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uClinux Ported to the iPod
ucdot writes "Here is the announcement for a port of uClinux to the Apple iPod, checkout the project page for extra details. Currently the frame buffer, audio and IDE devices are working. Still plenty of work to do."
Ogg vorbis support via Tremor decoder, for one.
Or you can install apache on it and serve webpages. It'll still be more stable than IIS.
... this seriously rocks!
All thats needed now is a port of libogg, and away we go! Well done Bernhard!!!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Easy: Half-sized music at very good quality means more music on my small iPod-hard drive.
when i got the nomad jukebox it was ok, but i had to trade up for the beautiful UI of the iPod.
the only thing i miss about the NJB is the ability to make realtime playlists, and to be able to delete songs away from the computer. i would love to see that come to my iPod via this port!!!
also a dual boot would be incredible, but doubt the 2 firmwares could co-exist unless the firmware would be a booter (ala lilo or grub), and the iPod/Linux firmware be made virtual and put onto the ide harddrive.
once more mature, wonder how the legal implications of "look n feel" would be determined since you are confined to such a narrow user input. apple made the UI so sexy, that it would be hard not to emulate it.
For anyone bored to check their website here are the two screenshots they include.
1
and
2
first off, I don't see that this has been done for anything other than a bit of fun. the pleasure of the hack. However, going a bit further... ...part of the iPods appeal to me is the multipurpose aspect. It's not just a music player, it's a -fast- external HD. Now that's well and good, but more features never hurt.
:)
Adding in the possibility of tcp over firewire gives you, essentially, an entire portable linux box that's a good sized firewire HD, music player, and terminal-accessible machine with a battery life measured in DAYS.
That doesn't mean it could ever completely replace a good laptop for example, but to me a lot of the little uses of a piece of hardware are those that go beyond what it was designed/made/intended for.
It is what it is, and someone shall find a use for it. And it's cool
I think an important question is (and I didn't find the answer in the article) that can I put back the original software?
Szo
Red Leader Standing By!
Apple's reaction will be interesting. If they jump on these developers, they will be sending a strong message about exactly what they are selling with the iPod. If - and I think this is more likely - they ignore or even help the project, the iPod will become immensely popular.
Ogg support (or even just a shell prompt!) would be reason enough for me to buy the iPod today.
Hope this message gets through to Apple.
So, what's next: will some intelligent company build a DVD player that can be extended with IDE drives internally and run Linux so that we can load it with mplayer and freenet and build that "your grandmother can fileshare" set-top DVD/VR I'm dreaming about?
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1. Get it to continue working with iTunes. Imagine, once this matures and the music capabilities are running at full speed, how nice it will be to be able to sync and use both your ogg vorbis and mp3 files on the iPod using iTunes to organize everything.
2. Figure out the remote pin-outs, so hardware hackers, or at least those with soldering skill can make their own remotes. I'm thinking I would like to modify my snowboarding jacket since I can't afford that Burton/Apple iPod jacket. Granted, this request goes out to anyone who is interested as it really doesn't have anything to do with the iPod linux project. If I can find some time, I may look into it myself.
If anyone has any info on the above, please feel free to chime in. Oh, yeah, and I noticed this from the FAQ. Perhaps this can waylay all of the "WHY?!?" trolls:
Cheers. :)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Once you have control over the OS you can run almost any software you want on it. You could turn it into a complete organizer, not just a portable audio player and storage device.
As long as you've got access to a Windows machine with Firewire, you can convert a Mac iPod to Windows by using the Windows iPod software installer from Apple. And it'll still work on the Mac -- Windows iPods work just fine with Macs, although not vice versa -- the only thing you lose is the desktop icon.
How so? You still need to actually buy the iPod from Apple...
I dont see your logic there, u need an ipod to run it on, Apple still get the money.
