Rhythmbox Gets iPod Support

Bhondai writes "The latest release of the popular GNOME based iTunes clone, Rhythmbox has, amongst new features, initial support for the iPod. Things are still a little unpolished at this moment (requiring manual mounting of the iPod to /mnt/ipod), but this does look promising. A list of changes and new features in Rhythmbox 0.7.1 is available at Footnotes."

Comments

does it play ogg ?

[mirko]

Well I guess it does but despite the trollish title, I wonder if it on-the-fly convert OGG to MP3 when it transfer tunes to the ipod ?

Re:does it play ogg ?

[NanoGator]

"Well I guess it does but despite the trollish title, I wonder if it on-the-fly convert OGG to MP3 when it transfer tunes to the ipod ?"

Your life would be a lot easier if you just used MP3 in the first place.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[mirko]

Habeo Mac ergo I do, it's just the trick that would be technically interesting : if you can convert while syncing, then this might open some interesting opportunities ; a level/quality adjust for selections foirst comes to my mind.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[Moofie]

Uh huh. And re-ripping 40gb of music on the fly would take...how much processor?

Hell, if you want it to be that slow, why don't you just get one of the players that only supports the slow flavor of USB. (As opposed to the slightly-less-slow USB2)

Re:does it play ogg ?

[EvilGrin666]

This problem has already been solved for another purpose. Go look at ices/icecast That will do OGG -> MP3. I'm sure you could work something out with some shells scripts and a few pipes.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[perly-king-69]

You really don't want to do that. Encoding from one lossy format to another will really degrade the quality.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[shfted!]

But you really do want to do that if you want to listen to your tunes on your iPod, after all, it doesn't support ogg vorbis.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Well I guess it does but despite the trollish title, I wonder if it on-the-fly convert OGG to MP3 when it transfer tunes to the ipod ?

Kinda the reverse of dragging and dropping an OGG or MP3 from a CD audio disk in Konqueror?

Re:does it play ogg ?

[perly-king-69]

Given that there number of consumer devices which support ogg is low, and that conversion to mp3 from ogg further degrades the sound quality, is there any good reason to keep your files in that format?

Just a question, not a troll.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[mirko]

Neither I am sure you'd transfer files on a daily basis, nor I think you'd do this with xyour entire collection, it'd just consist of a convenience export.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhhh, you can't badmouth vorbis here!

Everyone knows that music sounds better when it is encoded using a patent-free process :-/

Re:does it play ogg ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, sir, that was the best post I've read all week.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a reason that a better ogg-mp3-ogg transcoder couldn't be created?

Re:does it play ogg ?

[dalutong]

same reason you might use gnu/linux even if it isn't, or certainly wasn't, a standard.

ogg really is better, however. the same sound quality and the files are considerable (i'd say 20+%) smaller. When you have a lot of audio or very little space to put it it matters.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[perly-king-69]

Is there a reason that a better ogg-mp3-ogg transcoder couldn't be created?

Yes. Both formats' encoding methods 'lossy'. As the description implies this means that in order to compress the data they discard, or lose, some of the data, in our case sound.

The real problem is that ogg and mp3 lose different parts of the data. When you encode a wav file to ogg, you lose some part of the data. Re-encode it to mp3 and you lose another, different portion of the data. Hence the degradation in sound quality upon using multiple lossy compressions.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[shfted!]

It sounds vastly better for the same file size. And it's Free, and widely supported -- except on portable players, it seems.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[Anonymous Coward]

And wouldn't it be easier for Mr R. Stallman to give up his dreams of global software freedom and use Windows?

Wouldn't it have been easier for Mr L. Torvalds to just forget about writing his own OS and use Windows like everybody else?

Are you saying its easier to hack in Windows? Obviously you've never used Windows. And Cygwin is not the answer.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[GauteL]

While this is certainly true, I can think of myself and lots of other people willing to take that loss in quality in order to not have to reencode their entire music collection.

Since Rhythmbox as an app don't really show the user the difference between an MP3 and an OGG you would assume that you could drag and drop ANY music file onto the iPod. While a small notice saying that this will lead to loss in quality might be reasonable, it certainly SHOULD do what the user asks it to do.

While I might want to reencode my entire music collection at some point, simple conversion from OGG->mp3 might be what I want if I just want to listen to a certain album on the road.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[PyromanFO]

Actually it's pretty well supported on any player except the iPod. I wouldn't call that a low number, iPods hardly have a 90% share of the market.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[Enahs]

Even if you ignore the Vorbis zealots, it really is better. It's not a stellar format, but it can beat MP3 (yes, even lame) for filesize/quality.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[Slack3r78]

Are you overlooking the fact that you'd be converting from one lossy format to another lossy format? Both use different algorithms for determining what's discardable, and you're likely going to end up with a file the sounds pretty bad in the end.

What you're suggesting, however, wouldn't be too hard if your player supported Vorbis. It's my understanding that Vorbis is designed in a manner where you can 'strip' it down to a lower bitrate without totally reencoding - I may have misunderstood, however. Anyone know for sure?

Re:does it play ogg ?

[NightWhistler]

The number of devices is low, but getting better. iRiver started adding ogg support to all new players, and is releasing firmware updates for the models they can cram ogg support into...
I've been listening to ogg on my IMP-550 for a while now, and all my new encodings will be ogg.

(Disclaimer: I know the codec's called Vorbis, I just like the sound of ogg, OK?)

Re:does it play ogg ?

[squiggleslash]

I have files that have been encoded by others in Ogg. Sometimes the choice isn't made by the end listener.

Several games come with their background music in Ogg format. While relatively little of that music is particularly good, occasionally you come across something you really do like listening to.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[perly-king-69]

Really? Are you sure? My Archos player (or any other in their range AFAIK) doesn't support it. Nor any mainstream CD/DVD player.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want the best solution, buy a scad of hard drives (like.. 4x160GB or so), build a RAID array (320 GB, mirrored) and store all your music in a non-lossy format (SHM or FLC, whatever floats your boat).

If your music collection is 'only CDs you own' then this is feasible, and you can recompress without a double-lossy care in the world for your portable devices.

This is a semi-troll, admittedly, but I would really love to see some good tools for dealing with large libraries of music in this fashion.

For example, if I'm ripping a CD, I want it ripped to a *single piece of audio*, same as it appears on the CD itself. Track data should be metadata; no seperate files for seperate tracks (yes, the ogg container does this, i know). That ripped CD should appear as different tracks in my media center.

The media center should let me recompress on the fly to whatever format I want.. So I can plug my [insert portable music device name] in and tell the app to put some data on it.

And the best part, since the CD is stored as a single audio file with track data, you can put the original CD on the shelf and burn a backup copy without even needing the original.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[numark]

Seriously, I'm not exactly sure why Ogg being free should be one of the overruling concerns about which codec to choose. I try to support free software as much as possible (much of the work that I do is done using open-source web development tools, and I've released a number of open source programs.)

However, just because Ogg is free doesn't mean that I'm going to choose it over what I see as a better, non-free choice for codecs. MP3 and AAC work much better for my needs, so that's what I choose. As soon as Ogg is up to par with what I need (native support in iTunes and iPod, integrated into the CD rippers I use), I'll use it gladly. However, I'm not going to choose a codec that's inferior for my specific uses, just because I want to go with a free solution.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[derF024]

As soon as Ogg is up to par with what I need (native support in iTunes and iPod, integrated into the CD rippers I use), I'll use it gladly.

iTunes and the iPod will likely never support anything but AAC, since apple wants to lock you to their music store, software and hardware. Any CD Ripper will encode to ogg these days, and the Rio karma (which plays ogg and flac natively) beats the iPod in every single category except advertising budget.

However, I'm not going to choose a codec that's inferior for my specific uses, just because I want to go with a free solution.

You chose inferior, proprietary hardware and software which you knew didn't work with ogg (and never will). that's not ogg's fault, it's yours.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[47Ronin]

Tunes and the iPod will likely never support anything but AAC, since apple wants to lock you to their music store, software and hardware. Any CD Ripper will encode to ogg these days, and the Rio karma (which plays ogg and flac natively) beats the iPod in every single category except advertising budget.

Wong. The iPod supports AAC (protected and unprotected), AIFF, and MP3.

Re:does it play ogg ?

[shfted!]

For the very simple reason that I never want someone else to have control of my media, which could be possible if I were to use a non-free codec.

They changed their mind?

[OmniVector]

I remember speaking to one of the developers in the IRC channel specifically about this. Their response was "write a gnome-vfs module for it."

Granted they had a point, but that isn't as seamless as a solution if you ask me. It's about time gnome had a good ipod solution.

Re:They changed their mind?

[robbyjo]

I remember speaking to one of the developers in the IRC channel specifically about this. Their response was "write a gnome-vfs module for it."

Well, that's typical OSS developers... :) I'll bet that the iPod support is because someone actually came to the IRC channel and flame "Rhythmbox sux because it doesn't support iPod". ;)

Re:They changed their mind?

[Lussarn]

I for one don't think IPod support should be on the application level. Are rhytmbox going to write backends for all players? Seems like it should be donre in a separate lib.

They should have started with one that plays OGG.

Re:They changed their mind?

[adamwright]

Far more likely that one of the developers bought/was given an iPod. Nothing like experiencing the problem first hand to motive a programmer to provide a (decent) solution :)

Re:They changed their mind?

[mydigitalself]

It's about time gnome had a good ipod solution.
gtkpod

does the job for me just perfectly.

Re:They changed their mind?

[MC_Cancer_Pants]

requiring manual mounting of the iPod
AND
but that isn't as seamless as a solution if you ask me

Did you ever mount your ipod? *giggles* If so, I should hope it were an ipod mini.

Re:They changed their mind?

[FooBarWidget]

So why do you expect volunteers to do everything for you? They do it for free. If you want a feature and they don't want or can't implement it, then you can either wait until they can/will or do it yourself.

Remember, they aren't getting paid. If they *are* paid then that's another story.

Re:They changed their mind?

[dalutong]

Exactly!

This is why I propose that each tech company give every developer a free gadget.

Hey! I can dream.

May this project actually get finished...

[iamacat]

As in automatic mounting and unmounting, syncing with multiple devices and so on, rather than remain unpolished like so many Linux projects. I remember trying to sync a USB Clie with Linux and, although programs like kpilot were out for a while, they still required manual commands in a terminal window to work.

Re:May this project actually get finished...

[pldms]

Thankfully people are working on this, or at least part of the problem.

AIUI in response to this article by Havoc Pennington a project called HAL was started. This will hopefully form the userspace part of stack for convenient automounting behaviour. It's worth looking at the current (0.2) spec for the detail, but essentially you should be able to plug in an iPod and have RhythmBox detect that (via HAL, communicating using dbus).

Re:May this project actually get finished...

