices and x86 laptops) and no host-specific controller. People talk about putting Linux on a PDA and using USB to control devices from it, but until USB On-the-Go becomes pervasive, this cannot be a reality. On the other hand, Any FireWire device can communicate with any other.

FireWire is a more flexible standard, and with planned upgrades to 800 Mbps and higher, there's no shortage to it's possibilities.

If someone would just make a drive that doesn't use an IDE/FireWire bridge but actually has an on-drive FireWire interface, the benefits could be substantial.

*sigh*

As a note, you can get FireWire hard drives, , scanners, printers, and the Kodak DCS Pro 14n 14 megapixel camera will use FireWire

Re:Been over this...

[Oculus Habent]

damn the scanners and printers should be a link. It goes to CD-RW/DVD-RW drive from Sony.

Sorry for the mixup

Re:Been over this...

[mbbac]

1. FireWire is faster than USB 2.0.
2. FireWire support peer-to-peer connections.
3. What if you want to use the iPod for DV?

USB 2.0 has no purpose. USB 1.0 is good enough for low performance peripherals (mouse, keyboard). FireWire should be used for everything else (harddrives, digital audio, digital video, printers).

Re:Been over this...

[jrwyant]

It is amazing how the industry moves when licensing fees are involved. :) Apple wanted $1 (so I heard) per FireWire (or IEEE 1394A, B, etc.) device, so Intel said "no thanks" and didn't include it on it's chipsets. Similar for other chipset developers.

But as USB has no licensing fees for developers, people flock to it, despite 1394's obvious technical superiority.

Re:Been over this...

[Oculus Habent]

IEEE 1394 is a standard, with no licensing fees. The license was for the FireWire name, which Apple now lets anyone use for their IEEE 1394 product. This is why there are i.Link devices - Sony didn't wanted a brand for it and didn't like the fees on FireWire (at the time).

As for chipsets, they aren't as available as USB, but there are a few of them out there. All of Shuttle's XPC line incldues FireWire. Almost everything Sony makes; nVidia's nForce chipsets support it. Two of the three South Bridges Sis offers have it. I can't say about AMD or Intel, as AMD's site is worthless and, strangely, I can't get intel.com to load.

IPOD

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple years ago I was buying RAM at a store. The manager wanted $150 for 4mb. I told him that some day I would be able to buy 256mb of Kingston RAM for $40. He laughed and said, "LOL, IPod".

my 20GB works great :) (and howto)

[warrior]

Apparently the site is already /.'ed. Here's a way to get it working with a nice GUI.

I'm using the latest stable kernel (2.4.20). 1394/ohci/sbp2 are all working great. Be sure to check "prompt for development drivers", then add the 1394 module and be sure to add OHCI and sbp2 (these also help if you're into dv ;). Be sure to have SCSI compiled in or as a module!! Also be sure to inlude the HFS (if you've got the mac version) or msdos/vfat (for windows ipod) if you don't want to reformat your ipod. Reboot with you new kernel.

modprobe the 1394 and ohci modules. Do a tail -f on /var/log/messages and plug in your ipod and wait for the magic :) You should see Apple iPod being added as a (5/10/20)GB SCSI disk. Add a mount point for the drive in /etc/fstab using vfat if you've got windows or hfs if you've got a mac. You should now be able to access the iPod as a removable SCSI drive! modprobe -r sbp2 to safely remove the ipod (you have to unmount it first, too).

Now, for the GUI. Download ephpod. Install it using wine (wine ephpod.exe). Change your wine config (probably ~/.wine/config) to use wherever you mounted your ipod as a drive. Startup ephpod. Be sure you've added some nice fonts to your wine install.

Enjoy!

Re:my 20GB works great :) (and howto)

[IamTheRealMike]

You can find more instructions (a non-slashdotted copy) here

Re:my 20GB works great :) (and howto)

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, is that all it takes to get one of the more popular MP3 players working under Linux? With such simple plug and play goodness one would think that Linux would be on every home computer, especially considering the difficulty of connecting an iPod to a Windows box - my mom had the hardest time installing the software and pluging the darn thing in.

