Slashdot Mirror
Latest Version of iPodLinux Reviewed
Demolition writes "The latest release of the iPod-Linux Installer has been reviewed on Accelerate Your Mac!, a popular Mac performance/modification site. As mentioned in previous Slashdot articles, the iPodLinux Project is an open source venture devoted to porting Linux to Apple's iPod. In a nutshell, the reviewer finds that the iPodLinux Project has progressed a long way from its early proof-of-concept days."
Am I the only one seeing the IPOD going the way of POG in a few years? Still this has some interesting implications.
If people find out they might have the ability to do ohh so much more with they're $200+ toys, and they make it easy enough to port linux(has to be idiot proof), then we may find Linux getting much more exposure in pop culture. Unfortunately, I doubt they'll be able to make it user friendly enough.
Go ahead and call me unreliable; reliable is just a synonym for predictable.
It would be possible to get third-party support for formats that are not officially supported, such as RealMedia or Microsoft DRM-protected audio files. Additionally the dial interface lends itself to use for reading e-book or USENET newsgroups, or for keeping an address book, phonebook, or the days events in your pocket.
However, I wonder if the GPL would create problems in this sort of environment -- presumably there is content that is not open on the player that would be necessary to incorporate into this project. Perhaps it would be wiser to adopt something Open Source such as OpenBSD instead; it's a text-only environment, so the lack of graphical support would be a minor problem at best, and it contains a good deal of security features that would be beneficial should wired applications for this new platform be developed after this project takes off.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
But what if you want to put 40/80 GB of your music collection on a music player? What if you don't want to have to remove/upload music every time you wanted to hear something different? I know that even at 128kbps 1gb isn't a whole lot of music.
Because the interface could use some improvement. Scrolling song names when browsing would be great. It's really annoying to have 5 things in a list with the only way to tell them apart being to play them.
-matt
...keep in mind that Darwin has no practical use beyond its basis for OS X.
Most operating systems have no practical use except for running applications written for them. What's your point?
Gotta get me one of these!
There are several nice disk-based MP3/ogg players out there that already run Linux out of the box. You can save yourself a lot of trouble, get a more functional device, and support FOSS by buying one of those. Apple's iPod just isn't built for Linux and Apple clearly doesn't want you to run a FOSS OS on it (otherwise they would have shipped it with one).
Apple is not our friend. You might like their fancy computers and software, but never forget that they are a proprietary hardware and software company.
Since when is "friend" defined as non-commercial? Also are you incapable of having friends that do not share your religion? Most of us are not that narrow minded.
Apple promotes Unix on the consumer desktop. Apple increases the acceptance of FreeBSD by using it for portions, Darwin, of their operating system. Although they do not have to, BSD license, they are "good citizens" and make their changes available to the public. Apple has open sourced it's formerly proprietary file system code. They provide a free development environment with their systems. They actively work with Terra Soft to make a version of Linux, Yellow Dog, available for Apple hardware.
The fact that they do not open source all their code, their GUI in particular, does not make them an enemy. The fact that they do not support some people's pet music formats does not make them an enemy. The fact that their mission is not to promote all things open source does not make them an enemy. They seem happy to coexist, and to work with open source when appropriate.
Now watch the Apple zealots mod this down for being anti-Apple
Actually there is no shortage of legitimate reasons to mod you down.
IP over FireWire is out in a final release. It is part of Panther and not available separately (except in beta form). It is very easy to set up and works fine (with both Windows and Linux).
The iPod doesn't need to have Ogg support just because you want it to.
You're assuming the man-hours of development aren't also man-hours of entertainment :-)
What we did was so that we did not have to pay high bandwith costs for people who are to lazy to type in the URL, as it only blocks the slashdot referers.
That must be our fundamental disagreement then. I happen to think clicking on links is normal behaviour on the web. I understand that you had to do something, but I'm offended when you start using the word 'abuse' when someone links to your site or just clicks on a links.
The OGG container-file format and Vorbis encoder
Yes, please excuse my misuse of these ridiculously confusing names,
Yeah, Quicktime container and Sorenson codec are sooo much more transparent that I can tell what someone is talking about from the sound of it alone.
well, programming with familiar libraries, filesystem, and system hooks is a good enough reason for that... imo.
plus, there's already a bunch of lightweight programs and audio decoders for ucLinux
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
I really don't think they mean to label visitors as being "abusers". It seems more like a poorly worded statement written in great haste (no doubt as their server was smoking and their ISP was freaking out). The site is cohosted hosted with theplanet.com and I'm pretty sure ipodlinix.org will either have to pay for the extra bandwidth use caused by this /. article or atleast shut down for a while. Money I'm sure they don't have. To add insult to injury their front index page is dynamically generated via php causing an extra, much unneeded load on the server.
Since /. is a commercial site and attempts to generate revenue from advertising IMO the responsible and moral thing to do would be to try to do something to minimize it's impact on smaller sites. Maybe
offer to mirror the site for a few days. In short, is it fair for /. to make money for every page view while the FOSS project site in question loses what little money they have for every corresponding page view? IMO, no.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST