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Linux's iPod Generation Gap
An anonymous submittor says "Today's young generation can use Linux on the desktop provided it works with their iPod. Linux on the desktop still hasn't reached that stage and has to be compatible with multimedia applications like iTunes and iPod if it has to beat Microsoft's Windows dominance on the desktop. Open source gurus at LinuxWorld discuss solutions to make Linux more consumer-friendly."
Really. It's not hard.
/dev/sdc6. Don't know why that is, but the dev said he'd put it on his TODO list.
Just emerge gnupod and make sure you compile it with the --with-ffxk-so-opti=3 directive in autoconf. That'll hose you every time. Also I recommend that you use gnutunes out of the gnxms repository; the vanilla Gentoo repos's version is hosed.
Also, my iPod only works if I mount it as
Aside from that it's pretty easy!
For more information, click here.
User: "How do I get my iPod to run in Linux?"
Zealot: "Oh that's easy! If you have Redhat, you have to download quake_3_rh_8_i686_010203_glibc.bin
Wait, I can access an iPod from inside Quake 3 on Linux? Sweet. Does it give you a boost? Like an extra few feet with the rocket jump?
Now all I need is an iPod.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
Linux is *not* user friendly,
Well, it's not friendly to first post trolls perhaps.
In my case I plugged in my MP3 player, it showed up on the desktop, I copied over some MP3s and they worked. Some people might have said this was because I picked an MP3 player that implimented a standard (USB bulk storage) protocol rather than one from a vendor who aims to keep everything locked up tight, but personally I think that it's just trying to make you jealous.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
There is no gap between ITunes and Amarok.
There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't.
...with the article summary, which implies that Linux is going to have to "be compatible" with technology X in order to appeal to the masses. In point of fact, if Linux adopts that strategy it will *never* appeal to the masses, because it will always be catching up.
The only way to have significant appeal is to offer something that the masses want, that Windows can't. Hint: rock-solid security is not something the masses *want*. Yet.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
Ditto here. I plug my Archos Gmini into my laptop, which is running Slackware, and I drag and drop music onto it, no problem.
No goofy drivers, no 3rd party software, no arcane commands. It just works.
Apple puts out a proprietary, defective-by-design consumer electronics product and won't port the required software to platforms other than Mac OS or Windows and it's somehow a Linux shortcoming?
???
I'm confused.
And the circle of life continues to spin, occasionally wobbling on its axis thanks to the weighty presence of dumb.
Well, what do you want? Do you want to be able to throw your music on your iPod? You can do through a number of applications, although I find Amarok's new versions (>= 1.4.1) are the most seamless way to do that. I use my 4th generation 40GB iPod exclusively through Linux, and have had minor issues (had trouble getting rid of that "Do Not Disconnect" message in Mandriva/PCLinuxOS, that's about it), but no show-stoppers. As far as iTunes, I haven't tried to pull down music from the music store. I'm assuming it's not possible right now.
I find the summary deceiving. To pose the question, "does Linux work with my iPod?" and then answer "no, it hasn't reached that stage yet" is not giving a true picture. If someone asked me that question, I would say "yes, mostly" and then get them to clarify what they wanted to do.
"Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
Pretty much every media player for Linux supports the ipod. Amarok, Rhythmbox, Banshee, etc, etc. Not to mention gtkpod! AFAIK every mainstream distro compiles the proper support into the kernel for usb or firewire support as well as VFAT/HFS file system support. The ipod should be pretty much plug and play on any modern Linux distro.
At the very least the title of the article is misleading BS.
Apple puts out a proprietary, defective-by-design consumer electronics product and won't port the required software to platforms other than Mac OS or Windows and it's somehow a Linux shortcoming?
And the best bit is that I (and probably you soon) got moderated down for saying it.
What do you expect Linux devs to do? Magically support every bit of hardware in existance without decent specs and no access to the closed DRM which makes the bit people are most unhappy to leave behind tick? Yes, I am aware that the actual format is open, thank you very much, but the DRM is not and so purchased large music libraries are non-trivial to convert to something that works on any platform.
And yet the iPod does work on Linux (even the new ones). How about that for good service, and all for free I might add.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Water also wet. Further bulletins at as warranted.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Remember that Apple's iTunes music is encoded with its DRM. So you cannot legally play iTunes-encoded music on the iPod.