Re:my 20GB works great :) (and howto)

[warrior]

Those steps are for someone who doesn't have at least kernel v2.4.20 and the proper modules compiled. Most current distros have all the necessary stuff so you just need to plug it in and mount it. At that point, it's just like any other drive and (like on windows) it's a matter of writing the itunes.db on the ipod. Ephpod is pretty good for this, but it's windows software so requires wine. This is not a permanent solution. Someone will build a nice linux native UI, I'm working on one myself.

my mom had the hardest time installing the software and pluging the darn thing in

I bet she did. For instance, when I plug mine in under winxp as soon as "Musicmatch Jukebox" recognized the iPod the #@!ing computer restarts. I'm not re-installing the (P)OS for this when a kernel compile takes 5 min. I was, however, able to get it to work in windows with ephpod, but all my music is on the linux box anyways and transferrring over the network is slower than firewire. Kudos to the ephpod developers, very nice. Open source it!

Mike

Re:my 20GB works great :) (and howto)

[kzinti]

Yep, I can confirm this works - I've been using it since I got my 20GB Win iPod. I only used the bundled crapola software once: to "christen" my iPod.

EphPod is a cool program, and I'm glad to have it. However, using EphPod under linux still has some glitches:

(1) The "Add Directory..." feature doesn't work, you just get an empty selection browser. I suspect this is a wine limitation (I'm using the Crossover plugin version). You have to use "Add Files" instead, and just select all the files you want to add. That doesn't sound like too bad a workaround, but it's quite painful if you're adding a few thousand.

(2) Sometimes EphPod screws up the iPod database: choose a Fleetwood Mac tune, get Elvis Costello song instead. *sigh* Using the EphPod's "Rebuild Database" function cures that problem, but it almost always loses the playlists. Solution: always keep linux-side copies of the playlists. I use xmms to build the playlists, then use Emacs to clean the xmms-specific lines out of them. Xmms can still use them, and they can be re-loaded into the iPod after rebuilding the database.

(3) The 1394 drivers are immature. They frequently fail to recognize the iPod; unloading then reloading sbp2 usually fixes this. The drivers sometimes cause kernel oopses, at least with 2.4.19 and the latest 1394 drivers as of the time I got my iPod - I haven't tried 2.4.20 yet.

(4) EphPod doesn't seem to recognize mp3 genre tags; I haven't looked deeply into this problem yet, but I suspect it may be an id3v2 vs v1 problem.

That sums up my experience. I would say that using an iPod under linux is not for the faint of heart.

--

(Because linux sees the iPod as a generic block device, there are some interesting things you can do with it. When I first hooked up my iPod, I used a 'dd if=/dev/sdb | gzip -9' to grab an image of the hard disk - which could later be used to restore the entire iPod back to "virgin" state. I also dd'ed off a copy of /dev/sdb1 to have a copy of the firmware. The entire 20GB image compressed down to less than 10MG - must be mostly zeroes.)

--Jim

Re:my 20GB works great :) (and howto)

[Anonymous Coward]

TIMAATB (This isn't meant as a troll, but...)

You just demonstrated why Linux has such a difficult time coming into the mainstream. While I understand what you said (I think), my boss would be really lost, not to mention my Mom, girlfriend, or even one of my best friends. Long time Linux users are content with doing extra steps to get something to work. Windows/Mac users are not.

You're not a relic, you're a moron

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way to feasibly generate static files for a site featuring so much dynamic content without losing your sanity. I have generated pages for seven years on one of the top three sites on the web so I am also invalidating your comment as ridiculous based on your premise of moral legitimacy.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: Learn to be a Luddite

[markv242]

"The website is using dynamic content with PHP. Already we know the site isn't setup for high concurrency."

What exactly makes you think that? I'm not a huge PHP fan, but the site could be running any number of load balancers (software or hardware) in front of its backend. Additionally, PHP can scale to very high concurrency, it just needs to be tuned correctly. Your precious "flat-file-serving" Apache can only serve 150 simultaneous clients out of the box if you haven't tuned it.

