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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."
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.
- tristan
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.
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.
Life is offtopic.
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.
blah
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)
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Please, please, please can you change the slashdot GNOME logo? The one currently being used on Slashdot was phased out years ago.
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
Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
.to be original.
.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.
--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. .
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". .
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
You really don't want to do that. Encoding from one lossy format to another will really degrade the quality.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
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.
transmission_err
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.