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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."
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.
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.
No, I don't want a free iPod
The last time I tried this, it hosed about 20 mb of MP3 I had. I'd avoid this with a very long stick.
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.
/mnt/ipod/ will do nothing but store it on the iPod hd. You won't be able to play it
In response to the comment about cp/ls - the iPod uses a proprietary database (iTunesDB) to store meta-information, so cp *mp3
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....
"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.
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).
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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.
...
gtkpod does sync entire library and playlists.
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...
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Silly me - if you open 'About iTunes' you'll find that:
'G-Force visualisation engine licenced from WhiteCap Technologies, inc'
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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.
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.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
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.
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.
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?
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.
Well, that's something original, isn't it? Some people think Blender's UI's just great.
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.
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
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.
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
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?)
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