"News flash: RDBMS do not scale."

Now I know you're talking out your ass, because if you had any experience at all with Oracle, you wouldn't have stated this. I suppose Amazon, Yahoo, CNN, et al aren't able to scale? The simple fact of the matter is that, like any other piece of software, how you tune your applications goes a long way to how many simultaneous threads you can serve up.

I think you really underestimate the true power of the Slashdot effect. What's likely happening in this situation is that Apache is buckling under the thousands of simultaneous requests, many of whom are coming from modem users -- using up precious processes to download the content. I seriously doubt that, if this person is running a 500MHz or greater machine, that processor time is an issue at all. What he/she needs to do is re-tune Apache to serve more simultaneous requests.

"Try generating your content to a static file and serving that."

That is one of the harder things to do, believe it or not -- you're venturing into the realm of a more fully-featured content management system at that point. What if your content changes on a regular basis? What if, like Slashdot, the comments are dynamic?

"Even Ye Olde Apache 1.3 can serve tens of thousands of static files per second."

Not out of the box it won't. Read your own httpd.conf and look up "MaxClients" and "KeepAliveTimeout". Out of the box, MaxClients is set to 150, and KeepAliveTimeout is set to 15 seconds. Once you hit the 150 MaxClient threshhold, the performance of your webserver will be terrible, because you'll be waiting 15 seconds between unique client requests.

Re:The investment in an iPod warrants the followin

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice post. You're nailing her too? ;) heh

Re:The only thing missing is a nice SIG

[gosand]

They're over there with their things. It's with its things. A lot of things.

You're sig will fall on deaf ears with the /. crowd, and your a fool to think otherwise. Most people would of realized that by now.

:-)

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[account_deleted]

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Re: Learn to be a Luddite

[Jeffrey Baker]

To use your own example, CNN doesn't scale at all. Whenever a major news even happens, CNN goes offline, along with MSNBC, et. al. CNN actually has a "breaking news" mode that eliminates all the database-driven crap from their front page. Yahoo scales well because they make extensive use of pre-generated files. Imagine that! For example, the charts on finance.yahoo.com are generated periodically, not custom generated on every request.

Thanks for sharing your expert knowledge of httpd.cond.dist.

XSL as an alternative to dynamic content.

[markv242]

XSL is not yet mature enough to replace good ol'-fashioned Java (that was a weak attempt at humor). It simply is too time-consuming to build templates to handle anything more than the simplest error-checking. XSL only has the most basic of variable support, and writing a "function" in XSL is somewhat akin to using an iPod as a PDA-- you can do it, but why not just use the real thing?

Re:XSL as an alternative to dynamic content.

[markv242]

I suppose my requirements for a content management system are different than yours. I have yet to see an XSL-based solution able to expire content. Until I can see a system that reliably expires content without some sort of song-and-dance with 0-length files, cron jobs, and the like, I'll stick with "update article set available = 0 where id = blah" and run a dynamic site.

CNN doesn't scale at all

[markv242]

That "breaking news mode" that CNN busts into where their front page is static only happens at a threshhold of 100,000 simultaneous requests. Anything underneath that and they remain in their "regular news mode" of running a dynamic site.

Additionally, the only reason that they don't continue to run in "regular news mode" above that 100k threshhold is cost. Their server farm is perfectly capable of handling 10x the requests, but CNN has mandated that they aren't willing to spend the money in maintenance costs.

Your example of the charts on finance.yahoo.com is a bad example; "pre-generated files" is a misnomer-- Yahoo is simply telling their application servers to cache that information for a few minutes. This is, once again, a great example as to why a well-tuned application server is far superior to serving flat content.

your site is way out of date

[g4dget]

Both Archos and Creative have entirely new product lines out there. Some Archos drives are much sleeker and more capable and support both FireWire and USB2 (as well as MPEG4 video and audio).

The Creative Nomad Zen is sleek and small, and supports both FireWire and USB, as well as recharging through USB.That alone makes it a much better choice for Linux users than the iPod. It also seems to have somewhat better battery life, and it supports recording.

OGG on portables...

[SvnLyrBrto]

I thought that the difficulty in finding OGG compatability in portable players wasn't that all the makers were being "evil" and trying to suppress the new "free" format.

I thought it was because most portables use integer-only CPUs to save that little bit more money. And while there ARE integer-only deconders for MP3s, there aren't for the Vorbis codec.

Is this no longer true, or am I caffeine defficent and wrong in the first place?

cya,
john

Re:OGG on portables...

[Doc Hopper]

Was true until a little while ago. http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/index.html. The new "Tremor" codec is integer-only. I think it may require a bit more CPU speed than mp3, though.

Why???

[swordgeek]

OK, I already know the answer to this one: Because you CAN!

However, from a practical point of view, I can't imagine any reason to run Linux on a box that comes with a very tightly (and well) designed BSD Unix OS.

Re:Why???

[Kourino]

However, from a practical point of view, I can't imagine any reason to run Linux on a box that comes with a very tightly (and well) designed BSD Unix OS.

You mean like, say, a Dell? :) They make iPods designed for Windows now, too. But think for a moment and you should see that there are other reasons to want iPods to talk to Linux than "I installed YHL over my copy of Jag".

As for running Linux instead of OS X, I'm trying this now. I do like OS X. It's managed to annoy me much less than Windows has in the past. But it's not terribly snappy on a 700 MHz G3. Even with over half a gig of RAM. Debian feels faster, in general. (Maybe it's just because I don't see a wait cursor as often as I do in Jag.) But stuff crashes more under it ... Debian testing feels less stable on non-x86 archs :/

Re:Why???

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't you hear? Linux isn't just for PPC any more!

alternatives

[g4dget]

Get a Nomad Zen instead. It has both FireWire and USB interfaces, slightly longer battery life, and it supports recording. Or consider the new Archos players and recorders: USB2, FireWire, and lots of other features.

Re:alternatives

[geek]

Nothing from Archos even comes close but the Nomad Zen is nice for the money. It just lacks a decent interface which has been creatives problem with all of their products for years. I have a Nomad IIc right now from Creative and love it. I've dropped it several times and the case is all scratched up but it still works like a charm and iunes plays quite happily with it.

I really like the looks of the iPod but I refuse to pay that much money for it right now. Maybe when I find a new job but even then it will be a serious decision.

Re:alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't particularly find the slippery iPod wheel "nice". As for Archos, they give you a lot more functionality in a slightly larger package. It's a reasonable tradeoff.

Re:alternatives

[merz]

Get a Nomad Zen [nomadworld.com] instead.

Have you actually used one? I haven't, but they are getting a lot of negative feedback over at our good friend Amazon

Does anyone have one?

Re:alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

Nomad IIc? Apple had the IIc -years- ago. Shows how far behind everyone else is ;)

How to use your iPod under Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Buy a Mac
2) With a piece of string and a ceiling hook, dangle your Linux distro CD's over the desk where your Mac is
3) Connect your iPod to the Mac and enjoy.

You have now successfully used your iPod under Linux.

D'oh!

[PCM2]

When I first skimmed the headline for this story, I was saying to myself: "Wow, cool! They have iPod tools for Linux? Maybe I can get them to compile under Mac OS X!"

Archos works great under Linux

[boy_afraid]

As I said, the Archos MP3 player works GREAT under Linux. When I connect it via USB it automatically loads and is mounted. I have to admit it, it works better under Linux than under Windows because I didn't need to load any drivers.

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[account_deleted]

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Re: Learn to be a Luddite

[ElGuapoGolf]

As someone with programming experience for a financial company I can tell you that the reason the charts are generated periodically and not custom generated is costs. If they provided real time finanical updates, it'd cost them a fortune. Providing you with data that's 15 minutes old costs them almost nothing.

Re:Pissed off Mac user-

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not funny. Stop posting it.

The thing about being a "waiter" means he sucks at his "graphic design" job, so now he works at McDonalds, where they don't require you wash your hair or shave.

MOD THIS UP

[Second_Derivative]

Though not too much. I've been looking for some alternatives to an iPod for a while now..

