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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."
Is it digitally signed?
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.
Not really. This is a very important project because there are several autonomous surveillance vehicles (ASVs) which will be deployed by the military that use the same basic architecture of the iPod for one of their flight control systems. It turns out that for long transcontinental flights, the little Lego pilot inside the ASV needs about 10 hours of music to keep him alert during the mission. Porting Linux to the iPod ensures that ASVs will be able to fly long after the iPod craze peters out and Apple goes out of business.
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I think they were hosting the site on an iPod.
I want an iPod with a 512x384 display, emulating a Mac Plus (except with much more RAM.)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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I mean, my GOD. It's almost like NetBSD. Next thing you know, there'll be Linux vibrators!
Hmm...
Suddenly I want to be a sysadmin!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
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In a nutshell, the reviewer finds that the iPodLinux Project has progressed a long way from its early proof-of-concept days.
Looks like it has support for the "back" and "stop" buttons. Support for the "play" button should be available shortly. But it plays OGG!
Hmmm... Let's see...
Safari, their own web browser... I seem to recall they took code from Konqueror, made it better in terms of rendering things better and more compatible... released Safari (closed-source), then gave their changes back to the Konqueror people
Rendezvous. You may know this as ZeroConf. Yes, it existed before they did Rendezvous, but no one did it well. and they released their code back to the ZeroConf people to make the implementation and API better. They also made SDKs so people from every OS can use Rendezvous technology and work with Macs. Did MS help the Samba people?
No company that shoots to make a profit is going to be 100% open source. No one has found a reliable business model on how to do it and stay alive more than a year. Apple does make closed software (and protects it, rightfully so, thats where their INCOME comes from. thats what keeps you on THEIR Unix, instead of taking their stuff and running off to any Linux distro that runs on PowerPC.) and ok, so you can't see the code, but the APIs are so well written, that just about anything Apple makes, I can plug into with my OWN software. How does MS let you plug into shit? With VB? Feh. They make things as easy as possible for developers, and give back to those they borrow from (the Watson thing was a load of crap, there was nothing "unique" about that, and the guy from Konfabulator is a whiny bitch cause someone else made widgets for OS X and did it in a way that doesn't eat up 95% of my CPU at idle.)
While Apple IS a for-profit company, and they HAVE at times used legal threats to keep their products "safe" its mostly out of the purity of the mac "experience", not "shit, we're losing money on that".
I don't see Apple getting too pissed off about this one though... If they aren't against people running Linux on their macs, why would they care about the iPods? Remember, the majority of the cash Apple sees is from hardware sales. The times when Apple gets pissy is when you meddle with their SOFTWARE. This keeps their software on the iPod intact (sort-of) so I don't see them getting their panties in a bind.
But if you want to demonize Apple for trying to make a buck even though they've done more to try and help open source software than most of the other major players in the industry... go right ahead. it just make YOU look like the rabbid zealot for anything anti-Mac.
Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
...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!
For as much as they take from FreeBSD, they give nothing back.
Let's not forget high-paying jobs for all those core developers....
And quite a bit of Darwin code that you're free to roll into your own "BSD for PPC" distro.
And the wine, the wine goes without saying.
And the aquaeducts.
But apart from the wine, the medicine, the acqueducts, and the peace, what has Apple done for us?
The iPod is definitely fast enough to handle ogg vorbis. The problem is just that the iPod has two different processors, which the tremor decoder wasn't designed for (or anything else except the original Apple firmware). Linux on iPod currently doesn't use the second processor except for some very basic stuff.
If you are one in a million, then there are six thousand people who are just like you.
Since every time a media player is mentioned on /., and this is an iPod running Linux, and 95% of my collection is in ogg, etc. I've karma whore by posting this link to the currently /.ed iPod Linux Wiki FAQ. In short, here's the answer, and there is no reason, from either the site or TFA to change it (TFA says nothing about ogg.) No mailing list or forums available.
Note: Linux != ogg. If your iPod runs linux, that does not mean everything you can run in mplayer will suddenly work on your iPod as some seem to be suggesting.
Short version (from the Wiki):
Is there an OGG player?
The Tremor (http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/) player is running at about 80% real-time.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
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).
