Linux's iPod Generation Gap 533
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."
I use my iPod with Linux (Score:5, Funny)
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!
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Once we work out these small flaws, it should all be smooth sailing, at least for music... Video is a whole other matter.
Re:I use my iPod with Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
I dunno, exactly the same thing could potentially happen if you remove an iPod from a Macintosh without ejecting it.
Funny but wrong (Score:5, Informative)
- 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?
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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*.
A million Monkeys (Score:3, Funny)
and yet they can't. what is going on with that? I think by now, we've kinda grasped the things that make a good desktop. If no-one can bring that simple magic to linux now, they never will.
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Perhaps Linux could take a tip from both Microsoft and Apple in how they support hardware.
These companies make decisions of what hardware they are willing to support and which ones they are not going to support. Apple has an absolute stranglehold on the hardware that goes into their computers. This makes it pretty easy to make software that works. They are able to leverage their control of both hardware and software to combine a very solid solution.
In slightly different methodologies, Microsoft has a v
And the counter-point is (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
http://amarok.kde.org/ (Score:3, Interesting)
I Work n Amarok (Score:3, Interesting)
Amarok beats iTunes in quite a few ways; eg. wikipedia artist-lookup, lyrics lookup, suggesting music from you collection for you to play next, last.fm integration, cover downloads, playback formats supported, etc. Certainly we have every feature iTunes has except a music store. And we have patches to allow purchases from Magnatune sitting on the mailing list.
We aren't as simple as iTunes. Out interface shines in some areas, like our drag an
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Like iTunes? :P
iTunes IS bloated (Score:2, Informative)
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The only functionality that you listed that Amarok is missing is buying music - a pretty nonvital and trivial to implement feature. I'd be ready to wake you up when it's implemented, but I think
Re:You're delusional...Suckah (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
You're delusional and owned. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
I beg to disagree... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Presently, Linux is:
Catching up with windows binary support
Working on MacOSX binary support
Keeping well ahead of video format support
Whooping ass at new-and-innovative native applications
Whooping ass at reinventing old-and-ubiquitous applications
etc, ad inf.
To those who pooh-pooh the state of linux, may I suggest: You don't keep up well
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However, the ways I can see linux making way into the home desktop are by having major vendors offer linux computers like the windows ones they offer (for example, a line of linux computers that come with everything preinstalled and heavily marketed), or linux having some killer app everyone wants (
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Re:I beg to disagree... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even more to the point, as long as there's even one app running on MS or Mac that isn't on Linux, the naysayers and fanbois will claim that Linux isn't ready for the desktop because of that one app. No matter how good Linux is, how much better its stability and security, how many apps there are for it, as long as the fanbois can point to one thing that isn't duplicated to their satisfaction, they'll continue to claim it's not ready yet.
Linux is ready for the desktop, right now. It's ready for Aunt Minnie because Aunt Minnie isn't going to be installing her own software on Linux anymore than she is on Windows. What it isn't ready for is the MS/Mac zealots, but then, it never will be because they have no desire to change, nor to admit there even is a viable alternative to their favorite OS.
not a typical mac zealot rant (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is ready for the desktop, right now. [...] What it isn't ready for is the MS/Mac zealots, but then, it never will be because they have no desire to change, nor to admit there even is a viable alternative to their favorite OS.
I would say that Linux was ready for the desktop ten years ago, and has become LESS useable since then. I am currently running SuSE 10.1, and while it was slightly easier to install than Slack 2, it's a complete mess as far as user interface goes. The old Unix desktop paradi
Re:I beg to disagree... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironically, this is because Windows and OSX are plots to take over the world; whereas Linux is just an operating system.
KFG
iPod != iTunes (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Ipod? That's easy! (Score:5, Insightful)
At the very least the title of the article is misleading BS.
Re:Ipod? That's easy! (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, you can. (Score:5, Informative)
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?
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It doesn't hide it at all. iTunes by default automatically unmounts an iPod when it's done syncing it. As far as Windows is concerned, an iPod is simply a USB "mass storage" device and it can be accessed like one. That's how iTunes syncs the music to the iPod, it copies it over using normal file access.