Linux will remain behind of commercial OSes in the realm of media, not because it is Linux, but becuase of DRM.
Why is this modded as a "Troll"? Post makes complete sense to me.
Funny, you must be really comfortable with accessing your iPod from Quake3 then.
The post is an known, old troll where the lazy AC only managed to replace Quake 3 with iPod in the 'questions.' If you really used Linux 'for several years' you'd have spotted the trollness of it easily - iPod access is easy both in KDE and Gnome, what's missing is iTunes (for store+iPod use)
The people who can, have. Then they turned it into a library and now iPod support is available in
- amaroK
- gPodder
- gtkpod
- iPodDisk
- podtool
- and Rhythmbox
you were saying?Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Alright, I'll bite. When was the last time you used Linux? Every modern distribution has some form of package management. I'm a Ubuntu user. Here are the steps I used to install GTKPod:
Now, please remind me, how is this more difficult than Windows? The same process under Windows is longer and less secure. All packages from Ubuntu's repositories are digitally signed. Can the same be said for the random executable you just downloaded from a web site?
. . .all you iPod junkies, get a fucking detox.
Does the detox support vorbis?
KFG
BTW, don't they just plug in and appear as a drive? Anyway...
It's all the peripherals. Your ipod, palm, nokia, cameras etc syncing with the calendar, todo, email, files etc. The problem isn't actually with Linux, it's with closed proprietary protocols. Saying the problem is with Linux is naive, the problem is with standardisation and with peripheral manufacturers writing software which works on several platforms. Its really an economic problem rather than a technical one.
Deleted
I don't think anyone is really asking for support for M4P (those would be the encrypted, DRMed files purchased from the iTunes Media Store) files on Linux. Everyone realizes, I think, that there's no way to do DRM with open-source software, and frankly I think this is a Good Thing.
However, people use iTunes and iPods for a lot more than DRMed music. There is this tendency here on Slashdot to assume that everyone who uses iTunes or owns an iPod has purchased lots of music for it from the iTMS. This is not true, and in fact is provably wrong. The vast majority of music on most people's portable devices and in their music libraries, comes from ripped CDs (or from peer to peer).
Linux would be doing well if it could just come up with a library management program that was as good as iTunes is, and it would be doing better than iTunes if it made it as easy to download music OFF of the iPod as it is to put it on. (That is, to do the magical and frightening-to-media-companies "reverse syncronization.")
iTunes had a large userbase long before the Music Store existed: it gained popularity (back when it was a Mac-only program) because it has a good interface for managing a lot of songs and playlists. I have yet to see (although if someone wants to point one out I'd be interested) a Linux application that is the equal of it. All the Linux programs seem to assume that the OS' file browser is the best way to manage music, and that small single-purpose tools should be used to do syncronization or updating.
I remember what managing a large MP3 collection was like before nice library management programs were developed to automatically sort files into folders by Artist/Album, and it sucked. The file browser--even a good general-purpose browser (like Konqueror)--is not the tool for this job.
While this is very true to the "UNIX way," it's not what people want. People want big, monolithic, do-everything applications. They want something that's a media player, a library manager, a file uploader, an ID3 tag editor, and a portable-device-syncronization manager. If you could build a BitTorrent client and P2P browser into that at the same time, that would be great, too.
iTunes isn't good because of the Music Store, it's good despite it. There is a huge, gaping hole that the Linux community could fill if people desired to, for a program that's BETTER than iTunes: one that works seamlessly with the iPod but also works with other music stores (non-DRMed ones: AllOfMp3.com, eMusic, etc., plus free sources), and doesn't shy away from features because it would piss off music companies (sharing/streaming of music, true bidirectional syncronization).
Apple's software is hobbled by the company's relationship with the media companies and the necessity of flogging their own music store, not strengthened by it. It means that they have to produce crippled software, which doesn't do everything that it could otherwise. The FOSS community could run circles around iTunes; heck, they could make the closest thing that Linux has to a 'killer app' for home users. Going on about DRM is just a red herring; only a very few people can afford to buy large quantities of music from iTMS anyway, the great majority wouldn't be stopped by that from moving to a clearly superior piece of software, if one existed. To my knowledge, it does not. And that's why iTunes reigns supreme.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The basic idea of itunes is just flawed (from my perpective at least)..
... you just connect it and an scsi device(on most systems) show up, you just have to mount it ....
.....
Most players, even my stupid Panasonic car radio can read-in an MP3 list on the fly, and then play it, so why not that super-intelligent-wonderful device?
As on any normal MP3 player I have seen, you could just drop the files onto the device, and then it would create a playlist from it....
That way you could use any system, not just that retarded Itunes. That way you could use m3u files as well.
But wait: this way you would not need a windows or a mac running that bloated crap, that is nothing but a "buy more from itunes" adware pile.
And here is what really bothers me: you cannot use iTunes store from where i live, and now they even stopped selling prepaid cards at the apple stores. Still I have to download a new version of their crap almost every 3 weeks, with bigger and bigger file sizes, while i could just drop files on an USB drive's filesystem, and then press play...
I think I am one of the very few people who is sick of his ipod in every single sense, except it's physical strength (i use it at the gym every day and get it wet, and hit it with weights and run with it... then usually steam it for a few hours in my gym-bag's front with my wet heartrate monitor)
Other than that: sound:ok i guess, earphones:garbage, interface awkward, functions:bloat, control:complicated (always those menus with the idiotic scrolling)......
Oh if that little function existed, you could use it with linux just fine, as far as usb drives are enabled
mounting something too complicated? I guess do not use linux, that is my advice
Why does Linux have to appeal to anyone but the people who use it? I thought that was the whole point. If you don't feel like paying for software then you've either got to write it yourself or wait for someone to give it to you (or steal it, but that's another topic). And this is exactly what the Linux community has done; as many people here have pointed out you can use an iPod in Linux (to say nothing of using Linux on an iPod). So the majority of people find using Linux to be too difficult? So what? They can just pay for a simpler OS that does work for them. It's like paying someone to clean your house, wash your car, make you food, or any number of services, and if you're someone who's not willing to pay for those services then you either have to do them yourself, or find someone who will do it voluntarily (or to enslave).
couldn't do something so simple as using a file manager.
Believe it or not, iTunes hides the Shuffle from Windows. If you plug a shuffle into a machine that doesn't have iTunes installed, it will appear as a drive.
At least, mine did when I first got it. Maybe newer ones are different?
Clear, Dark Skies
On my OpenSUSE 10.1:
- Open Amarok
- Attach iPod Nano
- Amarok pops up a box that asks if I want to use it to manage a new iPod
- Click affirmative
- Transfer, delete, manage music and podcasts at will
I have not read the article so I don't understand the issue. Are the using a two-year-old version of some odd distro?
Well you can wake me up when iTunes displays song lyrics on the fly, pulls up Wikipedia entries on the artist, sorts music in a sane manner, does not phone home on your music collection for an "enhanced" buying experience, is fully skinable so you can get rid of that 1900 Ford mentality of "They can have it look however they want as long as it is this shitty minimalist skin", and supports ALL the music file formats i want to use like .ogg
And I wouldn't brag about iTunes music store as a feature considering they don't even really sell YOU a song...With their permission you are granted the right to listen to their music on a limited number of computers.
Oh and did I mention that it's memory footprint is about 1/4 of iTunes?
Oh and did I mention that it KICKS the llamas ass?
"All those moments, will be lost in time...like tears in rain..."
You are so suckered by the music industry. iTunes gives you DRM garbage without long term credibility. It's a step backward from analog, except for convenience of play. Free media is technically superior and easier to use than non free.
Burn? Why? CDs are an input and an archive. I save my wavs as gziped tar archives and play them as oggs.
Amazingly enough, I can buy CDs and listen to my music with Amarok. Reasonable services will sell you FLAC without DRM. Reasonable bands let you trade their concerts without charge. iTunes does not live up to the Amarok + Wikipedia + Lyrics experience, nor is it's database as good. As time goes by, the gap in quality will widen.
As usual, non free is getting it's ass kicked and people are routing around it. Artist and users are getting a better deal elsewhere. When they fold and leave you without a key to what you purchased, you will understand why the deal was raw to begin with. I've digitized my parents and my grandparents music collections and will be able to give them to my kids. I'm not buying into something that will prevent that. Your player won't last forever, but the music and the culture it represents should.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Except what they're talking about here is not another piece of "every bit of hardware in existance", it's the single most popular music player on the market, and probably the most ubiquitous peripheral out there right now.
