iPod Touch and Linux

[Tyler Aviss]

On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 6:21 PM, Thomas Milne
<tbrucemilne-TcoXwbchSccMMYnvST3LeUB+6BGkLq7r at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 9:04 PM, Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 12:32 AM, Thomas Milne
>> <tbrucemilne-TcoXwbchSccMMYnvST3LeUB+6BGkLq7r at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>> Anyone using this device with Linux, in particular with Debian?
>>>
>>> I looked at a couple of tutorials but they're aimed at Ubuntu (like
>>> seemingly everything), so some of the steps have me adding Ubuntu
>>> sources.
>>>
>>> I was looking over the release notes for Gnome 2.30 and its supposed
>>> to have good support for iPhone/Touch, just wondering how nasty are
>>> the hoops I have to jump through.
>>
>> If you want to do terribly much on it, you'll want it jailbroken.
>
> All I want to do for now is transfer some music, and none of the
> recent turorials I've seen even mention having to jailbreak.
>
>> I found the "ifuse" installation to be somewhat flakey/non-fun.  There
>> *are* packages of reasonably late-breaking versions of the tooling in
>> Debian/testing, so there's hope of it "all working."
>
> I'm on Testing/Unstable, with Gnome in Unstable, so I'm pretty sure I
> have the right versions of iFuse and libgpod, but there are some
> packages like iProxy that I can't find and only seem to come from
> Ubunut, but then again I don't know if i even really need iProxy.
>
>> But iTunes has the habit of overriding things, so the following
>> desirable scenario doesn't work out:
>>
>>  - Sync some stuff onto iPod from Win/Mac via iTunes
>>  - Sync more stuff onto iPod from Linux via GnuPod/similar
>>  - Sync back on Win/Mac iTunes instance, and get the "union of syncs."
>
> Ideally I would never have to use iTunes after the initial setup.
>
>> Unfortunately, that third step doesn't work :-(.  Sync again, and you
>> can expect to watch whatever you added from the Linux side disappear,
>> as iTunes "heals the errors" (and deems anything not done using iTunes
>> as An Error).
>>
>> GnuPod isn't unfriendly in that way; it'll happily regenerate its XML
>> file based on what files (music/video) it finds on the device.
>>
>> I can't speak for Amarok or the Gnome-related stuff; there *may* be
>> some friendlier bits.  I'm pretty sure you'll want to look up ifuse,
>> tho.
>>
>> And don't have high expectations as to how much interaction you can
>> have between the free tools and the extremely-not-free iTunes.
>>
>
> Basically I just want it to be recognized so I can transfer music to
> it. The rest can be done over WiFi.
>
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I used to use VirtualBox for some of those windows-centric tasks like
syncing iTunes and such. However, I found that iTunes *really* dogged
on my laptop, and assumed it didn't run well in the VM for some
reason, or didn't like the USB "bridge" that VirtualBox used. Then I
tried it in an actual windows machine. Multi-core CPU, 2GB of RAM,
windows XP without a VM, and it STILL made the machine run like a dog.

Having a working linux app for my phone would be great. I've used the
FUSE methods but I I'm going to try a box with Ubuntu 10 and see if
that works better since it looks like that had libimobiledevice....


-- 
Tyler Aviss
Systems Support
LPIC/LPIC-2/CLA

“Even enemies will help each other if they are together on a boat that
is in trouble. ” – Sun Tzu
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