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 ?

[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 ?

[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.

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?

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?

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. =)

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]

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

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

[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

[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.

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?

[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?

[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.

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?

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:They changed their mind?

[mydigitalself]

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

does the job for me just perfectly.