When an iPod is plugged in, you can click the iPod icon in the lower right corner of iTunes to bring up the iPod options dialog. On the Music tab there's a checkbox that reads "enable disk use." With i
Linux fussy about hardware (Score:4, Funny)
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Where's that fud tag, anyway? It's definately deserved here.
DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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If you think that the majority of space on all the iPods in the world is filled up with music from iTunes... Well you've got another thing comming.
Besides, people don't buy iPods because they support fairplay DRM. They buy them because they play music on a fashionable easy to use device. They could care less as long as DRM is invisible and non-intrusive.
As soon as that DRM starts screwing them over
Mod parent down: Wrong (Score:2)
This is an absolutely untrue statement.
Hopefully it's just being spoken out of ignorance and not malice, but at any rate, it's misleading.
iTunes encodes music that you rip from a CD to bog standard MP3 files, WAV files, AIFF files, or AAC files. With the exception of AAC files, which despite being an open format may not have a Linux codec, all of them work equally well on all platforms, us
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Just one of the reasons why Linux is ahead of commercial OSes. Everything on my hard-drive will live forever through countless generations of computers with no fear of some DRM scheme or closed architecture rendering the data useless.
Bread and games (Score:2, Insightful)
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Not just ipods (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
You're half right (Score:3)
But virtualization can change that. The ability to run Linux or Mac OS X or Windows as a virtual machine on top of Linux, or OS X, or Windows is a huge win. It means that you can have your cake and eat it, too - you can use what ever OS you need to run the app or connect to the peripheral, then switch back to the OS you'd rather u
Linux and iPod stuff (Score:2)
don't fix linux, fix the damn ipod (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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My mp3 player actually works better on Linux than on windows - maybe people should just buy different ones... and I also feel a little like we should just stop worrying about the fact that not a lot of people use linux. I say good. Let windows keep getting all the viruses and the crap DRM and adware (I know linux is technically stronger as well as implemented better but I do thin
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On Ubuntu (Score:2)
Step 2. Select Banshee and click ok
Step 3. Start Banshee
Step 4. Plug in Ipod
Why appeal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Individual desktop users are irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Rockbox makes using iPod easy under GNU/Linux (Score:3, Informative)
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 [rockbox.org]. 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.
I always have the same thing to say... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Redherring.com is aptly named (Score:5, Insightful)
When will we get to mod articles "-1, Troll"?
"just works" in Dapper... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Linux needs to get its act together (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Re:Linux needs to get its act together (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Linux needs to get its act together (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Linux needs to get its act together (Score:5, Informative)
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 [gtkpod.org] work on Linux (even the new ones). How about that for good service, and all for free I might add.
iTunes is good despite iTMS, not because of it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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True, most of us have a relatively small amount of purchased music. However ii doubt most of us are willing to simply throw out what we BOUGHT becuase it is only a small part of the libary or we would NOT have BOUGHT it in the first place!
i can see this being a deal-breaker for alot of people
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Simply connect a patch cable from your Windows PC or Mac running iTunes to your Linux box (or you could do it all in software by running iTunes in a Virtual Machine), fire up your "Purchased Music" playlist, and the Linux mach
Re:iTunes is good despite iTMS, not because of it. (Score:5, Informative)
> and a portable-device-syncronization manager
Sounds a little like amarok..
Re:Linux needs to get its act together (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Well, yes. The strength of the OSS movement is that, technically, anything can be done. The fact that this has yet to be done points at a larger problem - the people who can, don't.
Say iPod support is created by this time next year. By then, the Next Cool Thing will be around. How long for Linux support for t
Re:Linux needs to get its act together (Score:5, Informative)
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?Re: (Score:2)
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It is when that's the mp3 player people want to use.
Users come first. It's just that simple.
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My preferred mail client is Evolution [novell.com]... but Windows can't run it.
By your logic, that's a Windows shortcoming because Novell hasn't created a Windows version?
Interesting thought, but I don't follow.
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My Archos MP3 player is about as cross-platform as anything I've seen... did they design it to work with Linux? No.
But they didn't go out of their way to prevent its use with Linux. Apple didn't HAVE to make it so you can't load songs on it with ONLY iTunes.
But for their own very good reasons, they did.
That is not a shortcoming of Linux.
