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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!"
Where are you getting "for many it has more features than the original firmware" from?
;) How's about automount picking up on another iPod plugged into the firewire bus and mounting it fat32, access it's database, copy the files over and naming them logically based on either id3 tags or on the database, and then update the localhost database? >:)
Seems to me everything is very basic, unless you count the ability to browse by file a new feature, but the datbase accessibility of the original firmware is conspicuously missing.
Still...I like it. The iPod has a usb bus. A firewire bus. Throughput is an issue, but I imagine some hotplug devices will get support.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Because the reverse-engineering effort needed to make it happen will yield other fruits.
I'd like to know how to add a remote display and simple button-driven UI to an iPod, for instance. My old PC-based car MP3 player is too big and clunky to fit in my current daily driver, and I'd like to come up with a way to interface its LCD and track-selection buttons to an iPod, using a microcontroller to do the dirty work rather than a whole PC. I'm about to go surf their tech notes to see if they offer any clues, even though I have no intention of running Linux on the iPod (if I can help it).
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
I would happily put linux on my iPod if it would record stereo tracks. I hear it is technically possible, but.........no one has anything other than those crap voice recorders (mono).
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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You're also paying a premium for hardware design. The sand-proof controls are a real win. I doubt it would be especially hard to implement the interface (although it was probably hard to design it the first time). As for why, you might want to play ogg files. I'm not entirely sure where the system is actually stored, but you might be able to take one of the minis, remove the hard drive (and sell it for more than the cost of the ipod), and put in a CF 802.11 card. Then you could stream music from your computer or over the internet while wearing it around the house.
The reason to have an alternative operating system for the iPod is to add new features! There are so many great things that can be done with the hardware in the iPod, that Apple is only beginning to scratch the surface of (or not even considering at all).
Not to mention adding features to the 1G and 2G iPods that are only available on the 3G firmware... I would run Linux on my 2G iPod if it provided functionality similar to the On-The-Go playlists on the newer iPods. Open-source firmware could even improve on these features, such as having the ability to name and save a playlist you've made away from your computer.
Finally, feature additions such as these might keep Apple on their toes - they couldn't let their own firmware become stale, because the alternative would always be improving. I think the Linux on iPod firmware is a great idea, and I wish the developers the best of luck.
I'm a typical slashdot type, hell, programming pays my bills, but i held out on buying an iPod UNTIL the mini came out.
Why? Because I walk everywhere I go, and the mini is small enough that it fits (when clipped into my jean pocket) above my pager and cell phone. Plus, it's just damn cool. And 4 days of music is more than i need on me at any one time.
- - How about using it to hold ISO's of your latest distro that you could use as a more direct form of data transfer
.....
Just to name a few ideasThis can be alot cooler than some of you are even starting to scratch the surface
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Oh, and even Joe Satriani digs that Darkness tune.
Random is the New Order.
I'm not saying that it cannot be truly valuable to anyone. You seem to have use for it, that's good for you. I will give you, or anyone, "a break", for sure for sure. You need not reply if you feel authentic, I can't judge you from here. If you have no regard for the "signs" I describe, then you're obviously on the good side of my rant. And all of us are inauthentic to some extent of course: I, myself, don't feel like some sort symbolically-exuding philosopher-poet in that aspect, far from it, this is just kind of an area of interest for me, tis all.
I've heard some Satch(at least, I have Live in San Fran buried somewhere, I think I've heard more), but he's hardly a true artist is the musical sense. He's more a guitar acrobat. Perhaps he makes an art out of his acrobatics(or some music-acobatic hybrid), but I wouldn't say he makes much of an art out the music itself. There's a world of difference in relation to the art of the actual music between someone like Mr. Satriani and, say, Pere Ubu. I would stress the difference between musicianship and musicality. And I've never heard the Darkness, actually.
Generally I don't give a shit about desktop Linux because the UI is crap. I tend to think of Linux desktop users as people fighting against reality for idealogical reasons. However, when the UI is out of the picture it's great.
I use Linux on a server for FLAC/MP3 serving with Slimserver from slim devices. The UI in that case is a simple web interface, no command line required. It does the job it's supposed to do, and I don't much have to care what else it does. Windows in that situation would be too complicated and perhaps not capable of the very long uptimes my Linux box gets.
On the iPod, it's a lot like the Apple iPod UI - task oriented, simple functions that do one thing well - or at least it will be when it's polished. Which is fine, I don't much care if Apple patent or copyright or sue or whatever. As long as I get to have menu items like "Capture from CF" and "Record" without buying garbage like the Belkin accessories that enable those functions (the Belkin CF reader should NOT be sold. It is incomplete, useless with RAW images). To think that Linux is going to let me use my iPod in more useful ways is awesome.
It's the first Linux project I've ever thought I could be interested in contributing to. Well done guys! (and let's not forget the ucLinux people, who have been working for quite some time to get where they are.)
This is flamebait, and I should mod it as such, but I think it'll make more of a difference if I explain why I would.
Who is going to go making playlists for every one of their folders and then update those playlists every time they add new folders? I see a problem here, one where the ipod playlists become a pain in the ass to keep up - why keep the same data in two places where they will surely fall out of sync without tedious manual synhronization?
I also use folders to make a custom nested format which separates songs by language, style, and year. You can't do that with playlists. A final plus for me is that browsing by folder avoids using ID3 tags, many of which aren't present on the the thousands of foreign language mp3s I have. The original ipod firmware lists a lot of songs as Unknown for me - I have to play them to figure out what the songs are - how useful is that?
The parent's response is similar to the many I saw on the ipodlounge forums. When people asked about browsing by folder, a bunch of apple zealots would shoot em down saying apple's way is better and that they should use it because it is easier. Well not in my case.
-----Some Ideas for the Ipod Linux
A neat thing that has been overlooked - wait till someone replaces the drive with a wireless CF card! We'll get an mp3 player that can be used anywhere around the house to stream music over the local network. We'll have to wait till the Linux firmware can actually play mp3s without skipping though, something the original article submission kinda implied could be done. It appears this is because they are relying on the processor to decode mp3s rather than whatever proprietary hardware mp3 decoder/encoder hardware is in there. Hopefully soon, if they do it at all, they will reverse engineer how to control the mp3 chip in there.
Another idea - what about streaming HDTV over the network and through through the firewire port? A TV with firewire port can do the decoding! Streaming mpeg2 to a firewire equipped HDTV wouldn't require the ipod to do any decoding, so it appears there should be enough procesing power to do this. It'd be nice to see an ipod docked next to the HDTV, and able to play video content from the PC. Didn't Netflix just announce downloadable rentals? Write a program that transcodes the rental into mpeg2 in real time and streams it through the IPOD onto a big TV screen. Pretty neat.
let me add some more.
:)
:)
* add SIDPLAY and MOD/XM support so that one can enjoy the full MOD galore without first going through the arduous task of converting them to AAC or MP#
* implement a pitch control with the wheel (so I can do some actual dj'ing on the device, or, rather, on 2 devices
what's more? there must be a lot more features I want to have. from file formats to fixing stupidities of the existing software
still running a x86? dinosaurs do exist!