Woefully out of date info.....

[Anonymous Coward]

And SPL != SNR. LOL.

Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

and your still using linux...why?

Apparently this is no longer true

[barzok]

There's a "Tremor" integer-only codec listed on the CODEC project page.

Re:Ebay

[w3svc_animal]

How about an 'almost new' ipod for $182.50.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=11024&item=1947662392

Request for CmdrTaco

[Anonymous Coward]

Show your respect to trolls, fool. When you keep on opressing trolls, you make them stronger and more intense.

Live with them or else.

(P.S. Linux is gay)

How much a speed hit for dynamic xsl.

[Ilan Volow]

It's kind of weird to see a flamebait parent post morph into an interesting tech discusssion. I'll probably get modded off-topic, but what the hell.

I'm actually writing a blog system that stores blog files in xml and then transforms them from xml to html (among other formats). I've considered the whole just-in-time transformation thing, but I'm worried that it might be too much of a speed hit (every time a user hits the blog site, yet another transform). If it saps too much server cpu cycles, sysadmins might not be all to keen on having the software installed.

Do you think my fears are unfounded, and that 1000 users hitting the site a day (which means maybe ~1500 jit xslt transformations) on a server that a hell of a lot of people are using for a hell of a lot of other things is reasonable?

Re:How much a speed hit for dynamic xsl.

[Anonymous Coward]

I used XML+XSLT model quite a bit and in my view you exagurate its advantages too much. Where do you keep your XML? If it's dynamic data, you still have to make a databgase connection and generate it. Quite often you will need several connections to get all data you need and then stitch returned XML into one structure. If it's static and you keep it in a file, might as well serve static HTML. And finally, if it is dynamic and stored in a file, you give up all database niceties (performance, data integrity, transactions etc.) and take a performance hit on every update in a not-as-fast filesystem.
Ability to do a client side transform is by far the biggest advantage, and possibly the only advantage performance-wise for a traditional website. Although, not very reliable with all the different client side parsers I might add :). On the other hand it is hard to beat XSLT in situations where you have to serve different types of clients. And by different I don't mean IE and Mozila, I mean HTML for web browsers, WML for PDAs and pnones, VoiceXML for regular phone access, XML interfaces to other external systems etc. That's where this technology shines but, to be honest, how often do we need to do all that :)?
In conclusion, there is certainly a place for this method, but more often than not it is chosen just because of the developer preference and not real necessity. As always there are several ways do do things and XSLT is just one of them.

LinuxLookup.com Server is back up

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi all, this is Jon here. I just got back online and found my article bombarded from various sources (Slash being the biggest). I've got the server back up again, and I'll do my best to keep it up.

Server is back up

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been away this morning and wasn't expecting this to be slashdotted today, since I submitted it last week some time. I've got it back up and running, and I'll do what I can to keep it up.

-Jon

Posted as anonymous, who needs karma anyway? =)

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[account_deleted]

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....what? what are we doing?

[Mark19960]

Are we using iPods WITH Linux or are we installing linux on the iPod and then installing the iPod stuff on linux?
needs a little clarification :)

Missing...

[Whatsthiswhatsthis]

The only thing missing is a nice GUI. ...if that isn't the story of Linux in a nutshell.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Goodbye "No Theme" days

[Tokerat]

Unlike every Linux and Windows, MacOS is still not capable of being themed by 3rd parties (unless you consider a grey version of the default a "theme").

• Duality 3.1 - "Scheme" switcher for MacOS X (you say theme, we say scheme, I have no idea why)
• IHeartNY - Custom icons and dock skins.
• CandyBar - from Panic and the IconFactory, allows you to customize any and all system icons, including the toolbar, the trash icon, the default folder icon, etc.

So I'd say we're pretty much covered. I'm sure it won't be long before someone writes an app that will replace Dock.app to do something different, even if Apple tries to sue the bejesus out of them.

Hmm, now that I've compiled this list (and I'm sure I missed a bunch of stuff), why haven't I installed any of this on my OS X machine? *off to download :-)*

it's been done before

[nuckin futs]

using ephpod and WINE. this uses a GUI. here's a site with step by step instructions.