It's like the day I tried to install Linux and it wouldn't write to my data disc which was formatted in NTFS. No, it's not Linux's fault, but it made me go, "oh well, it would've been nice, but it's too much bother". A reaction that I promise you is more common than any other.
- ------- There are ten kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who... Huh?
I have concluded that "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" rants like TFA and "This is the Year of Linux on the Desktop" raves are both equally irrelevant, because they both miss the point.
If an attractive, usable desktop environment with excellent multimedia capabilities were what it took to make a desktop computing platform dominant, I wouldn't be typing this comment from my Windows box at work. We'd all be using Amigas. The /. Macolytes will argue that we all would have been (and still should be) using Apple Macintoshes of one description or other. Let's review, though: the Amiga is on the dustbin of history. The Mac soldiers along, but for all its "Volkskomputer" propaganda, only a relatively small proportion of relatively affluent Macolytes ever use them.
What dominated the desktop? What made the Personal Computer a commodity item? Bring yourself to say it: IBM-Compatibles running MS-DOS. They were ugly and primitive. It were single-user/single-task systems. Keeping one running initiated a user or administrator into the secret world of cryptic command lines and oracular error messages (ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?). It certainly wasn't an attractive platform by any standard now applied....and yet it completely trounced all its competitors. Why?
Because it was extremely attractive to the sort of person we don't like here on /.--procurement types. It was "good enough," they were "smart enough," and, goshdarnit, the IBM-compatibles ran Lotus 1-2-3! Industry kicked off the massive adoption feedback loop, and, flash forward to the present day, we're all in a Microsoft universe.
We will leave that universe NOT because the competition offers a compelling, beautiful, secure product that is compatible with the latest Apple blobject. We will leave it when the same hated procurement types start to calculate that the costs of staying in proprietary software outweigh those of running Free software. Once the argument is framed in those terms, the adoption loop will turn again, and people will be forced to use the platform they use at work, at school, or wherever.
If Linux is or isn't ready for YOU, that's really your decision. But it's pointless to evaluate desktop Linux's chances of mass adoption assuming that the masses will all flock to a better, more secure, and more usable platform without being compelled to do so by some external force.
That's funny... I installed ubuntu like this:
Then I was online. I clicked on "Syntaptic Package Manager" and checked the box for "Banshee". I clicked "Apply". After it downloaded, I plugged in my iPod nano, pulled my music off of it, and began to listen.
You're right, that was really hard. Fuck. I mean, it's a good think I'm a software developer, or I wouldn't have made it through that.
Don't even get me started on video cards. Mine burned out, so I bought a new one. I booted into Linux - didn't have to change a thing. I booted into Windows... whoops! Driver incompatibility - no GUI for you. What? You can't get to a command line without first booting into the GUI or entering some arcane key combination on boot? And who knows how to install graphics drivers from the command line in Windows, anyway? Well damn, I guess reinstallation is the only option. Or buy a card identical to the one that burned out.
What makes iPods complicated to use on GNU/Linux desktops, is the iTunesDB file that has to be parsed and written for the iPod firmware to be happy. If it wasn't for that, you could just mount it as a regular USB drive, and copy the files over.
A friend of mine recently bought an iPod video, and had a few fights with his media player while trying to compile an iPod plugin for it, but with no luck. When he came over to my place, I suggested that he could switch firmware to Rockbox. The installation might not have been the easiest, using dd to extract the firmware from the iPod's HDD, compile a tool which was then used to patch the original firmware with a bootloader, and then copy onto it the Rockbox binaries afterwards.
However, it is now possible to just copy music into the mounted iPod using any file browser, and it'll show up in Rockbox immidiately. Rockbox also offers many new features to iPod owners. Does the Apple firmware play OGG Vorbis or FLAC files? WavPack? AC3, then? Rockbox still can't play video files, though, but the Rockbox bootloader actually sets up a dual boot environment, so that you're able to switch over for watching videos, or playback DRM'ed files, if you have to.
Mine's even easier.
I just plug it into its dock and Amarok recognises it, mounts it and makes it available for transfers automatically. Then I press "Disconnect" and it unmounts AND ejects it, ready to take cycling.
And Amarok is actually nice to use. gtkpod is *horrible*.
Nobody else has this sig.
And disappointingly, its always still current. Linux has a seriously split personality and I don't think its ever been the right way to be. On one hand we have this excellent well documented, stable server platform. Here I love it. Couldn't ask for anything more (don't hate me BSD users!).
