Comments on: Lazy web: iPod Shuffle

By: gsuveg

gsuveg — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:55:24 +0000

hi,

me works good, i have a 2Gig shuffle, i LOVE it

By: treb0r

treb0r — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:47:19 +0000

Hey Rob,

After years of ipod slavery I got sick enough of Apple to look for an alternative, and boy have I found one.

The Cowon iAudio 7 has the best sound I’ve ever experienced from an mp3 player - blows the ipod away, especially with decent headphones (the included ear buds are pretty rubbish)

And it support Linux out of the box, and works really nicely with rythmbox…

http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/iaudio/7/

By: Mats Taraldsvik

Mats Taraldsvik — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:06:50 +0000

Hi,

Consider the SanDisk Sansa Clip. It even supports .ogg in a recent firmware update.

It is tinier than the shuffle, has a screen, and is either a mass storage device or MTP-device (you choose).

Also, it is very cheap.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:07:20 +0000

I’d recommend against it. I’ve had nothing but problems using my 5.5G Nano with Linux. My biggest gripe is I have to keep everything in MP3 format, which my songs are not currently. Secondly, rythmbox is imperfect and will happily put a .ogg or .flac file on the ipod which makes it freeze when playing. As a matter of fact the iPod likes to freeze with some of my MP3’s as well. I suspect iTunes would sanitize things somewhat (never used it) in a way Rythmbox doesn’t. All in all, my iPod doesn’t get used much just because it doesn’t work so smoothly with my collection based on Linux.

By: Derek Buranen

Derek Buranen — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:50:31 +0000

The Creative Zen Micro is so much better than the iPod shuffle and it works with Rhythmbox or any software. It’s just a USB mass storage device with no DRM and it has a screen where you can see the track name and other info.

Don’t support the freedom haters!

By: Vax

Vax — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:01:02 +0000

I’m running Ubuntu’s Rhythmbox 11.5 and sold out about a month ago. Last time I checked, I can play music from my new shuffle, but copying to it works like USB storage and doesn’t work with the shuffle’s database. I have fallen back to using gtkpod. I really wish this worked, since this is really the only Apple product I really like and I’d like to give one to my family members that I have using linux.

I’ll check again and post if I get new behavior from Rhythmbox

By: Paul Drain

Paul Drain — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:55:21 +0000

Hi Rob,

If you use 0.11.6, with teuf’s patch from GNOME bugzilla #358029 — your shuffle can be initialized and run automatically without the need for GTKPod, Yamipod, Floola or iTunes.

There’s some patches since 0.11.5 that are needed to get that patch working properly, so if your distro doesn’t ship it — you might need to compile it yourself.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:27:53 +0000

If it has to be an iPod, why not get one with a display and install Rockbox on it? You won’t need proprietary media-databases or activation for Rockbox.

http://www.rockbox.org/

By: jani mikkonen

jani mikkonen — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:22:53 +0000

Thanks for notifying, had to test it and yes, it works

PS. There seems to be bug in the blog software ?

Page says: “Welcome back jani mikkonen” but when hitting submit, i get Error: please fill the required fields (name, email).

By: Christophe Fergeau

Christophe Fergeau — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:08:00 +0000

Rob, rhythmbox should work nicely with an ipod shuffle, if it doesn’t, feel free to complain on #rhythmbox or on bugzilla since this would be a bug. Fwiw, I filled a brand new ipod classic with music using only linux tools (gtkpod to initialize the ipod the 1st time it was plugged in, and rhythmbox to add content to it), so I don’t expect the ipod shuffle to be significantly different.

Jani, rhythmbox has been able to write to ipods for years now, though that can be disabled at compile time if some required dependecies are missing