Apr 4, 2008

Rhythmbox and my iPod

Rhythmbox is the default music player on Ubuntu. I've heard wonderful things about Amarok, however I still have yet to try it out. Rhythmbox is great, even makes me not miss Winamp so much anymore. It does all the normal stuff, like play my music, let me search through the library, sort by various things like artist, album, etc. It even keeps track of how many times I play a particular song. Shows which music on my list I actually listen to.

So I finally caved and bought an iPod not too long ago. I dislike Apple nearly as much as Microsoft, but I figured I'd give it a shot. I plug in the iPod and...nothing happens. Doesn't detect it or anything. So I do a quick Google search for "ubuntu ipod" which brings me to a page that says the iPod must first be formatted before I use it. Ok then, I reboot into Windows, download iTunes, and format the thing. Cool, so Windows now sees it. I reboot into Ubuntu, and what happens? Something! Rhythmbox detects it and pops it up on the side with all the playlists and what-not that I can dump stuff into. So I can drag and drop music onto my iPod now.

So hooray, I can mindlessly stare out the window with white earbuds in my ears. Speaking of which, I wonder if my huge headphones will work with the iPod, I like those better.

7 comments:

Guillaume Theoret said...

You really should try Amarok. It's the best music player of any platform (linux, windows or mac)

Rob Britton said...

I'll try it out one of these days, don't worry.

Anonymous said...

xmms is winamp for linux... atm i cant get it becouse the package manager isnt completed yet, (thats what i get for going cutting edge XP) it looks like winamp and kinda works like it

Rob Britton said...

Yeah I remember XMMS, I used it years ago with Mandrake (back when Mandrake was still called that). The problem with it is that it is still buggy and the original developers stopped working on it years ago.

Unknown said...

I had the same problem, if you google Songbird which is a good player in it's own right it has full ipod support and is capable of formatting a new or windows ipod, then you can either continue using Songbird if you like it or your ipod will now magically work with Rhythembox and any other program in Ubuntu...

http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Developer/Articles/Builds/Contributed_Builds

artsrc said...

In Ubuntu 9.04 Rhythmbox works with a mac formatted iPod.

However I seem to have to run a fsck if I disconnect it with out ejecting it. Maybe this is because i tried to turn off journalling.

Rob Britton said...

@artsrc: Yes this is because an iPod is basically a Flash disk. If you write to it at all, the memory may become corrupt if you just yank it out - it's the same under Windows, not sure about Mac.
I guess Linux is just a bit more picky about running diagnostics...