I can see it now. Two geeks in a bar looking at each others linux equipped ipods. One pulls out a firewire cable and says "I'll share you mine if you share me yours"
EGG, the Electronic Gamers Guild
Its sad to think that people are so anti-cooperate that they don't know a good thing when it bites them on the nose. It's OK to make money. If we didn't make money we would all be starving on the corner of some streetor "working" behind a supermarket. Apple traditionally doesn't tell people to stop hacking their devices unless they have a good reason. As long as we don't see an article like "Linux used to pirate boatloads of music on the iPod" on /. and the linux hackers have followed all the details outlined in the EULA we won't hear Apple cry shennanigins.
I contribute to opensource free software projects; don't let yourself get overzealous with this anti-corporate thing.
100% Crunchier
Its not like it is breaking any agreement with Apple. Read the software license that comes with the iPod, its a simple software license, nothing else. Just like Apple has not squished the Linux on PowerPC programs, Apple will not got after someone wanting to write something for the iPod. iCommune was a person breaking their agreement with Apple, they had all the right in the world to tell him to cease and desist. My 2 cents.
not really..... Apple are fundamentally a hardware company, they only have software on the iPod so people will buy an iPod. They probably don't really mind what software people run s long as it's an iPod that Apple sold 'em ;)
They can't even be pushing Mac-only compatibility as they sell a Windows version etc etc.
So will Apple be miffed if you buy an iPod and install a random os on it? I doubt it, just like they don't send the boys round when you buy a Mac an install Yellow Dog or something.
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
Whether you put a new OS on it or not, the OS that Apple puts on (which is made by Pixo by the way) will be on before you even buy it. You'll be paying Apple the same amount no matter what you do.
This is my
And this is useful, how?
:)
What a curious statement... I bet they had a lot of fun creating it and learned a ton in the process. Since when does hacking something have to be useful?
It didn't exist before, and they made it exist, even if all it will ever do is show the penguin logo. Kudos to them.
At the same time, you could fit a lot of iPods in a server rack...
I don't know where to start but let's just say that Apple certainly doesn't have a monopoly on portable MP3 players. If you don't like their way, just buy any other MP3 player... maybe I didn't get the irony in your post?
Why is the penguin on their website stoned? Was he making one of the switch ads too?
Only the current 10GB and 20GB iPods have non-moving "wheels". The 5GB and the original 10GB have a moving wheel.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
The ultimate is efficient servers, barely larger than the hard drives inside them - having only one cable acting as both data and power, capable of being stacked 595 to a standard 42U rack, giving and incredible density of almost 12 terabytes, double that if you use a back-to-back storage configuration.
Yes, the iPodServe is the most incredible, albeit expensive, server technology available. At just under $300,000 per 42U rack, you couldn't manage more if you had the staff to do so.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Just a thought...
/dev/mp3 ? The idea of using a software decoder on something i think has a hardware decoder just seems a little....uselsss?
Doesn't the iPod have a hardware decoder for mp3? If so why don't they think about making a device for this in the kernel...maybe so it would be possible just to cat >
"What do you mean you have no ice? Do you expect me to drink this coffee hot?" - Random Customer, Clerks
You know the developer is a slashdot frequent when you read the FAQ.
"3.4 Can you imagine a Beowolf cluster...
There was an April fools about a bunch of Buddhists ordering a heap of iPods. Too bad... if it were true perhaps they could have clustered them to solve the ancient mysteries...
Translation, yes, but its just silly. "
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
If you are so uninterested in someone else's hard work, time and effort that you need to bad mouth them, please keep it to yourself.
;)
If you want linux on your Archos JB20, why not try porting it youself?
Or just buy an iPod
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
At the moment much of the possibilities for the hardware in the iPod is going unused, for whatever reasons.
It's difficult to tell exactly what the out-of-the-box features are, as precise details are closed... but:
There's a PP5002B-C in there, and the PP5002 product brief(pdf) states support for mp3 encoding, and decoding of mp3, wma, wma, aac and accelp.net formats. Of course, Apple use custom firmware which may not have all of these facilities.
There's also been talk of using the iPod for direct sharing over firewire. There's possibility of using IP-over-Firewire and running a webserver on the thing. There's a lot of fun possibilities out there, especially if a few more hackers get on board, although no alternative firmware will gain popularity until it has a simple UI, one of the things apple tend to be rather good at.