People have pointed out numerous
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Sure, you can carefully arrange your music into folders if you've got the time, but even then you can only have each song in one "list", unless you're willing to make multiple copies of your music for navigation purposes. Any sufficiently large music player needs an playlist/organization system, or it will be almost useless. It's not a matter of being proprietary, it's a matter of acceptably fast access to large amounts of discrete data elements.
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Not friendly to anyone who can't do a Google search. My kids got a genuine I-Pod. The machine I provided them has Ubuntu Daper Drake. I gathered from Google that the Banchee Music player supports the I-Pod except for the DRM stuff. In addition to sending music to the player, it can upload from the player. It that respect it's better than I-Tunes for my kids. Installing it was a snap. On the menu bar I selected Applications. On the pull down I selec
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And all I had to do to get my iPod running was click 'Install support for iPod'. It did all the heavy lifting, and even put in gtkPod for me.
Mind you, it doesn't work with iTunes, but lets face it, if you're considering Linux, chances are you've already rejected the DRM-encrusted mess that is iTunes.
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I love music. I buy, on average, an album per week. Back in the day, it was CDs, then I gave up paying money for music and just grabbed what I wanted from Napster. Then it was a mess to find what I wanted on Gnutella or whatever, and I just stuck with what I already had.
Then iTunes came out for Windows, and I started buying my music that way.
My only complaint with the iTunes DRM in the couple of years I've used it is that when I sell/upgrade my computer, I forget to deauthorize it. Ot
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Re:Linux needs to get its act together (Score:4, Informative)
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)
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So why use it? If the point of the computer is to run photoshop, iTunes and the occasional game and you have spent the large amount of money for photoshop then it makes sense to use the environment it was designed for - or something that works tolerably with it like recent versions of MS windows if the games you like do not run on a Mac.
Linux is for when you take the task based approach, where the requirement is for example - "to edit text", but if you take the applicatio
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Frankly, I don't know. I suspect that as a portable music player things will go swimmingly, but there's not iTunes for Linux so you can't do the whole music purchase thing.
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http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/05/18/2
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So something like:
Is too difficult? [ubuntu.com]
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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
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Well... If you use Ubuntu, you can just check off the application you want to install instead of using apt-get.
If you use Red Hat... Well... I dunno.
Personally, I use a Mac, but Ubuntu isn't that hard to use if you want to use it.
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Linux is user-friendly. It's just picky about who its friends are.
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Ease of use is a question that centers around which distro you're talking about, and for Ubuntu, the usability gap has closed significantly.
Ubuntu Dapper does everything I need it to do. I'll freely admit to a higher level of technical know-how than most users, but I didn't have to exercise any of it to install a usable distribution that had Rhythmbox c
Mod parent down (Score:2)
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This is a common anti-linux troll that pops up on occation when Linux usability is in discussion. Normally the app is quake.
Please take note how the AC didnt even bother to edit the whole post before submitting:
User: "How do I get my iPod to run in Windows?"
Zealot: "Oh that's easy! If you have Redhat, you have to download quake_3_rh_8_i686_010203_glibc.bin....
You are kidding, aren't you? (Score:2)
1: iPods work under linux. Through the hard, evidently thankless, work of people reverse engineering them. Depending on which distribution you use, when you plug your iPod in, the icon that pops up on the desktop will be the correct model and colour.
2: iTunes will never work under linux, unless under wine or similar. iTunes is Apple Computer Inc.'s proprietary music distribution service. It is not open to outsiders. There have been several efforts to make compati
Re:Linux needs to get its act together (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Linux needs to get its act together (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm sorry, but fuck the iPod. (Score:4, Funny)
Does the detox support vorbis?
KFG
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The uneducated consumer may decide that rental and subscription services works for him. That a one click download of a Rhapsody playlist is a better use of his time than spending hours trolling BT and the P2P
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong.
>No major distro supports mp3s by default.
Wrong. Mandriva/Mandrake does and always has. If, by "suppport", you mean PLAYING mp3 files. Now CREATING mp3 files is not included. That takes all of about 1 min to download and load the lame rpm from PLF.
>They crash. A Lot
I have never had Amarok "crash", but I do tend to use xmms the most.
>Not only that but they rely almost completely on id3 tags, which sucks if your music collection h