60 Gigs of Uselessness?

[vakkotaur]

I've been wanting a portable (wearable) music player of a modern type (that is, an mp3 player rather than a Walkman) for a while. jmaynard had suggested I use his iPod. This falls under the "Great idea, almost" category as evidently one needs to use iTunes (and therefore Not Linux) to get it do things like load up files from a computer, which is rather the point of the thing.

My searches have shown that some folks can get the iPod to work with Linux, but it involves wiping the thing clean and since Jay has a bunch of stuff on it, I don't consider that a real option. Also, I don't know if it can then deal with silly Apple-specific encodings after that. I did install banshee and gtkpod which together are supposed to allow one to use an iPod with Linux. It half-way works. I can plug the thing in and it shows up. I can read the music of it. Put anything on it? Nope. Despite the claims, it refuses to do that.

So I have a couple questions and I will preemptively eliminate three unacceptable answers:

1. Use a Mac! If I wanted to do that, I would be doing that. Not a realistic option.
2. Use Windows and iTunes. See #1, add profanity for emphasis.
3. Use Windows iTunes under WINE. I'm reluctant, at best, to deal with WINE and iTunes is right out. I don't need that ill-mannered headache.

What I do need is one of these:

1. A means of using, including getting mp3 file TO it, the iPod from Linux.
-or-
2. A recommendation of a Linux-friendly mp3 player.

While option 1 is certainly less expensive monetarily, I like option 2 as then the device will be mine and I can do what I like without having to be careful to preserve someone else's music and such - and random playing won't be likely to drop me into stuff I'd delete or never have loaded up in the first place.

My idea of an mp3 player that works is one that I plug in via USB and it's simply a USB drive and I can do drag & drop copying to files to (and from) it without having to muck about with silly translations. Inexpensive is always a plus. I've seen a few fairly inexpensive portable mp3 players, but they give no indication that they work with anything but Windows. Maybe they work fine with Linux, but I'm not about to blow money in this so-called economy on something might be, for me, utterly useless. High capacity is good, but not essential. 4, 2, or even 1 GB might not be much nowadays, but even 1 GB that works will easily beat out 60 GB that doesn't work.

Comments

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

Or just dont buy an ipod. Im still quite happily using my creativelabs zen xtra that Ive had for seven years. Works fine.

I *refuse*, full stop, to install itunes on my computer, and also refuse, full stop, to own an ipod. There's other options.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=15353

http://www.amazon.com/TrekStor-vibez-Player-Black-Silver/dp/B000KDZR5U/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-5826389-4311648?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1173406008&sr=8-1

Din't buy an iPod, not buying an iPod. Just have access.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

It's Jay's iPod. Not mine. I can use it if I can figure out how. It would not have been my choice as I haven't liked much Apple has done since the Apple ][ series when Woz had enough influence to control Jobs' silliness.

As should be obvious, I also will NOT have iTunes on my machines. The iPod is only a consideration as I have access to one without spending any money. That would settle it, if it just worked in a sane manner. But since it evidently does not, I need to look for something that does work, and try to spend as little as I can manage and still get something tolerable.

Re: Din't buy an iPod, not buying an iPod. Just have access.

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

I know it's Jay's. But it's fundamentally useless to you. So you're going to have to get something else, which is why I posted the links. Creativelabs stuff will work too but you need a linux program to use it. Check this entire post out:

http://digg.com/linux_unix/the_PERFECT_mp3_player_for_Linux_geeks_Linux_friendly_hardware

Re: Didn't buy an iPod, not buying an iPod. Just have access.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

It sounded like you missed it from the title.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

That's the thing, "most" is not "all" and I don't care to find out that I got the one that doesn't work sanely by buying it and then finding out.

[sideband.livejournal.com]

Banshee can write to ipods.. uses a slightly different database format than iTunes does, but it works for non protected music. Try it out.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Did you miss the second paragraph? I tried banshee. It didn't do as claimed for me. I can import stuff from the iPod, but I can't get anything to the thing. It just utterly refuses to do that. I can try to drag and drop like it says I can and it does the animated "nope, that goes back, you can't do that" thing.

[sideband.livejournal.com]

Which distro/version of Linux?
Which kernel?
Do you have udev installed?
What appears in /var/log/messages when you plug the iPod in?
Which iPod is it (generation/version)?

Lynn has an iPod micro-thing (no display on it.. just a little 2GB keyfob looking thing.. forget the model name) that works just fine on KUbuntu 9.10 i386, both reading and writing.. Of course, we had to junk the iTunes database (after the download of all the music to the hard drive) to upload anything.

Apple changed their database format sometime in the last few years, and Banshee utterly refused to upload to it until I rebuilt the database and went back to the older version type. All her protected music re-uploaded and played on the thing after the upload under the old DB type, and it worked just fine.

Of course, you won't be able to play the protected content on the computer without iTunes, but that's to be expected with DRM in place.

In short, Banshee DOES work, provided you're willing to download everything to the computer, switch to the older DB version, then re-upload everything. I do not know the implications of it if you attempt to then use a newer version of iTunes on the thing after the conversion is done.

[yakko.livejournal.com]

I have a SanDisk Sansa Clip+ (4GB internal flash, was something like $50 or so, has microSD so you can expand it). It works as you want it to. It shows up on the desktop as one or two drives (depending on if the external storage is fitted). Just drop the MP3 files into the MUSIC directory and you're off.

[malterre.livejournal.com]

This is what we lend out at the college and seems pretty platform-friendly

[yakko.livejournal.com]

Another thing: while I do have several iPods and lots of AAC files, neither is really friendly in a general respect. AAC seems to be encumbered such that I have to download additional files for Ubuntu to play them. (I'm not even entirely sure if it's a patent issue or what, but I had to tell Rhythmbox to load the extra codec.) The iPod is encumbered because it's a "Mac" iPod, meaning that the filesystem type to Linux is hfsplus, and that means the filesystem will invariably be marked read-only.

I simply use the iPod on a Mac with iTunes, even though there's no real reason it HAS to be that way other than Steve Said So. This is why I got the Clip+ as an experiment.

(I can't wait for cars to support USB for player control. The car is pretty much the reason I have an iPod these days. The Clip+ is much more useful. The usefulness would be complete if it played (unprotected) AAC.)

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Aha, since Jay uses the iPod with his Mac(s), that explains the read-only-ness of it: filesystem screwiness. While I suppose I could fiddle around to get around that, having a sub-$100 solution that Just Works seems to be the best way to go here.

[sideband.livejournal.com]

Have you installed the Medibuntu repositories? (http://medibuntu.org) Certainly makes it easier to do things like convert aac to mp3, etc... and might also fix your Banshee issue.

[yakko.livejournal.com]

Oh... I'd forgotten about Medibuntu after gutsy. Added it and everything is better now. :o)

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

Don't bother with iTunes under WINE. It does something bizarre with the USB port, so you can't sync. I gave my 60 GB iPod to my niece, who has a MacBook and hence can use it fully. I have a COWON S9 of the 16GB persuasion. Excellent sound and display, and it indeed looks just like a flash drive when I connect it, but I can't say that I like the UI. Whatever else one can say about Apple, and quite a bit of that is NOT good (e.g. the way they're trying to set up an applications barrier to entry by denying developers the ability to use any portable layer above Apple's API), it did very much the right thing for podcasts, making it easy to know what you hadn't listened to and keeping old stuff from filling up the space. Also, the S9 doesn't know from h.264, which means no Cali Lewis for me unless I figure out some way to convert formats. OTOH, one can write a replacement UI... in Flash.