Ok, I've got to ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Although I'd seriously consider going through and re-ripping all of them if I had the money... "

How much would it cost you to re-rip your songs?

Re:Been over this... USB 2.0 has a Purpose

[puto]

I have 5 USB 2.0 80 gig drives in the field. I get them for 140 bucks a piece.

1. They offer another back up option. My networks have tapes but they also have this extra redundancy. Connect it to a plane jane windows box running 2000(any old box). And you can have it back up your entire network quickly and easily in the wee small hours. 80 gigs is a lot space and you can restore from it rather quickly, much quicker than a tape. Still keep the tapes but for an 80 gig back up that will run for about 3 years constantlym you can beat the price.

2. I have one that does in my tech back with 4 20 gig partitions, one is mp3's for me to listen to. One is just about every software tool imaginable. The third is ISOs of all the redhats, windows, solaris,office, you name it i got it. And the fourth I use to grab files with that need fixing.

I also carry an interface card with me. Because now I dont carry around all those cds. If I have to dump a lotta data, i just pop in the 2.0 card(if the machine doesnt have it) and I boogie.

USB 2.0 is fast enough for me, will be more widepread than firewire. And I have never had a problem with it.

Now my 'doctor' bad is just a Leatherman, this drive, and the adaptor card, and one cd with the drivers.

Firewire is great technology but Apple forced intels hand when the wanted to charge per installation per motherboad. They reneged but way after the fact. That is why it didnt take off so quick.

I have an ipod, and an ibook. And firewire is fast. But I gotta say when I can dump 10 gigs in hardly anytime. No messing with tapes(I still use em but this is quicker) if it fails I always have the tape.

My other USB 2.0 personal drive gets the same treatment as my clients. I leave the house for the night, it goes with me.

Puto

your favorites are really "out there..."

[djupedal]

My site doesn't waste time listing products that aren't for sale and may never exist. I waited all year for Nomad to release something besides a press release. I finally stopped waiting...they are too late to the party, and now they've missed the 2002/03 Christmas shopping season.

From the Nomad site: "available soon"...how lame is that?

Besides, I love it when Nomad and Archos L-users whine :)

Re:Ebay

[Toraz Chryx]

That's hardly 5GB for $15 ;)

1.8" hard drive!

[wchin]

Apple uses Toshiba 1.8" hard drives in the iPod. You can see an example here. Toshiba sells a PCCard version of this hard drive for $399 retail. You may be able to find it as cheap as $240. Here is Toshiba's page for hard drives.

As you can see now clearly see, this is much smaller (54mm x 78.5mm x 5mm) and lower power than even laptop 2.5" hard drives. Apple probably pays between $150 and $200 for the 5gb version of these drives.

do your homework

[g4dget]

My site doesn't waste time listing products that aren't for sale and may never exist. [...] From the Nomad site: "available soon"...how lame is that?

The only thing that's lame is your excuses. The Nomad Zen and the entire Archos product line have been at our local electronics store for a while. And if you bothered to check PriceGrabber.COM or similar sites, you'd see that, while some companies are sold out due to Xmas, several still have them in stock. Reviews on Amazon.com go back to October 23.

Besides, I love it when Nomad and Archos L-users whine :)

And that's your excuse for putting out inaccurate and outdated information?

Re:Been over this... USB 2.0 has a Purpose

[mbbac]

Your post doesn't say anything positive about USB 2.0. All your post talks about it how Intel used its market dominance to ensure that USB 2.0 was on more Wintel computers than FireWire.

That's a benefit of USB 2.0's presense, not the technology. I simply said that with FireWire beating USB 2.0 in every category, there is no point for USB 2.0.

USB has it's place, but in my mind it isn't for high performance devices.

audible.com?

[FunGuy]

one of the things i found out was that audio books from audible.com are only supported on MAC OS, using iTunes. Does anyone know of any present hacks to enable non-iTunes software to copy it to the iPod (linux and windows versions...). Thanks! -FunGuy