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Improve Your iPod with Rockbox
polar_bear` writes "The allure of the iPod is undeniable -- they're well-designed, sleek little music players that pack a lot of features into tiny packages. However, iPods fail to deliver when it comes to support for free codecs like Ogg Vorbis, and -- let's face it -- iTunes leaves a lot to be desired. If you'd like to enjoy the hardware goodness of the iPod with GPLed firmware, give Rockbox a try. Tim Lord explains how over on NewsForge.com." NewsForge is also a part of the OSTG network, and Tim Lord is "timothy", one of our own editors.
As a user who has been using Rockbox since its very first first release on the archos recorders, I have to implore all of the Linux fanboys to PLEASE not jump on the bash Rockbox in favor of Linux bandwagon. Rockbox has an entirely different philosophy than Rockbox Linux and offers several advantages, including:
Portability - Rockbox is written in C has long been designed to be hardware-independent and will compile for a whole range of mp3 players, including Archos, Apple, and Iriver Models.
Sleekness - Since Rockbox is a specifically mp3 player OS, it doesn't carry a lot of the bloat with it that Ipodlinux does. As a matter of fact, its near instantaneous boot times are one of the best aspects of the firmware.
Multiple Codec support - All the biggies (except the closed ones) are there or are under development.
Direct Disk access (this one is a biggie) - No more f-cking around with the monstrosity that is the Itunes database. For those who prefer a filesystem approach, this is a godsend, and for those who like a tagged DB, Rockbox has just added support for a pretty nice platform-independent db of its own that can be generated on teh fly by the player!
Great Community - Of all the homebrew firmware efforts for various devices that I have had experience with, Rockbox has by far the most helpful and motivated bunch I have seen.
Bjorn, Linus (no, not THAT Linus) and the rest of the Rockbox crew represent some of the best guys in the Open Source community and deserve the thanks of anyone supporting OSS. So, please no "Linux runs on my Ipod, toaster, and 8 of my 12 marital aids!" nonsense, and let's give these guys a hand.
I bought an iRiver H320 specifically because Rockbox development had advanced to the point that it could reproduce the features of the stock firmware. These days, it's gone lightyears beyond what iRiver had planned. Just a small list of improvements:
I held off on buying an MP3 player until it could work as a satisfactory replacement for my MiniDisc recorder (primarily used for recording concerts). The current RB source offers the ability to activate the backlight when your recording meters clip! Fantastic for recording in darkened event halls.
Check out current developments for the H320 series over at Mystic River.
Couple things:
Hassle and risk?
Took me about 15 minutes to add the rockbox firmware to my iPod. As far as risk, no one has broken their iPod yet with Rockbox, and I can't imagine how they would... If something truly 'bad' happens, you can always use the iPod restore utility, even if the firmware is completely junked, since that functionality is built in to a read-only portion of the hardware.
As far as comparing it to iPodLinux, the two projects have very different goals. iPodLinux wants to take a general operating system and cram it onto a music player with as much original functionality as possible, whereas Rockbox is designed from the bottom up as a replacement firmware for music players that has better support for more formats with more features and eventually, a better interface (the most lacking aspect of Rockbox ATM).
Also, it's strange that this article mentions Rockbox only in the context of iPods, considering that it was originally designed with Archos and iRiver players in mind, and has only been working on iPods for a couple months. Hence, many things which work nicely for other targets are still quite broken on iPod.
It does have a very active dev community (I can cvs update every 3 or 5 days and see a new major feature working) and is a lot of fun to tinker with, but as far as a 'better' replacement for the iPod firmware, I really wouldn't say it's quite there yet.