[multipartmixed]

This sounds like a problem which could be solved by automountd. Maybe the RhythmBox guys could sort that out instead of re-inventing the wheel.

Re:May this project actually get finished...

[NightWhistler]

Just takes time... since kde-3.2 my Clie works like a charm with Kpilot. Made me finally switch from JPilot which has been working just great for over 2 years....

Re:May this project actually get finished...

[avida]

So contribute code, money, time to the project. No writes software just so other non-contributors can use it.

Re:May this project actually get finished...

[greenfly]

You already can set up the iPod to automatically mount and umount upon access using autofs. I talk about it here

I don't see...

[pdbaby]

what's so impressive about this? If you have to manually mount the ipod, then the only new feature is a front-end for "cp" and "ls". Anyone care to enlighten me?

Re:I don't see...

[ernstp]

No, that's not enough. For the songs to become visible on the iPod you have to edit the iPod's database, add ID3 tags etc.

Re:I don't see...

[mirko]

a front end for cp, ls and mp3info, then...
IT sure IS a front-end but if it earns you some precious leisure time, then why complain ?

Re:I don't see...

[sprouty76]

There's a lot more to syncing an iPod than just copying the mp3s onto it. There's a big database on there that needs to be modified every time you add a track, so that the iPod can find it while browsing by artist, genre etc.

Re:I don't see...

[Anonymous Coward]

Clue for you: People who use Linux by choice generally aren't concerned with this "leisure time" thing.

Re:I don't see...

[gantrep]

Right, computing itself is their hobby, so they want it to be something that is interesting and engaging to do. If Linux were easy like OS X, Linux users wouldn't like it as much. They'd move to BeOS if they had to to maintain the same elitist pattern of time-wasting. A front end for moving my music to my iPod? No thanks, buddy!

Re:I don't see...

[steveha]

There's a big database on there

What's more, Apple didn't share any of the details needed for free software to support the iPod. People had to figure it out on their own.

steveha

Re:I don't see...

[sprouty76]

I know. I'm writing software to parse the iTunesDB (and write it, which the RhythmBox software doesn't do yet) and integrate it into KDE.

That said, it's pretty well understood by now. GTKPod have a decent implementation.

Well supported?

[forcery]

Have anybody tried this yet and know how well supported it is?

Does it work just like a usual mp3 player (have to copy manually) or can you sync your entire library to it (like you do with iTunes)? What about syncing playlists?

And I couldn't find the README.iPod file in the 0.7.1 source.. anyone know where I can find it?

Re:Well supported?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyway, gtkpod exists... and does all that very well ... => http://gtkpod.sourceforge.net/

I don't understand why developers a doing again and again the same software....

Re:Well supported?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you are not a developer.

Re:Well supported?

[mydigitalself]

gtkpod does sync entire library and playlists.

Re:Well supported?

[Anonymous Coward]

gtkpod kinda bites

RhythmBox has a really nice GUI. If the developers of RhythmBox can get decent iPod functionality in their program and retain a good looking UI, I think it's great.

iTunes XML

[Animaniac]

This was the one of two things holding me back from moving to Linux, as I use my iPod and iTunes a great deal on Windows. The second thing is the ability to import iTunes library data (which is conveniently stored in a nice XML file) into Rhythmbox. That way I can migrate from iTunes to Rythmbox with little trouble. That last feature would make the deal for me. I'd like to move my x86 machines to Linux and save up to get a nice Mac too. =)

Re:iTunes XML

[Ryan Amos]

Apple loves XML. Almost everything in OS X is XML (dig through a .app folder in the console if you're curious.) Most OS X apps store stuff as XML as well, so it's all very portable. Open standards fucking rule. :)

What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Anonymous Coward]

VVC4 XML metadata support, common for years in WinAmp, Windows Media Player and other mainstream media software, still cannot be found in Rhythmbox. It is used by most or all DRM (Digital Rights Management) technologies commonly used by internet content resellers. Without this users just cannot pay for content online and all Linux users will be classified as pirates.

Before we get this important feature Linux cannot make serious inroads in the corporate desktop market. It's not even a complex feature, just requires linking to libxml and some 500 lines of code. I made a patch for this myself but the RhythmBox developers rejected it claiming they don't want any more dependencies (libxml), but I believe the real reason is that they don't want to touch DRM. But the fact is musicians can't work for free and at some point we need to start paying or the whole industry will die.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Anonymous Coward]

I asked about this issue on the rhythmbox-devel mailing list three years ago but didn't even get a reply...

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[sn0wman3030]

There is seriously no reason to buy music online IMHO. Just buy the CD at the store, and rip it onto your hard drive. You get a disk with all the music, uncompressed. Plus, you get the case and all the artwork/essays that the artists include with each album. The artists still get paid, and everyone wins.

Rhythmbox integrates the wonderful Sound Juicer as a ripper. It is the most simple, straight-forward ripper available for the linux desktop. Rhythmbox may not be itunes yet, but it's making improvements constantly.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Anonymous Coward]

Rip? But what do I do when the CD is copy-protected?

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Trurl's Machine]

There is seriously no reason to buy music online IMHO. Just buy the CD at the store, and rip it onto your hard drive. You get a disk with all the music, uncompressed. Plus, you get the case and all the artwork/essays that the artists include with each album. The artists still get paid, and everyone wins.

Yeah, especially the oil companies. For many of us, "just buy the CD at the store" translates to "just drive to the store", while "just buy the song online" translates to "just double-click on that icon while slashdotting at leisure".

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Anonymous Coward]

"You get a disk with all the music, uncompressed"

You're aware that the iTunes Music Store encodes their files from the original master, right? Meaning AAC files from the iTMS are potentially closer in fidelity to the original than the compact disc equivalents.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Anonymous Coward]

You take the CD back, get your refund, and never buy a CD from that record label ever again.

Once that record label's profits plummet, they will either comply with the published CD standards, or they will go bankrupt by trying to sell non-standard silver discs to people who actually want to buy CDs.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[FinestLittleSpace]

use a ripper that rips from the direct sound steam that goes to the hifi... (cdex)

'as long as i can hear it, i can rip it'

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[deconvolution]

As a music management software, it really needs to incorporate the tag editing functions like cantus

and also looking forward the regular expression search function.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[hitchhacker]

But the fact is musicians can't work for free and at some point we need to start paying or the whole industry will die.

Pay musicians to create music instead of paying people that "own" music.

-metric

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[FrostedWheat]

There's this great new website called Amazon.com, and they actually send you real CD's. Even books!

Amazing what they can do this day and age.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Before we get this important feature Linux cannot make serious inroads in the corporate desktop market.

So...corporations are interested in buying music over the Internet?

I had thought a corporation was akin to a stodgy old man, and here you're basically saying 'Dude -- corps got rythm! They hafta JAM!' or whatever is hip these days in trendy corporation lingo.

Thanks for clearing this up for me!

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Anonymous Coward]

There is seriously no reason to buy music online IMHO.

Oh yes there is.

a. Many new CDs are deliberately broken (or "copy protected" as some prefer to say) and for example my laptop's CD drive isn't very good at handling those. Equals "no ripping".

b. The music stores around here SUCK. Seriously.

c. I dislike the idea of buying unnecessary shit (CDs in this case) that I have really no use for per se.

I would have no problems paying for music, but there are no potential online stores with anything I'm interested in in my area (yes, I'm not from the US).

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Anonymous Coward]

So...corporations are interested in buying music over the Internet?

No, but corporations don't want to be using any software they associate with piracy.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[BESTouff]

Before we get this important feature Linux cannot make serious inroads in the corporate desktop market.

I can't remember how many times random assholes have said this sentence (and have been modded +5 Insightful). Please understand this: Linux is currently making it to the corparate desktop, wether or not it supports your pet feature.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[WWWWolf]

Yeah, especially the oil companies. For many of us, "just buy the CD at the store" translates to "just drive to the store", while "just buy the song online" translates to "just double-click on that icon while slashdotting at leisure".

You can buy CDs online, too... this one CD I bought most recently was only available through a web store. Okay, it took two days to deliver it, and there was still the trip to the post office to pick it up, but I got uncompressed music and higher quality music videos than the ones I had downloaded. And physical media and clever cover art and all that stuff. =)

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[MC_Cancer_Pants]

But the fact is musicians can't work for free and at some point we need to start paying or the whole industry will die.

Who said free? Artists make alot of money. Who said that artists are immune from getting a second job? The people being hit are the bad artists, the good ones still sell the records because people both want to listen to them and believe that they deserve the money.

Now I'm not saying that most of the crap on MTV is good music in my opinion, but apparently in the average person's mind it is. Musical artists don't need to make extremely large ammounts of money. I'm a painter, and there's a clear threshold based upon which people you know that defines whether you're living in a one room appartment or a mansion, there's hardly a middle-ground. The same is true with actors. Some go to hollywood, some live in a one room apartment next to their play-house. It's about time that the music industry face the reality that all other artists face these days: Even if that means *gasp* getting a second job.

I am assuming that you're talking about taking money from the mid-ranged/local artists: I hope that you're not talking about money being taken from the millionaire MTV artists. IMHO small artists aren't the ones making money off of record sales; small-time artists make money by playing gigs.

To bring this back on-topic, Painters don't make money off of prints, they make it off of the originals. Actors (not the hollywood kind) and dancers make money per performance, not for selling copies of their work. Why can't musical artists be content with making money off of concerts?

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[AigariusDebian]

The artists still get paid, and everyone wins.

And how much *exactly* will the artist get from the 20$ I paid for that album and how much will go to the resellers?

And how much will the artist get from the 14.85$ I paid for their album online (15 tracks for 0.99$ each)?

I think album buying online is far better for the artist!

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[dubious9]

Or to perform music. Seriously though, at least here in Pittsburgh, small venues for people to perform at are going quickly. Supporting local music translates directly into given support to the "real" music industry people: the musicians. So get out there and go to some indy shows. Musicians still should get compensated for music they sell, but at a much smaller rate, think $5 a CD (direct to artist)

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Powercntrl]

There is seriously no reason to buy music online IMHO.

Well, IMHO there is a reason:

Singles.

While I agree with you that if you want an album, purchasing it in its physical form and getting the uncompressed audio is the best way to go.
However, if you don't want an entire album of filler to get one or two good songs, buying individual tracks online is really the only option. I've purhased over 130 songs from iTunes so far and absolutely 0 complete albums.

Of course, you could have meant piracy is a good substitute for online music stores... While I don't really give a rat's ass if the RIAA doesn't get my $0.99 per track, the quality of singles on P2P networks is really questionable as of late. I'd rather pay $0.99 for a song I know is a good quality encoding that will download quickly, than download several copies of the same song (usually with incorrect/misspelled or nonexistant ID3 metadata) to later listen to each copy and determine which isn't fucked up in some way.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[pyite]

No, no they are not.

fidelity
n 1: accuracy with which an electronic system reproduces the sound or image of its input signal

A lossy format is never going to be more accurate than a CD.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Quantum Jim]

Then why not post your patch here so we can try it for ourselves?