There's obviously a fair way to go with this uClinux project, and I'd expect much of it's initial progress has been made thanks to the ARM7TDMI port of UClinux - I'm not belittling the hard work of Bernard Leach here. The current mp3 and ogg playback is probably not as optimised as it could be with full knowledge of the portalplayer chip and the rest of the iPod's hardware. It would be great if information on the hardware would be opened up, but I don't see this happening for a while, in the mean time, get this man an official FDK!! (or maybe not, because of them damn legal issues).
All things said, looks like a great start, just wish I had an iPod....
I have to say that this is potentially a hell of a lot more practical than hundreds of other odd projects to port Linux to wierd hardware.
Some ideas, most of which are based around the principle that this allows the Linux community to add features to the pod that apple haven't gotten round to yet:
Stuff Apple might very well do anyway:
Ogg support, and perhaps other freaky formats.
Playlist editing on the Pod
Stuff Apple are very unlikely to do:
Ipod's store the files on the disk but name them randomly so you cannot access them easily when it is operating as a firewire drive; a TuxPod (I'll want royalties on that name please) could store them as regular files so you no longer need special software to load a pod up and can use it to play your songs on a PC without needing to keep a copy on the PC.
It should be possible to put something together to allow you to use the scroll wheel to enter text (I'm thinking something like the system Stephen Hawking uses to enter text into his voice synth) making it capable of all sorts of PDA functions.
AvantGo client.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
It does this already. iSync lets you store Address Book and iCal data on your iPod. Pretty slick too.
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
You know, this isn't very useful. We already have linux based mp3 devices that are far cheaper than the iPod. The iPod's appeal is that it acts as a tool, not a computer...that is, it's simple and performs its duty infallibly. Adding a bunch of hacked features to it may be cool to some, but to me it's basically eliminating all the appeal of this type of mobile jukebox.
I mean, come on. We all laugh when we see a porsche with a big coffee can exhaust pipe slapped onto it. This is the same idea -- taking the expensive, high quality "performance player" in the market, and rendering it an alpha-quality linux box. All for the sake of playing OGG files, which you can't even generate with iTunes.
For $500, you can get a fucking sweet linux box. Or you can get an iPod. Don't wreck the latter trying to get the former.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
man vfork
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I know that a lot of my friends are waiting for the same thing, why don't any of the major vendors realize that there's a market here? Maybe it's not big enough... I have tried mailing companies to get some information on whether any of them plan to support Linux or .ogg, but haven't got a lot of replies so far.
Actually, how they react might depend on what can be done with the software. While they didn't make it impossible to get mp3's back off of it, they didn't make it easy either. If the work looks like it might get them flak, they may react or in the very least put out the message that installing unauthorized software violates the warranty, and possibly a license. Don't have one {sniff} so I'm not sure about any licenses, and I don't recall that they have much of a manufacture's warranty, but issuing a statement to that effect would probably be the least offensive method of covering they're butts.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
I have been thinking about using an iPod for storage of files that aren't music-related. Specifically, I'd love to be able to use it as a hard drive to dump extra images that I take from my digital camera when I'm on the road. Unfortunately, most hardware solutions to this (including the iPod) involve using the external unit as a slave -- that is, I can only SEND data to it, I can't initiage a GET.
This means that the only way to dump data from my camera (which has both USB and FireWire) is to connect it to a laptop -- cumbersome and overkill, I think. Now that Linux has been ported to the iPod, would it be possible to use it in this way?
Just to check, where did the battery life in "DAYS" come from? Leaving mine on and not playing anything only lasts a little over 20 hours.
Mod point free since 2001
This article is a dupe of a story that Taco is going to post a few hours from now
That's what I'm talking about.
:)
I have been considering picking up an iPod for a while, but I have been holding out on the hopes that Apple will realize this potential and modify the iPod so that it can be used as a digital locker for not only my MP3s, but my digital photos and movies as well.
Imagine how slick it would be to connect your camera directly to your iPod and download all of your photos. This would be a great feature if you are on vacation for a couple of weeks and you don't want to drag your laptop along.
If this project gets off the ground, maybe we won't have to wait for Apple