I agree, but for a different reason: why Linux? Why not some lighterweight OS than the Linux 2.4.x kernel?
a t-neat stories as much as the next Slashdotter. But I do have to scratch my head on this one.
Don't get me wrong; I like the oh-look-someone-ported-Linux-to-a-toaster-isnt-th
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Sounds like the iPod will trump the USB external master storage device that slashdot just recently mentioned to us. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to move media from a USB all-in-one media reader to the iPod directly without the need of a computer? You could be taking pictures with a 16megapixel Canon and not worry about storage space as long as you have your iPod around. I'm gonna keep my eye on the development of this program. On top of that, recording audio with the left earphone bud is also another cool feature.
Linux at home
The short version of the state of iPodLinux: It does work, and shows a lot of potential, but it's not quite useful as the sole OS for your iPod yet.
:)
A lot of development has been focused on the eye candy. Games, interface, that sort of thing.
What is really needed is some kernel and hardware hacker type guys who can get stuff working underneath all the interface and eye candy so as to make it actually useful for everyday use. Case in point: The iPod has a dual processor sort of thing. In the Apple firmware, the secondary processor is more or less devoted to audio decoding. That's not yet working on the iPodLinux kernel, instead the second processor is heavily underused and thus it's basically incapable of playing back high bitrate MP3s or AACs or things along those lines. Sorting that out would be a big step.
Looks and such are easy to program (hard to get right, but easy to actually do). Getting the thing to live up to its maximum potential is the hard part.
Help is gladly accepted, BTW.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
This has got to be a troll, since you're cheering about Microsoft's open source contributions, but I'll bite.
:)
First, Apple cannot possibly contribute to all the open source software projects that ship with their OS. Neither does Sun, or Red Hat, or IBM, or anyone else. It's simply not possible. Everyone takes more than they give. It's like asking a Linux user to contribute to every open source project they use. They can't. But that's part of the beauty of open source: there is a huge amount of high quality code out there with healthy developer communities that a software vendor (and end user) can put to good use without having to vet every single line of code themselves. And when all of those vendors each give back to a few of the projects they use, it feeds back into the health of the entire open source community. So, every company can't help every project, but every project can help every company (and user). That's a good thing, the way I see it.
And, Apple does give back. Particularly to GCC, FreeBSD userland, KHTML, X.org, Postfix, and others. And they always publish source for any modifications according to the appropriate license. I'm too lazy to go look up specifics for all of those, but there's a quick writeup regarding KHTML at www.kdedevelopers.org. Examples of the others shouldn't be too hard to find. But, you're not likely to see much front-page press about it. "Vendor X gives some code back to project Y" won't capture people's attention like "Vendor X stole code from project Y and is violating the license". You can scan the Slashdot headlines for proof of that.
I cannot personally think of any mainstream Apple software that Apple has made OSS.
Well, there is Quicktime Streaming Server. That should count for something. There's also OpenPlay, and Rendezvous. Anyway, there's a list on Apple's site, go take a look. It's not Apple's fault if none of the projects they have put out there are anything that you want to use.
but what has Apple really given of their own creation?
QSS, as just mentioned. Anyway, you can't make any money by just giving everything away. Ask Red Hat. Anyway, every vendor has to keep certain things for themselves to differentiate their product or there would be no reason to buy their specific product. That holds true for any vendor using open source code, be it Sun, IBM, SGI, Apple, or anyone else.
What about Quartz, Aqua, iTMS, iTunes, "Fairplay", Sorensen?
Quartz: I highly suspect there may be issues with IP from the display technology vendors. ATI and NVidia are stingy with their IP, which is why there are no real open source drivers for their display cards for any OS.
Aqua: Apple's UI is their main point of product differentiation, besides the custom hardware. Giving away Aqua would be like giving the hardware away.
iTunes/iTMS/Fairplay: They can't release the source to these because it would compromise the authentication/DRM scheme that allows them to sell RIAA music in the first place. But even so, who cares? DRM sucks anyway and I won't buy DRM encumbered music from anyone for any cost. And, if you want to use iTunes for library management, there's Crossover iTunes.
Sorenson: Not Apple's IP to open source. Go talk to Sorenson.
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
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