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[salmo]

>I made a patch for this myself but the RhythmBox developers rejected it claiming they don't want any more dependencies (libxml).

Ummm... no. First, Rhythmbox already uses libxml and has for a long time if not since its inception. The library data, etc. is stored in an XML format. Second, I've been on the rhythmbox-devel list since well back before the net-rhythmbox fork/remerger and I can personally say that I have never seen mention of said patch or proposition (and I would have noticed this). I really can't imagine this being rejected like this, for this reason.

I'm left wondering exactly why this comment was written. This discussion would be more appropriate (not to mention effective) on the rhythmbox-devel list, and if you have a patch, share it there so folks can test it out.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Enrico Pulatzo]

It still means more trash if you just want the songs, not the case, CD, liner notes, etc. (the etc means the plastic wrap and 4 adhesive labels telling you this cd has a security device enclosed in it)

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[sootman]

>There is seriously no reason to buy music online IMHO.

Except for the fact that a) I rarely *want* a whole CD--usually I just want a couple songs, b) I can have the one song I want in seconds, rather than a half hour, plus getting dressed, wear and tear on the car, that much more pollution, etc., c) I mainly listen to music with my iPod while driving and thus have no need for a shiny 5" disc, d) I could give two shits about album art, liner notes, etc.; all I might want are lyrics, but they usually aren't included, and I can usually find them online anyway, e) since I only want it in a portable format, why should I rip it when someone else has already encoded it for me, and f) the *last* fucking thing I need in my house is more jewel cases. So yeah, except for those half dozen reasons (and those are just off the top of my head; I could probably come up with another half-dozen) there's no reason to buy music online.

I hate people who declare "There is no reason to do X because I myself don't like it."

CDs are good for some people, iTunes are good for others, P2P is good for others, and there are many people who are in more tha one group.

As you stated, that is *your* humble opinion. You should have said "There is no reason *for me* to buy music online." You != the world.

A final note: whole albums, new and old alike, can be purchased for $9.99 from the ITMS. Compare that to store prices.

PS: Uncompressed, my modest collection (~300 CDs) would be over 200 GB. Hard drives aren't *that* cheap.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[FrostedWheat]

Welp, your Apples perfect customer in that case. I would rarly buy music any other way, the only exception is buying some FLAC files now and again - stuff that isn't avaliable on CD.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[FrostedWheat]

Er... silly me, replied to my own message instead of yours.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Darren.Moffat]

and thinks like Rhythmbox are not corporate applications, they are "home user" applications, just like iTunes isn't an application that you need on your corporate MacOS or Windows desktop.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Jeff DeMaagd]

There are some people like myself that actually WANT some of that "trash". The case, media and notes, although not celo wrap and security stuff.

I'd keep the CD as a bakup medium that won't disappear should the hard drive crash or the company running the DRM go out of business, etc. If the prevailing standard changes, the CD can be reencoded.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Jeff DeMaagd]

A lossy format is never going to be more accurate than a CD.

From what I understand, iTune's AAC is often encoded from higher sampling frequency and bit depth masters than what ends up on the CD. If the resulting file is encoded to play back with a higher sampling rate and bit depth then it is possible that the lossy format to be better than the CD.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you file a bug report or ehancement request?

If you did could you please post a link so we can encourage Rythmbox to add the feature?

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[clustercrasher]

Fork the code or at least provide your patch somewhere. THis is my main reason for staying on windows also.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[ratsnapple tea]

What? I know what "fidelity" means. But why does that explain why a lossy format is never going to be more accurate than a CD?

I think you may not be aware that CD mastering is a lossy process, since the original DAT is recorded at a higher bit depth and sampling frequency than CD's 16 bit/44.1kHz.

To make this a little easier to understand, imagine if CD audio was downsampled from the master to 4 bit/2.5 kHz (which is about the quality of plain old telephone service). No way would you say a CD like that was more accurate than a 128kbps MP3 or AAC made straight from the master, right?

yours

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Heretik]

I hope the "industry" does die. Maybe then actual musicians will get those dollars.

Go to shows, buy merch. This is good.

Do not pay for CDs from big record labels. What are they using those dollars for? Destroying the Internet last I checked. "Gee, thanks guys! Here's a bunch of my money!"

You want free software support for DRM? Are you insane, or do you just Not Get It(TM)? If you want someone else telling what you can and cannot do with your computer, you're using the wrong OS.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[AugstWest]

Great, there are people like you. Now recognize that there are people who aren't like you, and this thread can be done with.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW, so when i use my headphones on the go, i enjoy? exactly nothing more.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[pyite]

I'm well aware of the mastering process. However, AAC, MP3, or OGG are nowhere near as accurate as a CD is. By the way, you'd be hard pressed to find a "DAT master" of anything these days. FYI, a DAT is at most 48KHz/16 bit, hardly better than 44.1KHz/16 bit as a CD is. And those of us who do record on DAT often do it at 44.1KHz as to avoid the potentially nasty remaster from 48KHz -> 44.1KHz.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[ratsnapple tea]

Ah, I was unaware of that. Thanks for clearing that up. Still, I don't think it's accurate to say a "lossy" format like AAC can never be better than a supposedly "lossless" format like CD. You know, since perceptual encoding techniques keep the most important aspects of the waveform and all that technical blah de blah.

Re:What Rhythmbox still does not have

[damiam]

The CD is downsampled as it is made from the master. The AAC is also downsampled, in addition to being compressed. If the AACs were distributed at the same depth and frequency as the original master, you'd have a point. As it is, AAC have all the quality loss of CDs in addition to being lossily compressed.

Ryhtembox

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I tried this, it hosed about 20 mb of MP3 I had. I'd avoid this with a very long stick.

Re:Ryhtembox

[Anonymous Coward]

*gasp* You lost 4 whole songs? Poor you! *plays violin*

Re:Ryhtembox

[thomasvs]

With your spelling capacity, it probably was because you typed "rm hte box *.mp3" Anyways, your statement is crap, RhythmBox doesn't write to mp3 files, so it can't hose them.

Syncing - Read only for now

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using this from CVS for about a month, and it only reads from the ipod. Write support is planned for the future.

In response to the comment about cp/ls - the iPod uses a proprietary database (iTunesDB) to store meta-information, so cp *mp3 /mnt/ipod/ will do nothing but store it on the iPod hd. You won't be able to play it

Re:Syncing - Read only for now

[Anonymous Coward]

the iPod uses a proprietary database (iTunesDB)M/blockquote>

We gave them a kernel and we don't even get back the format of the ipod DB

Re:Syncing - Read only for now

[Jim Hall]

I've been using this from CVS for about a month, and it only reads from the ipod. Write support is planned for the future.

In the meantime, you may consider GTKPod, a very nice GNOME interface to read/write songs to your iPod. It even supports AAC formats. I have 20GB iPod, and I've been very happy with GTKPod.

Web site: http://gtkpod.sourceforge.net/

Example: http://www.freedos.org/jhall/ipod/

Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not innovation. Instead of looking at proprietary software and saying "let's do that!", developers with free time for GUI software should innovate. You heard me. Apple has developer mindshare not because of iTunes, but because it comes up with things like iTunes before anyone else does.

For all the talk of GPL != theft, there sure are a lot of clones of non-free software out there. Sometimes that's convenient for interoperability, but it's always a bad idea as a strategy -- it's just playing catchup. If Gnome, say, had said "let's make a really really good music player, with integration for everything useful and a nice interface" in 1999, it would be a lot more credible on the desktop. But no, the open-source world as a community waited and then imitated.

There are only a few GPL GUI apps that took a reasonably original idea (or reasonably original selection of ideas, to be fair, because most "original" software is made up of well-documented ideas) and did it well. In fact, I said "a few" to cover my ass -- I can't think of any at all.

Sigh. This is sounding more like a troll than I wanted. I guess it is one. I'm just disappointed. One reason I switched to Linux way back when is that it seemed fresh -- it might suck a bit, but it was justifiable and tolerable suck. It would get better fact, I assumed, and it would get better in strange, unheard-of ways. It sort of did. Mostly it didn't. Now it's just trying to look more like Microsoft and Apple's stuff.

How many Aqua GTK themes, now? And they *all* missed the point. It's not about pinstripes. Even Apple started backtracking on the pinstripes a bit. Pinstripes are the chrome, guys. Sticking them on GTK just gives you a ricecar*. What RealPlayer is to marketing, the Linux desktop today is to nerdery. In both cases, atypical users are making bizarre assumptions about what more ordinary users might like. RealPlayer had the advantage of early adoption. Linux has no advantage. It's judged on its merits, and its desktop merits for non-developers are slim to nil. Huge friendly transparent PNG icons don't matter. You gotta make it feel friendly yet solid. Solid yet friendly. Meditate on that for a while.

You don't get that pleasant-yet-stable feeling from clones. You just don't. It's like translated poetry, or the book of a movie. It misses the important parts and makes a big deal out of the boring stuff.

The GIMP is a clone (and if you don't believe it, compare things like the order of the layer transparency menu to Photoshop's). Sodipodi is suck. The only good video editing software isn't GPL. Blender couples the simplicity of emacs with the interface of vim. XMMS is a clone. OGG Vorbis is a conceptual clone -- it may not share any code with MP3, but you can't tell me it isn't essentially an "oh, yeah, we can do it too" situation, even if it's for all the best reasons. OpenOffice is complete garbage: it's ugly and unstable compared to the ten-year-old wopro my Mac Classic runs.

Okay, so there's Nautilus. That's the only thing that's really pushing any part of the envelope as a desktop app. And maybe Kudzu. Other than that, it's just a little chrome on Xerox PARC, Microsoft, and Apple.

This saddens me. I don't like it. Sometimes I try to do something about it, but ... meh. I run OS X on my desktop these days. I'd rather use the original iTunes. I can't recompile it, but I don't need to. I'm not saying OS X is the pinnacle of anything, just that in the end the GPL isn't as important to me as the feeling of a coherent, not-totally-derivative interface. (And yes, I know Apple's interface is derivative. It just isn't *as* derivative.)

Come on, guys. Let's see some GUI innovation already. Or is it already there and I'm just not noticing? Name some software that's:

0. GPL.
1. Useful.
2. Pleasant to use.
3. Not an instantly recognizable clone of something non-GPL.
4. Stable.

* Spelling intentional. Google it. In short, a lousy car decked out to look fast. Equivalent to "polished turd".