Of course the flip is the 'ready to dominate the desktop' thing. I've been using Linux for about 8 years and the one thing I haven't seen is a distro thats ready to take the place of a real, dedicated user environment.
Now I'm guessing that making it ugly and cludgy by trying to keep both the archaic (but server friendly) aspects together with the newer (and definitely still immature) GUI pieces is a big part of the problem.
I've got a box that can do everything, but only half as well. Its silly really. Top it off with the nuts and their struggle against *any* real change and you get exactly what you should expect to get: a system thats terminally mired in a wealth of old-school ideas (filesystem layout, lack of consistent driver API, DE abstraction, application fragmentation, etc).
For a lot of people these things are all very good, but for the 'average' user it make Linux the subtle nightmare that it really is.
I've been practically begging, for years, for someone to break the rules. Piss RMS off. I don't care really. Just give me an operating system that works like its 2006, proprietary drives and ALL.
I'm using XP Pro now. I'll probably end up moving to Apple at some point because I respect them for focusing on the front end and still giving their users the power on the back end (exactly where Linux distro's get it all cocked up).
Anyway, basically, I think its fear of rocking the boat and if there is *anything* more constricting then proprietary code thats definitely it.
Quack, quack.
I've got more important things to do than fuck around with my iPod. I want to plug it in, and have it work. Period. I know how to work on my car, but I don't have time to, even though I enjoy it.
Don't assume that because someone doesn't want to do something, that they can't do it. People aren't babies just beacuse they don't feel the need to make things unnecessarily difficult as part of some bizarre alpha-male chest-beating ritual.
If you can't find a way to sync your iPod with your Linux machine you haven't really been looking!
When will we get to mod articles "-1, Troll"?
0 1 - just my two bits
I'm young(ish), and I got my iPod to work on amarok. I download my podcasts through amarok and sync it up daily. No, it's not as easy as Windows or Mac, but amarok does default to syncing without deleting tracks that aren't on the hard drive. Amarok can 'rip' tracks off my iPod and add them to my HD's library. And amarok is free (not shareware or nagware or crackware like all of the Windows/Mac rippers I've been able to find). It was worth the two extra minutes of setup, and I can't imagine that the setup process would beguile any relatively computer-literate person, many of which happen to be: young iPod owners.
I started using linux six months ago. There are a couple things that keep a windows kernel in my boot menu at home (ok, just age of empires and Traktor DJ studio), but ipod compatibility is not one of them. Grandma (or her young, equally non-technical equivalent, whoever that is) doesn't need to be able to install and sync ipods to every single OS candidate on the market. The market comprises more than just Grandma.
Moron. Repeat after me. here's how you install linux. Insert CD. Hit enter till it loads. For 95% of all modern instalations, that's it. Installing windows is more complicated than this, I swear. It's just that most people never install windows. Also, here's how integrating my ipod worked in ubuntu: connect iPod. ta-da.
that if you're going to attempt to be a Linux apologist, you should try and actually help the folks who are having problems, rather than insisting that they are the problem. The GP is right, I come across this attitude all the time. Indeed, when I first installed Linux a couple years ago, I did it despite the general community of obnoxious "you are so not the haxor"-geeks, not because of them.
There are two side to this: the clueless noobs who want Linux to be just like Windows (which means, essentially, self-configuring or trivially configurable) and the self-proclaimed Linux Uber-geeks, who insist that everyone should be able to figure out obscure, undocumented command-line configurations by trial and error. This is a problem both with Linux itself and with many applications written for Linux.
I really like Linux. I have a Fedora box running at work, a Ubuntu box at home, and another box at home waiting to be converted to some other distro. Nevertheless, the truth is that Linux is not (generally speaking) as easy to use as Windows in terms of either hardware or software configuration. Until we admit that this is a problem for widespread adoption, it's going to continue to be difficult to convince people that Linux is just as good as Windows even though we know that in many ways it is actually even better. One way to make this better (aside from actually coding things to be easier to work with) is to offer support to people who are interested in using Linux.
New users are turned off when they attempt to dip a toe into the waters of Linux and discover that not only is the water much colder than they are used to, but there are obnoxious children splashing everyone, insisting that the water is warm and it's the new user that's the wrong temp.
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