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Linux for iPod Matures
elinenbe writes "The Linux on iPod Project has just crossed a milestone. Currently their firmware works on all ipod models other then the new mini. Sound plays and for many people it has more features then the original iPod firmware!"
Why would one run linux on an ipod?
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
This is great, now that Linux can run on the iPod I can.... play music? Pretty good stuff. Now I don't have to rely on Apple's crappy interface or poor integration with iTunes.
Honestly, I know this projects are mostly for shits & giggles, but the iPod seems to be about the least-appropriate MP3 player to port Linux too. You're paying a premium for software design & integration with the iPod. Linux on the Dell version would seem to be a more natural fit.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux (I manage an 80-node Linux Beowulf cluster at work) for the things that it's good it. But why would you take a working iPod and install Linux on it? It's not as if you get a discount on your iPod for running Linux. And it's not as if the Linux community has produced a wealth of iPod "killer apps." Straight out of the box, the iPod does what it's supposed to do. And until Linux has native support for some of the consumer technologies that make the iPod so cool (i.e., DirectX) what is the point of installing Linux on it? I realize that there's a certain "cool factor" involved with being able to run Linux on (insert consumer electronics device here), but at what point does one cross the line from usability over to zealotry? The fact that I can run Linux on my toaster isn't going to help me make bagels in the morning.
Even though many of you ask, "Why??" the news of a new OS for the iPod does present some interesting possibilities. iPods could be used as webservers (a webserver in the palm of your hand) or fileservers. Now that would be cool.
"I know kung-fu" -Neo, The Matrix
Linux on an Ipod is basically pointless. Especially on this very device, which is what hip people buy in the first place (don't get me wrong, I have one). That doesn't mean people can't tweak with it, but it's not that useful, since the geek population using iPods is outnumbered by the common consumers.
On the other hand, what about making a file browser that allow you to go through the files you stored on your pod ? I usually store isos, books, games, and the like on my 30Gb, and I really would like to be able to rename, delete, transfer to my comp directly from the iPod...
Of course, I could move my ass, but I'm not a techie. My 2 cents.
Regards,
jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
Maybe we people could write some new games for the Linux-on-iPod? You can't play Solitare and Breakout forever
don't even read this, just mod me flamebait, but isn't playing sound (perferably music) the entire purpose of a mp3 player? What exactly did the Linux on iPod do before? Display a cute penguin and nothing else? Forgive me if I don't consider playing sound a milestone.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
...while this is certainly a technical achievement, is it a useful one? Yeah, who am I to be the arbiter of that, but my mind is boggling.
My microwave oven doesn't run linux yet; can someone get hacking on that?
Seriously, with all of the real projects that need coders, this falls way off the map into the "There be Dragons" category.
"Linux: We don't have a real UI yet, but it doesn't matter because your garage door opener doesn't need it."
[shakes head sadly]
I guess Jobs was right in saying that Apple's competetiors don't "get it." The iPod Mini, for example, may seem like an absurdity to us /.ers because of its high price, low capacity, and low feature set. However, it was an instant bestseller, with so many preorders and subsequent purchases that supplies were exhausted in a matter of weeks. The truth is, the average person thinks differently from the average /.er.
For an example of what a replacement third party firmware can do for an audio player, check out RockBox. It turns the obsolete Archos Jukebox 6000 series models into machines capable of playing music much better than the stock firmware, and also capable of doing other stuff as well.
The bottom line: iPodLinux is a work in development. When it reaches production quality, it WILL have more features than the stock firmware, and will support more formats as well. (ogg, anyone?)
You missed the memo on playlists, right? Turns out that you can use them to create whole new methods of organizing your music... Neat, eh?
transmission_err
Random is the New Order.
Here's a suggestion: use the software you criticize, before you criticize it.
iTunes' smart playlists are automatically synchronized with the iPod, and boast features that your "custom nested format" wouldn't ever dream of achieving.
You can have:
Normal, every-day playlists, with playback order sorted by name, artist, time, album, genre, last played, rating, or random.
Or, you can have DYNAMIC, automatically synced playlists that update themselves based on any combination or exclusion of the following criteria:
Album, artist, song BPM, bitrate, comment, compilation membership, composer, date added, modified, genre, grouping, kind, last played, my rating, play count, sample rate, size, song number, time, track number, year.
That's a few more options than your "separates songs by language, style, and year" now isn't it?
The grouping and contextual modifiers are the following: contains, does not contain, is, is not, starts with, ends with.
This is presented as an arbitrary number and combination of graphical pull-down menus, easy enough for a novice user to use, yet powerful enough for someone versed in a language like SQL to understand and exploit to its fullest capabilities. What iTunes is doing is abstracting the presentation of your songs from the storage, which is what an mp3 player SHOULD do. The filesystem isn't smart, it isn't dynamic, and it isn't flexible. If you don't agree with this, then you're in denial. The very existence of playlists is proof positive that the abstraction is appropriate.
Your "case" is a strawman argument. You made this wild scheme of organizing mp3s because your software had no decent way of organizing music and organizing your playlists. Now that you have this half-baked limp solution for organization, you don't realize that better functionality has been designed into other players from the beginning. You're in the dark, buddy. Step into the 21st century. You want to browse by folders? Browse the Library on disk and double click to play your selected mp3. You want it organized some other way? Use dynamic smart playlists.
As far as ID3 tags go, it's nobody's fault but your own that your mp3s don't have that information in them. Another strawman argument. All of my mp3s have up-to-date ID3 information, either from CDDB or me typing in the info when I import something. Just because huge amounts of pirated mp3s don't contain correct information isn't a valid argument against the use of a useful technology like ID3.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
As long as we're talking about the original poster here, the original poster said iTunes' functionality lacked the ability to do things HE wanted.
Except he was WRONG, it has the exact functionality he wanted, plus the functionality he said DIDN'T exist.
Does this make any sense to you at all? My god. To recap:
iTunes functionality includes his "custom" scheme of presentation, as well as MUCH MUCH more. He was complaining that iTunes' organizational functionality EXCLUDED the way he does things.
Of course you can dream up of some inefficient, inflexible custom bullshit solution and complain that your solution doesn't exist in commercial software. That's the very definition of a strawman argument, which is what I'm trying to expose here.
I'm not going to berate your old school ways of doing things (I wrote perl and bash scripts to parse and organize my mp3 library back in.. uhh, maybe 1998, but I've moved on from that morass of bullshit and settled down in the modern world now) but I _AM_ going to correct assumptions made that are totally wrong!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.