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[ratsnapple tea]

Wow. This is EXACTLY right. A post like this deserves more than Score:0... c'mon, mods.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

My theory is, truly innovative developers (the ones with a flair for design and creativity,) they get hired away by companies like apple, and so open source is always going to be playing catch up to them. I wish it were'nt so but i don't see how it could possibly be any other way.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[thanuk]

Absolutely. And it's not even a good copy, it looks awful.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[gantrep]

Firefox and its extensions?

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[torpor]

Why does something always have to be different in order to be good?

Things can be equivalent, and still be quite good.

Innovation, obsessively pursued for the sake of innovation, is cancer!

More important than 'new technology' is 'working technology'.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[ickoonite]

I have had a similar experience, I suppose, starting out on DOS/Win 3.11, moving through Windows 9x and then finding Linux as a hope-inspiring alternative back in, oooh, about 1998. And hell, it did suck then - when I first started using it, KDE1 was in alpha/beta, but hey, it was different, so that was enough.

But like you say, there is always the lingering hope that it will get better. One is content with what one has when one is running Linux because, well, it's not Microsoft and some stuff (e.g. GNOME 2.6) is really rather beautiful. But, as I have pointed out before and as you rightly say here, there's very little innovation - GNOME 2.6's much-needed replacement for the file dialogue boxes are straight from Apple and the spatial file browser is another old Apple trick. And of course the Start button (you can write whatever you like on it; it's always gonna be a Start button) is hardly an open source original.

I suppose the root of the problem is that most open source development is done by nerds, whose C or asm prowess is indubitable but whose understanding of the average user is minimal to non-existent. I am not wishing to berate these types, because the work they do is often superb, but I think we can easily conclude that:

• Nerds cannot think like users and expect that every user should either work hard to understand the system or quite simply fuck off and not use their software;
• Users' expectations are far too high from a bunch of tech-types who have no understanding of users' needs.

We keep talking about Linux on the desktop. GNOME is now ready for the desktop, but what does that actually mean? OK, so now Linux is as usable as Windows, but somebody whit here the other day, Windows is not exactly good enough for most users. Why else would it need such a big tech support team in every organisation?

Aside from the feuding and pettiness that detracts from the quality of some projects (I cite xMule vs. aMule and mplayer as current or past examples), there is some great work being done. Why do we keep settling for good enough?

iqu :?

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

so apple (for example) pursues innovation for the sake of innovation only? not to improve power and ease of use?

congratulations on totally missing the point of the original post

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox's interface, at least on the Mac, is an immediately recognizable clone of Safari--it's shameless, really. Try again.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[kfg]

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.

--George Santayana

Sophmoric: The itch to be original

--Pete Seeger

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

- Ecclesiastes 1:9

I shall, I suppose, counter the orginal posters "troll" with one of my own. I too like software that just works. There are really only so many good ways to go about implementing most software tasks, and once those ways are discovered one is most apt to apply one's energies into refinement, not innovation.

While there is some real, solid work going on in software these days, most of it is fashion and barbarous. Most of the solid work really is going on in OSS, but a bit under the radar of the fashion concious, but OSS is not exempt from fashion.

Indeed, I'd say, contrary to the opinion of most involved in it, OSS is currently the bastion of fashion driven software, because it is written by "the people" who have little really deep understanding of what they are doing. They learned Java from the web. They never bothered to learn mathmatics or theory, indeed tend to deride mathmatics and theory.

While they may expend a good deal of mental energy on their code, they do not expend much mental energy at all on what they are doing.

Like, why they are even doing it in the first place, other than their itch. . .to be original.

Which they accomplish by following the trends. Go figure.

Like the Bible, Knuth is revered in passing, but largely unread. Codd is nearly vilified in some corners, or simply dismissed with a wave of the hand as "just theory". . .unread and un-understood, and unimplemented so that no one can even claim they have made a valid comparison with a working product. There's a good OSS project for someone. A project that can go where no man has gone before. A deeply useful project.

Who, in the internet "trained" generation, is even capable of it?

For that matter, who, in the modern trade school that even the universities have become, is capable of it?

The majority of coders are so busy "innovating" that they haven't even bothered to finish building the foundations. Software that just works. On known best principles. Even though it's just an evolutionary extension of someone else's work and not something that will get you a Slashdot headline.

That's what OSS is really all about. Otherwise we really are just better off spending our time making money to buy commercial "products."

KFG

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[JanusFury]

How was iTunes innovative? I guess the fact that Apple did a good job writing a music player is worthy of mention, but it's hardly innovative for Apple to take someone else's idea and do a nice job at porting it to the Mac.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, give me *one* music player that had the interface that apple invented for iTunes?
You can't, because iTunes where the first to implement different windows for author, album and titles, and make a search field.
Also the sidebar with playlists is not seen before.

So show me an app, that Apple is copying, and it is not the hard sweat of their UI-designers and testers that have made it work.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

man, you just don't get it, huh? if you don't already know what the big deal is about itunes then you'll never understand.

you probably don't get what's so great about the mac os, either. that's fine with me. actually, i'm glad on behalf of all mac users, since it means there's no chance of a prole like you joining the fold of mac users and tarnishing our reputation for good taste.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox, in previous forms of firebird and phoenix, has had that same interface (mac being the same as windows/linux versions) since before safari was even announced.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. The Google toolbar never used to be on the side like that, and the buttons on the bookmarks bar weren't oval-shaped on rollover. Details, yes, but it's the details that matter.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[slux]

Apple has developer mindshare not because of iTunes, but because it comes up with things like iTunes before anyone else does.

Apple didn't come up with the idea behind iTunes any more than the Rhythmbox developers, this Wikipedia article explains how it is based on SoundJam MP from another company and Apple just hired the people and bought the app. I would not be terribly surprised if there was something comparable even before that.

For all the talk of GPL != theft, there sure are a lot of clones of non-free software out there.

The "GPL != theft" part makes you sound a lot like a troll. Where did you get the idea that writing a similar app to an existing one is anything even remotely comparable to theft? It happens all the time even in the non-free software industry. More on that a little later.

How many Aqua GTK themes, now? And they *all* missed the point. It's not about pinstripes. Even Apple started backtracking on the pinstripes a bit. Pinstripes are the chrome, guys

People made Aqua GTK themes because they wanted them. It hasn't much to do with what direction GNOME, KDE or the free software desktop is taking. Why not rant about Windows XP which also has this Aqua theming craze and how Microsoft just doesn't get it?

The GIMP is a clone (and if you don't believe it, compare things like the order of the layer transparency menu to Photoshop's).

Again, even Adobe didn't originally come up with Photoshop. Just like Apple, they bought it after they saw what it was. (Wikipedia link. Drawing/image editing programs certainly have a long history before it as well. GIMP isn't the only clone either, there's other proprietary software such as Paint Shop Pro that is even closer to Photoshop as far as the look and feel go.

Blender couples the simplicity of emacs with the interface of vim.

Well, that's something original, isn't it? Some people think Blender's UI's just great.

XMMS is a clone. OGG Vorbis is a conceptual clone -- it may not share any code with MP3, but you can't tell me it isn't essentially an "oh, yeah, we can do it too" situation, even if it's for all the best reasons. OpenOffice is complete garbage: it's ugly and unstable compared to the ten-year-old wopro my Mac Classic runs.

And for every app you've mentioned there's also a lot of non-free clones and in many cases the dominant ones aren't the original appearances of the application type. Ogg Vorbis? It actually tries to improve (succesfully?) on the idea, providing better audio quality and/or smaller file size. There's AAC, mp3pro, WMA and a bunch of others too, you know. Why not whine about them too? What you said about Ooo.org pretty much applies to any modern Office suite.

Okay, so there's Nautilus. That's the only thing that's really pushing any part of the envelope as a desktop app. And maybe Kudzu. Other than that, it's just a little chrome on Xerox PARC, Microsoft, and Apple.

The desktop metaphor is still going strong after around 30 years (so's UNIX, by the way). The problem with lack of innovation in UI design is not just a GNOME or a KDE problem if you want to view it as one. If you want to see UI innovation you really shouldn't bee looking at the desktop environments that as their very goal are trying to provide the dominant user experience based on the 30-year-old metaphor. How about checking out something like Ion, Fluxbox and others from the plethora of available window managers? You could still also look at some of the more original stuff brewing for the big traditional environments, such as the kicker replacement called Slicker. In my opinion, GNOME has managed to stand u

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[patriceCH]

One vote goes to KimDaba. I have never used such a tool on Windows and I don't know if there is any. There probably is. But anyway, it's okay at least for your points 0, 1, 2, 4.

http://ktown.kde.org/kimdaba/

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[moranar]

Bluefish?

Totem? (the gnomification of Xine)

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[horza]

I have had a similar experience, I suppose, starting out on DOS/Win 3.11, moving through Windows 9x and then finding Linux as a hope-inspiring alternative back in, oooh, about 1998.

Oh please, Win95 was a cheap look-alike of RiscOS 2, task bar and all, though vastly inferior in every way. The Start button isn't M$ original (RISCOS2 was around '89, half a decade before Win95). Very little M$ have done has been original, it's been either copied (Apple, Xerox, etc) or assimilated. And even though they are a poor copy and steal ideas from everyone else... so what? Good for them! As a competative company you should be looking at what your rivals are doing and then providing them for your customers.

As for the rest of your drivel, there is plenty enough quality software that suits all MY needs. In fact several of my favourites are cross-platform so it doesn't even matter which OS I'm using (Firebird, Abiword, MySQL, etc). If it doesn't suit your needs then don't use Linux. If there are some Linux users that also use MacOS X but want to use their iPOD when booting into Linux, if they are intelligent and innovative enough to get Linux to support the iPOD then good for them. The more hardware supported the better.

Phillip.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know who predates who, but WMP has had those interface features since v8 (maybe even further back, I don't use Windows too much). It has a sidebar listing songs by Artist, then album, be genre, etc. It has playlists and auto-playlists on that sidebar. It has had a searchable library, and even that little text field for it.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[zsau]

Hmm... Dashboard, I think, manages 0-3 (and is being actively developed so it should make 4 before long; also, I'm not entirely sure if its 0 yet ... Nat was asking for objections to relicensing it from BSD to GPL, and I saw none). I have no idea if there's anything like gDesktlets/Super Karamba elsewhere, but then, I stopped looking at commercial markets so for all I know they might be clones. Alternative webbrowsers such as Galeon, Mozilla et al. have made some changes (for instance, a tabbed interface, rather than an MDI or SDI, has its own advantages and disadvantages), and without them popup blocking wouldn't've been going to be added to IE.

But I suspect this is as much a problem of the society at large (i.e. the capitalist/welfare sate system) and the subculture (f/oss). I don't really care where the innovation comes from. I like having a free desktop, and it mostly works good-enough for me. Sure, I look at Windows in a different light to my desktop, but Windows has more problems for me than just the licence.

And of course, free software doesn't end with the GPL. I'm not entirely sure what, f'rinstance, TeX is a clone of; and there's no reason to clone it, because it has a free-enough licence.

And, for instance, if I decided that I thought Rhythmbox was heading down the wrong track, and it should be implemented more as a view to a filesystem that can play what it's specialised to look at, even though this is something I've never ever heard of before but have thought of making if I had the skills, you'd tell me I was cloning something else.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[damian]

I agree with you too, I had to think a while until I came up with a program that fits your requirements.

- gaim (ok, it does what other IMs do, but its different enough)
- grip
- sane (instead of n*m TWAIN crap)
- gphoto (instead of n*m crap camera tools)
- spamassassin (maybe not quite as pleasent to use)

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[ickoonite]

Your first paragraph entirely misses the point of my post. And at no point did I suggest that Microsoft didn't copy their whole UI from, well, whoever (anyway, it is irrelevant). And in response to...

"As a competative company you should be looking at what your rivals are doing and then providing them for your customers."

...I would first offer...

"Aside from the feuding and pettiness that detracts from the quality of some projects ... there is some great work being done. Why do we keep settling for good enough?"

A truly competitive company innovates - the only reason Apple are still extant in these days of Microsoft hegemony is because they innovate like fuck. If OSS was similarly innovative, it would enjoy wider usage already. What is the point of moving to a lookalike that cannot run your applications? (Linux, of course, has other real, geniune strengths, but the UI side is not one of them).

And nor was I arguing with the actual content of the Slashdot story - more hardware support for Linux is great - but rather seconding the parent thread, which in my view correctly opines the frustrating state of current OSS software development - neatly summed up as copy rather than create.

iqu :s

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[am 2k]

I used to use SoundJam before iTunes was available, that app was just an mp3 engine with a playlist (and plugin support for visuals, etc). Comparable to mpg123, I'd say.
That's not really what iTunes is about, iTunes is a music management app, which happens to be able to play them, too.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[zsau]

I'm also currently reminded of Dasher, which is GPL and available for Windows and GTK, and is a new accessibility thing in Gnome 2.6.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tabbed window manager anyone? I can't live without it (PWM).

Sideways window handlebar? I don'r remember any GUI doing that before. (LiteStep).

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bluefish? More like Homesite than anything else.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[torpor]

You can improve power and ease of use and it won't be even, in the slightest bit, innovative. Power/Ease of Use and Innovation have nothing to do with each other. Completely separate.

Congratulations on completely ballsing up the definition of innovation.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[HrothgarReborn]

1. You are a troll.

2. Take a look at Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, IRC, PHP, Perl, Snort, Nessus, and a host of other Open Source projects that are the best of breed in their area and are leaving the commercial world playing catchup.

3. Making a new software that implements functionality of existing software can be very creative. It provides competition. It often improves on small details. It makes a legal, inexpensive way to empower more users to benefit from the idea and lights a fire on the commercial developers to continue innovating to keep their market share. It is by no stretch of the imagination theft.

Step outside your box little man.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. The Google toolbar never used to be on the side like that, and the buttons on the bookmarks bar weren't oval-shaped on rollover. Details, yes, but it's the details that matter.

WTF are you talking about? What Google toolbar? You mean the search bar (not Google-specific) on the right? That's been there for ages. And I don't have any idea what you are talking about. Maybe that is Mac-specific thing they added to look consistent with Mac apps. I dunno.

Where is the type-ahead find in other browsers? I have only found this in Mozilla-based browsers. I'd actually consider using Konqueror if they would clone this feature. Cloning good features is a good thing!

Oh btw, if Firefox clones features of Safari, it doesn't even apply to the argument. The thread starter was saying GPL software is a clone of non-free software. Not a clone of other free software.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[cjkarr]

Books - http://books.aetherial.net

Though it is MacOS X 10.3 only. Apple's development tools make it pretty easy to write nice useful software on that platform.

-Chris

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[pebs]

man, you just don't get it, huh? if you don't already know what the big deal is about itunes then you'll never understand.

I don't get it, either. Sure, its a simple app that's easy to use, with a few really cool innovative features (like the ease of being able to use it as a streaming server). The store is innovative, but if you don't use it, who cares? For the power use, iTunes isn't very impressive.

Take a look at Winamp 5 for an example of what a media (not just music) player should be. It completely blows iTunes out of the water, though with some work, iTunes would be able to compete. If there should be an OSS clone of anything, it should be Winamp 5 (without some of the fluff, like skins and visualizations). Rhythmbox and JuK work ok, but are headed in the wrong direction by trying to copy Apple's over-simplified interface that makes the user work harder.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[krunk7]

[OT] Kimdaba! Nice. Exactly what I needed and couldn't find anywhere......how much does it cost again? And could you point me to the original? [/OT]

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[binarytoaster]

The thread starter was saying GPL software is a clone of non-free software. Not a clone of other free software.

Then why the iTunes complaint that started the whole thing?

He's dead on, too, I can't think of a single thing that I could say "Yeah, well, I have THIS" when someone started saying something about Linux. However, I have many things I can do that with on OSX. Guess which one I use. :)

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[squiggleslash]

Erm, RISC OS copied Windows in this respect, not vice versa. Windows 1.0 had the big bar at the bottom that you had icons of running programs in. This was back in 1983-5 (announcement date/release date respectively.) You can see some screenshots here.

The icon bar was gone with Windows 2.0, and with Windows 2.x and 3.x the backdrop served the same function. With 95, they went back to having a taskbar/icon bar because the backdrop was now used to display file icons for the Explorer desktop.

Microsoft does have the occasional original idea. It's inevitable...

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's dead on, too, I can't think of a single thing that I could say "Yeah, well, I have THIS" when someone started saying something about Linux. However, I have many things I can do that with on OSX. Guess which one I use. :)

Not everyone can afford a Mac you yuppie fuck.

You don't have apt for OS X, now do you? You have to go through all the trouble of dragging and dropping packages. Whereas, us Debian users use one command for the WHOLE system.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[horza]

Using Linux I've been able to:
* literally use my home desktop at work using VNC
* log into a choice of window managers depending on my whim (kde, gnome, xfce)
* customise the behaviour of my window manager in a couple of clicks (eg I like to have the close window icon on the left so I won't accidentally close when I want to minimise)
* switch between multiple virtual desktops (and that Powertools copy M$ provide is not an equivalent, it's so slow its unusable)
* use the Filer I want to (currently ROX) and still be able to consistently drag and drop between applications

There are plenty more innovations but those are the first of the top of my head. Just because they aren't high-profile doesn't mean they aren't there. For example I'm thinking of doing some Home Automation and am looking at owfs. With it I can type "cat */temperature" and it will make all the temperatures sensors on a 1-wire twisted pair connected to a serial port measure and print their data. Since these devices look to the OS like normal files, I can use them easily from any language from bash to C to Python.

If a group of people want to make available some of their favourite software that exists on other platforms then I think that's also innovative and an interesting intellectual challenge. It's not "Linux trying to play catchup", it's "I'd like to be able to do this so why don't we create it".

Phillip.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[root_42]

> The only good video editing software isn't
> GPL.

Have you ever used Cinerella? In conjunction with transcode and the like? I think it's rather good -- with Firewire support for your DV-camera and everything.

> Blender couples the simplicity of emacs with
> the interface of vim.

That, my good sir, is plain trolling. Look at other 3D-suites like Lightwave or some in-house tools (which Blender has been for years) and you will also find "strange" UIs. Those UIs do not follow ordinary guidelines that are applicable to a wordprocessor or a web browser, but they support the creative workflow of artists, I would say. Blender's UI for example is all about speed and ease of accessing editing commands to manipulate your meshes.

And I'd say that opensource software innovates *a lot* -- albeit not that much on the desktop, but on the side of developer tools and server software. On the desktop innovation may be sometimes a bit slim, but for example: I have not seen anything like JuK before -- well, correct me if that is also a clone. Or the kio-system and the gnome-vfs system that you haven't got in any Windows-application and which gives you access to all file-protocols you can think of in every application!

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have apt for OS X, now do you?

Yes I do, dear troll, yes I do. The nice folks at fink have prepared an easily installable, wonderful collection of *nix software that comes with the object of your dreams: apt.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Wildfire Darkstar]

Lest we forget, iTunes borrowed much of its basic interface features from Windows Media Player 7 and up. WMP was the first widely used player to organize by tag info, and the first widely used player to have a searchable database and playlists. The net integration, too, was done first by WMP, Real, even Winamp.

Apple's solution, certainly, is more elegant, and iTunes does, IMO, have a better design than WMP. But the basic differences are minor: function and design-wise, they're quite similar.

I think a lot of people on /. tend to forget exactly what Apple has done well historically: they're not, strictly speaking, innovators. The original Apple I was a calculated attempt to mimic other hobby computers of the era. The original MacOS borrowed heavily from other early GUI systems, including Apple's own ill-fated Lisa. Mac OS X is built on the codebase of numerous earlier projects.

Which, mind you, shouldn't be considered a mark against them: what Apple is almost uniquely skilled at is bringing together the best of all worlds: iTunes was not the first media player on the scene, but it did a good job at it. In Windows, it's my player of choice. But let's not pretend it's something that it's not.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[ickoonite]

I'm still maintaining my line that a lot of Linux is catchup, certainly in the GUI arena, but your latest post has given me at the very least pause for thought and made me think why I love open source/UNIX so much.

I suppose the place where the real innovation is is in these little "intellectual challenges," as you put it. Linux's out-of-the-box hardware support is unrivalled (Windows XP can't begin to match it), and for me, the best thing about the open source UNIXes (and in this I include Mac OS X) is the "little" things that you can do with it. Would anyone like to explain to me how I could tunnel PPP over SSH on Windows? (I only mention this one, because I do it on a regular basis between Japan and the UK, and it uses all those clever UNIX things like, well, SSH, TTYs, a PPP daemon whose output is easily redirected, etc.)

Darl McBride types might ask what the point is. McBride would doubtless be asking how he could "monetize" [sic] your temperature sensors or a kernel-level driver for games consoles' controllers. Of course, truth is you can't put a monetary value on it, but it's wonderful all the same.

And is this innovation? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps it's just building on the immensely flexible and simple nature of the UNIX(-like) base that these operating systems adopt and some of the stuff is not particularly groundbreaking, but it is useful to a few of us. It's never going to help make FOSS mainstream, mostly because it's not really marketable, but is one of its greatest strengths.

iqu :)

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there is Fink, which it does, but it doesn't update ALL of your software on Mac OS X.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there is Fink, which it does, but it doesn't update ALL of your software on Mac OS X.

Exactly. The rest has to be done through the following "dragging and dropping packages" type of procedure:

1. "$ sudo softwareupdate -i --all"

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

don't dodge the question. you implied vendors of proprietary software such as apple innovate merely for the sake of innovation itself. explain why you believe this, because the rest of us find it ridiculous.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari isn't free software, you dolt, not in the sense that the original poster meant "free software." What's relevant is that Safari was released with a bunch of great UI innovations and then Mozilla got busy ripping them off--another example of the creative impoverishment of the OSS world.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

To add to this:

A good example:

Netscape VS Internet Explorer

IE didn't win because it was free, it won because it became better than Netscape. Linux won't win till it becomes better than Windows.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[NickV]

Not everyone can afford a Mac you yuppie fuck.You don't have apt for OS X, now do you?

You have to go through all the trouble of dragging and dropping packages. Whereas, us Debian users use one command for the WHOLE system.

Um... yes we do... In fact, it even uses a little command line program called "apt-get".

So why don't you do some reseach you "anonymous coward fuck?"

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[dalutong]

I have a lot of faith in the free software world. Once there are sufficient clones and people are happily moving to Free systems, then innovation (which does exist, btw) will increase tremendously. Not only will the user and developer base be larger, there will be less need for "we NEED a good media app. let's make one. and we want it to be popular, so let's go with what we know works." When rhythmbox is mature then I, an interested developer, will more like think, "you know, this would really be much better if it was implemented in this tremendously innovative way."

Apple does a good job. It is centralized. Centralization aides in taking such risks. Distributed and decentralized software development isn't ask risky (for large projects. the risky ones hit or miss much early on in their evolution) because they don't need to be currently (or really at all) and because innovation isn't in the mission plan right now.

I think that the current system will provide us, in the end, with a very mature desktop system that is very interoperable (something Apple can't say -- at least the interoperablity of the parts they created themselves). I look forward to that. I don't feel the need for bleeding edge innovation.

Sorry about the quality of my writing. I'm just finishing up a really long week. I think I'm going to hit the hay.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[medeii]

Apple didn't come up with the idea behind iTunes any more than the Rhythmbox developers, this Wikipedia article explains how it is based on SoundJam MP from another company and Apple just hired the people and bought the app. I would not be terribly surprised if there was something comparable even before that.

So you're saying that even though Apple bought iTunes off some other company, the last few versions haven't offered anything new? That the only differenc between version 2 and version 4.1 is a different set of colored notes on that photorealistic icon? Get real. Just because a company purchases code from some other company doesn't mean innovation stops completely.

The "GPL != theft" part makes you sound a lot like a troll. Where did you get the idea that writing a similar app to an existing one is anything even remotely comparable to theft? It happens all the time even in the non-free software industry. More on that a little later.

Because even if imitation's the most sincere form of flattery, it's still stagnation. Open source doesn't go places when all we do is copy other companies' ideas, package it in a cruddy RPM with a terrible UI, and post it on a brand-new, shiny SourceForge page. We go places when people come up with a way to do things better. Not that there's anything wrong with copying others' technology and recreating it to be better (Hello, Samba!)--but that's QA, not creativity.

People made Aqua GTK themes because they wanted them. It hasn't much to do with what direction GNOME, KDE or the free software desktop is taking. Why not rant about Windows XP which also has this Aqua theming craze and how Microsoft just doesn't get it?

You missed the point, too. Microsoft doesn't make and sell an Aqua theme because it'd land them a copyright infringement lawsuit. People like Aqua on OS X, so they copy the look and feel for their own themes. Which is fine and dandy, but when mere reproductions represent the majority of all theming work in open-source desktop development, there's something wrong.

... there's other proprietary software such as Paint Shop Pro that is even closer to Photoshop as far as the look and feel go.

Haven't used Paint Shop Pro in awhile, have you? Download the trial version of 8, install it. Then open it and Photoshop together, and notice that Photoshop doesn't have customizable toolbars. Or that PSP's material palette is a far cry from Photoshop's color picker. The menu orders are different. The layer palettes, though offering similar functionality, are designed totally differently because PSP works with layers in a different way. Oh, and see the icon on the toolbar labeled "Pen"? Think of 80% of Illustrator inside one button, and not just a half-assed solution like Photoshop's gimped shape masks. Then look at Photoshop's PANTONE support and vast printing options. Notice the file browser (that PSP's had since version 3, and PS just got in 7.) Notice, ultimately, the fact that companies will steal ideas from each other -- and do it constantly.

Sorry, but it really pisses me off when people label PSP as Just Another Photoshop Clone. JASC doesn't just sit on their heels and let Adobe do the R&D, and since version 6, that's really been apparent. Too bad it's not open source, but it's a great product, and one that I've found worth buying time and again.

But then again, I wouldn't expect you to let small things like factual information to get in the way of making your point. We need to be thinking independently. Slicker's great, but it represents the exception rather than the rule. We need to change the rules, and start thinking on our own.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can afford a PC, you can afford an Apple.

If you can afford a new PC, you can afford a new Apple.

If you can afford a x86 based workstation, you can afford a PPC970 based workstation.

So yes, you can afford one. You cheap fuck. :)

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[JanusFury]

Winamp3 had a playlist sidebar from the earliest betas.
WMP had a music library with author/album/title searching.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[barkingcorndog]

What about arson? I haven't found a comparable cd burning program anywhere. It will convert pretty much any file format you want before burning to cd (audio).

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pleased to inform you that you have been trolled. HAND.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can afford a PC, you can afford an Apple.

Hey asshole, my PC (an AMD K6-2 450) was bought for me before OS X even existed. I have since then, also bought a Pentium 2 mobo/cpu/ram for $25, added a few cheap parts, and threw it in an old case. Spent less than $100 total. It actually does some things better than the K6-2. You cannot beat that kind of value, especially for a machine that is still good enough for use today. You won't be able to buy a used Mac capable of running OS X reasonably well for anywhere near a low price.

I have not saved the money that I have so I can blow it on an expensive toy, regardless of how useful and powerful it may be. I would love to own a Mac, but won't any time soon, because, yes, I am a cheap fuck and am not in a situation where I am saving enough money that I can afford it.

Linux is for people like me. It gives me everything I need at no cost with the existing cheap hardware that I own. And it does it well. I will contribute what I can to help it move forward.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gramps, the best geneaology app out there. Beautiful and powerful.

Lyx, the best text processor out there. Incredibly easy to use, produces text output that matches or exceed what professional typesetters can do.

Kgpg, the first encryption program that anybody can understand and use. Hell, it's gotten people who never understood public/private encryption schemes to undesrtand it and use it.

Unison, one of the most robust synchronization apps around.

I could go on and on, but you are just a lousy troll and I have better things to do with my life. People in the free software community need to learn to withstand the attacks.

Folks, we are winning. This means that Microsoft is likely to increase the number of paid trolls that post here under a huge number of pseudonyms. If they can demoralize future users with empty statements and hollow bullshit about innovation, new users may just be kept away from Linux long enough for TCPA and other similar schemes to arrive.

It is time to be proactive and put up a fight. The Linux desktop is awsome today. Go and use KDE 3.2. The innovations are everywhere, not least of all in the ability to produce an incredibly pleasing environment that runs beautifully on a P-II 350 with 256 MB of RAM.

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't free software? Those fucking pricks, acting like they are helping the open source community, when really its a closed proprietary technology.

What's relevant is that Safari was released with a bunch of great UI innovations and then Mozilla got busy ripping them off--another example of the creative impoverishment of the OSS world.

My point was the features he listed I did not see in FireFox and I'd like some explanation. Are these features present in only the Mac version?

Re:Meh. Innovation, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently so. Got the chance to play with a Windows version of Firefox and while the search toolbar is still clearly derivative of Safari, the bookmarks bar buttons aren't.

Nervousness about RythmBox

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of an iTunes clone makes me sort of nervous. If Apple made such a blatant clone of a flagship OSS project, and made it closed-source, wouldn't they be torn to shreds by angry Slashdotters? I thought were were supposed to be innovating here, not copying. And yes, I'm aware that in a sense Apple has done exactly that with BSD, but that's allowed under the license, and they've been goo about giving back (so far). (Same with KHTML.) Just imagine that RhythmBox came -first-, and -then- Steve Jobs announced iTunes. I bet there would be some fuss.

Re:Nervousness about RythmBox

[IamTheRealMike]

They do that all the time with even proprietary software - see the Sherlock fiasco. Hell the visualisation in iTunes isn't just a clone of G-Force, it practically is G-Force.

Re:Nervousness about RythmBox

[colinleroy]

The difference is, would it have been the other way, people could wonder whether Apple has copied code from Rhythmbox. But Rhythmbox came after, and we're quite sure they didn't get some code from iTunes.
Also, clones are very common in the software world, not only from open-source developers. Every good idea has been copied over and over.

Re:Nervousness about RythmBox

[pldms]

Hell the visualisation in iTunes isn't just a clone of G-Force, it practically is G-Force.

More accurately it was G-Force. iTunes was based on SoundJam and G-Force (was G-Force part of SoundJam?), so G-Force was essentially forked when iTunes was created. Or something along those lines, at least...

Re:Nervousness about RythmBox

[pldms]

Silly me - if you open 'About iTunes' you'll find that:

'G-Force visualisation engine licenced from WhiteCap Technologies, inc'

Re:Nervousness about RythmBox

[jay_in_pa]

xTunes was an open source iTunes clone for X that Apple legal got shutdown (or at least made them change the name) very quickly. I don't remember what they changed the name too.

Re:Nervousness about RythmBox

[fsterman]

Okay okay, from a real Macaddict ;) SoundJam engine is about the only thing that resembles iTunes. The interface is almost entirely different. There was no central library. G-Force is licensed, simply re-branded. It is/never was part of SoundJam. There are plug-ins for iTunes, SoundJam, Audion, WMP, MusicMatch, and Sonique. The latest versions are a lot better looking than the Apple re-branded and have better controls.

Re:Nervousness about RythmBox

[fsterman]

Ooh yeah, http://soundspectrum.com/

Re:Nervousness about RythmBox

[happyfrogcow]

It's all about the right to use what you bought in a way that you want. Why should I have to use an iPod with a Mac or Windows? Why should I be forced to use only a subset of it's abilities if I don't use an Mac or Windows? I don't have to use bread made by General Electric in my toaster made by General Electric. I bought the bread, I bought the iPod. ...wouldn't they be torn to shreds by angry Slashdotters?

some, yes, probably. why live by mob rule though? fair use is fair use, no matter who's using it.

Re:Nervousness about RythmBox

[numark]

Nobody's saying you can't use it. They're just saying, "you want to use it, you have to make it work yourself." By your argument, everyone using OS/2, DOS, Next, Windows 1.0, VMS, etc. should be able to complain simply because Apple won't let them use the iPod on their computer. Sometimes certain OSes get left behind. That's where the community has to come in and fill in the gaps, and perhaps even innovate in the field a little bit.

Re:Nervousness about RythmBox

[happyfrogcow]

Well it sounded like someone was afraid that a clone like this would be legally threatened by Apple. That interpretation is where I was comming from.

I agree with you though, on all points.

Re:Nervousness about RythmBox

[incom]

Maybe if they released a linux version of itunes I would care.

Re:So when

[freakmn]

I'm thinking a little after pigs start fying but way before Hell freezes over.

frying pigs?
mmm, bacon...

GNOME bounties?

[aldoman]

Was this a GNOME bounty? I seem to remember something to do with ipod but i think it could be evloution, not rythmnbox...

Re:GNOME bounties?

[nandhp]

It was evolution: http://www.gnome.org/bounties/Miscellaneous.php3#1 27552

Re:GNOME bounties?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was also a Rhythmbox bounty, posted on the rb mailing list.

However, this support does not yet match the criteria for the bounty-- it needs to have feature-parity with iTunes before the bounty can be claimed.

This is a start, though.

Re:This is cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Why migrate from OS X to iTunes? Suddenly feel like not having 3D support, access to the Music Store, or spending most of your time trying to get your hardware to work right?

Can't wait

[ike6116]

For Apple Legal to smack this project down. Apple Legal doesn't seem to striking fear into the hearts of many like it used to. Personally I think Apple could benefit from porting iTunes to Linux (Does it work under WINE?) Also what's the chance of this project implementing FairPlay?

Re:Can't wait

[pldms]

I don't see why Apple would care. They haven't taken any action about the numerous song extracting tools like PodWorks, which might have caused problems. Adding songs to and iPod seems pretty useful for Apple.

As for FairPlay, well this looks pretty good - although this stands a much higher chance of catching the lawyers' attention. VLC has an interesting module which implements FairPlay. (You might recognise one of the authors ;-) If you have an iPod you should be able to play FairPlay protected files on Linux - assuming the iPod is able to play the files, that is. Briefly: the m4p file contains an encrypted audio stream. The key is stored on the iPod, encrypted with a key specific to the iPod (a function of the iPod device id, it seems). They've also worked out the system information for windows that functions as the system key, incidently.

Re:Can't wait

[GauteL]

There is really nothing Apple can do about it. The only thing this project and other iPod-projects have done is to deduce how the interface to the iPod works and implement something that supports it. This is certainly not illegal.

Besides, while Apple are known for litigation, I seriously doubt they would try to go for this given the miniscule chance of them getting anything positive out of it.

Re:Can't wait

[frission]

I don't know if they will or not. They haven't put the smack down on Ephpod, and it's been around a long time

http://www.ephpod.com/download.shtml

Also, you can use it in Linux via wine to sync your ipod in linux

http://www.cs.duke.edu/~geha/ipod/

i actually think it's a lot easier by now...but it's possible.

GNOME Logo

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, please, please can you change the slashdot GNOME logo? The one currently being used on Slashdot was phased out years ago.

Re:GNOME Logo

[agent dero]

so is it a left foot now?

Problems with RhythmBox -- Still using GTKPod

[TD_3G]

I've had some minor issues with RhythmBox over time. For starters, I'm pushing a general gnome question across here... does every app automatically work with ESD? It seems like there should be a direct OSS or Alsa option, particularly for those of us with good cards and hardware mixing. RhythmBox I find to be slow at startup when playing mp3s, that is, every time I start to play an mp3 it not only slows and pauses for a second, but slows my entire system. I'm not sure what the issue with this is, but it's noticeable in every single release I've tried (stable and development). Lastly, I'd just like to say that I think GTKPod is an excellent solution for iPod users on Linux, it's what I've been using all along and seems to work great with a lot of features. I'd really like to start using RhythmBox, but until I can get decent audio playback out of it and it's features can match GTKPod I guess I'm sticking with Beep Media Player and GTKPod.

Re:Problems with RhythmBox -- Still using GTKPod

[pldms]

RhythmBox uses the GStreamer media framework, so I suspect your problems lie there. You can use OSS, ALSA, ESD and ArTs (IIRC) with GStreamer.

I wish this were clearer in RhythmBox - it isn't very obvious how to configure sound output in it (gstreamer-properties, btw). However once I realised what was going on I prefered the central configuration.

Re:So when

[gantrep]

Said salted and smoked meat is usually sliced thin and fried.

Possibilities!

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming you mean Vorbis: I don't see how that's terribly interesting. If you want MP3, store your stuff in MP3 to begin with. Transcoding from one lossy format to another ... bleh.

Now, I've ripped all my CDs in FLAC. Disks are dirt cheap these days; take advantage of that! Rhythmbox already plays FLACs just fine. Now, if it could transcode from FLAC to MP3 for portable players, that would be interesting.

(Yeah, so it's not instantaneous. I can think of a few ways to make it seem really quick for most cases, if you're clever.)

You could also hook it up to daapd to serve up music to other iTunes players, as MP3. (Is there a gstreamer plugin for that yet? There ought to be...) Or hook it up to Samba to serve .mp3 files to Win32 systems that can't decode FLAC.

Lots of neat stuff you can do. This is a really great time to be a multimedia hacker on Linux!

Re:Possibilities!

[Anonymous Coward]

What win32 systems cant decode FLAC? Theres plugins for Winamp, Foobar, etc,etc,et-fucking-cetera.

This shouldn't be a surprise

[rcs1000]

The open source community has always been very capable of technical innovation and development. When something has become standardised in some way, open souce can come along and replicate it in a less crash-prone, etc way.

Open source does not employee strategists and user groups and marketing departments. Hence why it is better at copying (and improving and refining) what has gone before.

It is the old process of innovation, adoption, standardisation, commoditisation that - in all probability - is older even than the software industry.

Clones and clones

[ccozan]

Well, Rhytmbox may be good. I have tried some times, but i crashed when i loaded my whole mp3 collection onto it.

And because my preffered DE is KDE, i reevaluated again JuK. And surprise! Not only had no problem loading everything, but it works flawless, playing oggs and mp3, without any slowing or something else doing to my system. It takes some memory, but i have enough

So if a project deserves to be developed to connect to Mp3 playes ( because not only iPod exists; i personally use a Neuros ), i think JuK it is that one.

Costin

Re:Clones and clones

[Anonymous Coward]

to be fair the JuK based on KDE 3.1 was much worse than Rhythmbox. It had serious stability issues, that I have never experienced with (the very stable IMO) Rhythmbox. I agree that 3.2s JuK is wonderful though and much more responsive (not to mention the simply fantastic tag editor).

Best, I think, would be freedesktop/gstreamer stylee bundle of mp3 player libraries that JuK and Rhythmbox could share.

caoilte

Re:Clones and clones

[Anonymous Coward]

True.. For the break period of time I used JuK (and KDE), I found it much more stable than Rhythmbox. I will probably use JuK once I figure out how to get output to work in Gnome. Setting the output to GStreamer isn't doing anything.

More Linux Applications for MP3 Players

[wehe]

There are much more Linux applications for portable MP3 players, not only for the Apple iPod but for the Creative Nomad Jukebox, Diamond Rio 500 and more.

Re:Can you imagine...

[perly-king-69]

Yeah, yeah - and in Soviet Russia iPods mount you...

Stability

[trans_err]

What rhythmbox really needs is a standard set of features (ID3 editting comes to mind) and stability. Rhythmbox has always been plagued with lock ups, freezes, and every other horrid use of the word. Ryhthmbox simply can not handle a large library of MP3s (10,000+). Most often rhythmbox simply will not even load that large a number of songs and simply die before it finishes.

Rhythmbox has a lot of promise, but they need to slow down for a second and fix the bugs which are preventing people to use what could be a really killer app.

Re:Stability

[jimmy_dean]

Actually, most stability problem that you see in Rhythmbox are due to the GStreamer media backend. GStreamer is still very much a new technology that at times is a little rough around the edges. It's sorta how Mozilla was for so long - very experimental before 1.0 and very unpredictable. I would expect to see GStreamer and Rhythmbox both stabalize rapidly in the near future.

Re:Stability

[Ender Ryan]

Have you tried the latest versions!? It used to do that in it's very early stages, but since the release that was dubbed "The Universe is Finite", it has been much more stable and can handle fairly large libraries.

I have a library of several thousand songs(MP3 and OGG), and it handles it just fine, over a 100Mb network.

Re:Stability

[jimbrewer]

RB-0.6.5 w/ GST-0.7.3 dies a horrible screaming slow painful death with my 13K song archive on the same machine. It's a damned shame, too, because I loved RB dearly while rebuilding the collection after a drive failure.

Re:Stability

[trans_err]

I have a similiar set up and the last version I have tried is .68 (the latest in debian sid) and according to rhythmbox the latest stable release. However, yes, I do still have horrid stability problems.

Innovation is

[Hackie_Chan]

It's because nobody earn any money on it.

Simple economics: Creating is what Apple does best. They innovate and get rewarded for that in the form of money, which gives the developers even more urge to earn more money in form of creating more and better products.
That's why in our society we have a thing called copyrights and patents. Tell me how many medications would be researched and created if we didn't have patents? Not many. When we're talking about software patents here on Slashdot, on how I look it I'm not thinking wether there should be or should not be patents, I'm thinking of how long those individual companies or persons should be allowed to hold on to those patents. In the open source market a lot of people work for free hence they're not rewarded for creating new things ("Why do it then?"). So instead of having innovation we're having a bunch of copycats doing their thing.
The conclusion is that with copyrights and patents, creation is rewarded.

I didn't want to make this comparison because it's so "tabu", but it really is communism (open source) versus capitalism (closed source).

Re:Innovation is

[hachete]

...creating perl, python and ruby. This is, IMO, where the real OSS innovation lies - Linux itself is a clone.

But this could all be a stage in development. There will be cutting edge stuff in the future I'm sure. But remember, while you're innovating your socks off, to *steal* from the best.

h

Re:Innovation is

[Anonymous Coward]

hahaha, you got modded down because some slashbot didn't like to hear the truth. jesus, slashdot is full of whining OSS apologists.

Re:This is cool

[jay_in_pa]

If you just switched from OSX to Linux on your mac, then use Mac-On-Linuxg t; to run OSX (and iTunes). It works pretty well -- on par with VMWare on the x86 platform (I've used both), but unlike VMWare, it is Free. You just need plenty of RAM (512mb is a good start, that way you can give 256 to OSX and still have 256 left for linux).

<a ref="http://www.maconlinux.org/">http://www.maconl inux.org</a>

/mnt or /media?

[leandrod]

/mnt/ipod? AFAIR my standards, /mnt is for ad hoc temporary mounting directly, without any subdirectories. It should be /media/ipod.

Re:/mnt or /media?

[dpete4552]

Then use /media/ipod, nobody is stopping you. I haven't checked it out yet but I'd be quite surprised if you are unable to configure where Rhythmbox looks for the iPod.

Re:/mnt or /media?

[leandrod]

> I'd be quite surprised if you are unable to configure where Rhythmbox looks for the iPod.

Hope so. Yet mentioning /mnt/ipod is quite a bit of disinformation.

So typical of microsoft...

[theladyboo]

To add a device that is only compatible with windows. tsk tsk shame on them. It will probably stink any way and crash - we'll call it - the little blue screen of death. Rebecca onlymacintosh.com

Overwhelmingly negative response?

[Gilesx]

Why is everyone being so negative about this news? What is perhaps the most accomplished open source music player has just gained inital support for the most popular (whether you like it or not) portable music player out there. Good news for anyone with more than a passing interest in open source software.

This is great from an open source / Linux point of view because it gives users yet another reason to switch from a proprietory operating system, and it's also great from a Gnome point of view because it may entice users in and give them a chance to see just how superior the Gnome DE is as a whole. Add the fact that some nice, elegant and most importantly *working* ipod code is now floating about out there in the open source pools, and I can't see how anybody can feel anything but elation at this announcement.

Ironic Homepage Banner

[cyranoVR]

It's kind of ironic that their homepage banner shows rhythmbox playing "Bring Me to Life" by Evanesence.

Seeing as their server is on its way to being Slashdotted, maybe a better choice of Evanesence song would have been "Going Under?"

You mean firewire?

[gotr00t]

Though the new iPods support USB through a seperate cable, their favored interface is still firewire, as the cable that comes with the iPod is a FW cable.

On a related note, even though USB2 is supposed to get 480mbps, and FW only 400, it seems that FW wins in almost all tests. For example, I have a USB2 and a FireWire version of the same LaCie external hard drive, and in copying a 1gb file, FireWire leads by almost 2 minutes. This also holds true for other hardware, as I have also tested 3 or 4 external enclosures, both USB2 and FW for a hard disk. How can one account for this?

Re:You mean firewire?

[Anonymous Coward]

... even though USB2 is supposed to get 480mbps, and FW only 400, it seems that FW wins in almost all tests ...

That's an oversimplified model, so it's not surprising it doesn't predict what actually happens. People mistakenly say that USB2 is "480MBps" because it runs at 480 MHz, and transfers 1 bit at a time. This doesn't take into account packet size, or control packets, or a bunch of other things. It's kind of like saying "100 MHz CPU means it runs at 100 Mflop".

(Besides, doesn't Firewire have 2 data lines?)

fucktard

[Ender Ryan]

What the fuck are you talking about? What could Apple possibly use to "smack this project down?"

They haven't used any Apple code, they aren't infringing any patents(far as I know), and they aren't breaking the DMCA with any DRM circumvention or anything of the sort.

So I ask you again, what the fuck are you talking about?

Re:fucktard

[ike6116]

It's not the synching with iPod, it's the ripping off of iTunes look/feel. Apple doesn't take to that well at all.

Re:fucktard

[Ender Ryan]

it's the ripping off of iTunes look/feel. Apple doesn't take to that well at all.

So what? There's not a goddam thing they can do about it. It's not copyright infringement, it's not trademark infringement, it's not even close to being identical.

Fuckin' Christ, Apple "rips off" nice user-interface designs these days themselves, from Mozilla, Microsoft, GNOME/KDE.

Get a fucking clue.

I could be wrong

[sjb2016]

My understanding of the speed difference is that FireWire is a smarter technology that has more processing power built in. As such, it can maintain a higher transfer rate more consistently. Whereas USB is dumb and needs to talk with the processor to work, as such, if there are other processes running while transferring, USB will slow down. Of course, I just read that on /., so it's probably wrong ;-)

You are insightful...

[tkrotchko]

...but to a generation who gets their music from earbuds, quality would seem to be a non-factor in most listenign today.

you don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

I used SoundJam MP, it didn't look anything like iTunes. The library and playlists and things were in separate windows. It didn't have the type selection search feature. It didn't have the 3 lists at the top (albums/artists/genre) which reduce your view of the library. It also had some features that iTunes doesn't have, like record from line in.

In short, Apple bought SoundJam and made a totally different program from it. Thus they both rewarded the original inventor for excellence and also innovated a lot on it.

I'm sorry, but free software clones are just plain industrial theft. It's like going to the store, seeing something you like and deciding you like it, but you don't want to pay for it. So you make a copy and mass-produce it.

As an aside note, I also used Photoshop before Adobe bought it. It was a hell of a program, it was clear that any design house that got on the beta program could practically drive their competitors out of business. Adobe did significantly improve it starting with the 2.0 release though. I wouldn't go so far as to say Photoshop is a completely different program though, because aside from the tool palettes, the UI isn't changed much.

iRiver support too ... eventually?

[Christ-on-a-bike]

iRiver machines use a database to store metadata too. It would be nice to have this integrated into Rhythmbox as well. I have talked to the developers and it may be possible. Unfortunately I'm not much of a C programmer.

(Check out iripdb for relevant code.)

Re:This is cool

[Standard Colin]

thanks a bunch. I knew this was possible in the back of my head but the actual possibility of it never realy struck me. I'll give it a shot, but I've only got 256mb or ram, so it probably wont work out too well for me

Innovation, schminnovation. JUST STFU.

[juhaz]

Would everyone please just STOP whining about the goddamn "innovation".

It's not like copying good features from somewhere else and combining them is not just as good for your desktop as trying to waste your time thinking about some never-ever seen stupid feature just to be "innovative".

Or if you're feeling so fucking innovative today, do it yourself instead of insulting works of others. If you can't do that, go ahead and give some of those uber-bright ideas to programmers, let's see if it's feasible for them to do it, just do anything but bitch and whine on Slashdot about some mysterious INNOVATION that is missing from everyone.

It's looking like a troll because it IS a troll, and you're looking like and idiot and an ass.

Re:Innovation, schminnovation. JUST STFU.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for saying that. It needed to be said.

Innovation is the latest code word from Redmond to its attack dogs to go out into the Internet forums and demoralize the open source community.

I am sickened by the bullshit I hear. Phisically, sickened. I am glad that people like you can see through the hollowness of the trolls who keep spouting about innovation.

Go fuck yourselves, assholes!

Project Utopia

[bartc]

Robert Love frequently blogs about his progress on Project Utopia - which aims to bring all these udev, HAL, dbus and gnome-volume-manager components together in one integrated, device-plugin-happy whole.

See his various weblog entries on Project Utopia from januari for a sneak preview.

Re:Firefox...

[Anonymous Coward]

firefox is ugly and a safari ripoff. it also emulates aqua widgets instead of using them natively, which makes it slow as shit (an appropriate simile, since the mac version of firefox is shit).

Too bad..

[Visceral Monkey]

..it's one of the most buggiest pieces of crap that's ever been released. The application rarely works as advertised unless you complile it to use Xine as a backend and not gstreamer. I pray the talk of including it in the default GNOME is just that, talk. A nice interface though..but that does nothing when it won't friggin work.

Hastings's Law

[steveha]

Don't forget Hastings's Law:

Before you can advance the state of the art, you have to reach the state of the art.

Rhythmbox is shaping up nicely, but don't forget that it really hasn't been aroud all that long. The Rhythmbox developers might do amazing, crazy things with it, but that will have to wait until they lay the foundation by adding the features people need, first. iPod owners need iPod support.

Consider the GNOME desktop itself. At the time it was started, KDE was already working and useful, and Windows already had years of evolution. GNOME has been playing catch-up for years!

I'd say the GNOME desktop is now in many ways state-of-the-art, the major exception being the File Open and File Save dialogs. I personally also think it is essential to have some kind of "device manager" that lets you browse your hardware (see what IRQs are in use, see whether the system thinks you have USB 1.1 ports or 2.0, etc.); that's coming very soon (HAL plus DBUS plus an application and boom, you have it). So GNOME is a few short steps away from the state of the art, and will soon be able to push it forward. GNOME Storage looks interesting, for example.

Despite the efforts of Microsoft and Apple, the desktop really isn't a swiftly moving target. Most innovations (e.g. ActiveDesktop) weren't useful or popular, and have been dropped; the ones that were kept are all easy to do. Within a short time, both GNOME and KDE will be caught up to the state of the art. And that is when advances become possible.

Note, however, that sometimes the state of the art is adequate, and there is no reason to push beyond it. Cars still have a steering wheel, a gas pedal, and a brake pedal, after how many years? Why not a gamepad interface with little thumb joysticks? Answer: people are used to what we have; people like what we have; it ain't broken, so don't fix it. The current desktop model, multiple overlapping windows with some sort of panel where you can see what you have running, is well-established and popular.

Still, if you want to do something completely different, it's easier than ever now. You don't have to build a whole desktop, you can focus on just changing the behavior of one piece of an already-built desktop. You want something shockingly new? Build it and see if anyone likes it. If it really is cool, people will help you. Even if you aren't a coder, mock up some screenshots and show them around.

I won't be helping you though, sorry. I'm pretty pleased with GNOME and the way it's going already.

steveha

Unencumbered online music

[Christ-on-a-bike]

bleep.com, magnatune.com, enough said

Get a clue!

[LibrePensador]

You want to hear about innovation? Ok,let's talk innovation.

Find me a proprietary application that can do what Plone does. http://www.plone.org

Along these lines,find me something as feature-full as the Zope web application server.

Find me a program made by Microsoft that has robust support for the IMAP email protocol. I can list many FLOSS programs here that do

Find me a web server that is as good as Apache or an FTP server that is as good as VSFTP or ProFTP.

Find me a sound server/sound architecture as robust and feature-full as ALSA.

Why is it that Apple uses CUPS? Because it rocks and yes it is open source and it is the best printing system around.

How many file formats does Windows support out of the box?

Find me a clustering solution that is as advanced and as featurefull as those available on Linux? Moreover, find me a piece of proprietary software that matches what a distribution such as ClusterKnoppix offers by allowing you to create a cluster in minutes without having to load any software to the machines themselves?

Find me a faxing system as versatile and robust as Hylafax?

I could go on and on and on.

But all of the above misses the true point of free software, which is that we are enriching humanity by making the tools of tomorrow available to everyone. Our true innovation is at the social level. We remove all boundaries and allow anyone to contribute to the betterment of society. We just ask that if you want to build on our efforts, you share your own and that you play nice.

But it does support AAC

[rustman]

AAC sounds better than OGG at the same bitrates.

Re:But it does support AAC

[shfted!]

Yes, transcoding from vorbis to aac would be better than to mp3.