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Get More From Your iPod: Rockbox and iPodLinux |
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Thursday, 05 April 2007 |
Although Rockbox works on multiple devices, I am going to focus on the iPod, mainly because I have one and it is what the majority of people today own.
iPodLinux is obviously an incarnation of Linux, and Rockbox is a firmware written from scratch. They are meant to be firmware replacements, although I find them to be good supplementary firmwares, not just for the cool factor of having Linux on your iPod, but the fact that you are triple booting your iPod as well. The easiest way to have either one of these is to install the other, because they complement each other, as the iPodLinux bootloader allows you to choose iPodLinux, Rockbox, the Apple Firmware, or disk mode. You can add other items to the bootloader as needed, because many applications for iPodLinux are required to be boot outside of iPodLinux's GUI.
Enough of my hot air, let me give you the lowdown on some of the features of these two amazing implementations of Linux:
- YOU CAN PLAY DOOM ON YOUR iPOD!!!
- If you choose to use one of these replacement firmwares as your primary, you can just drag and drop mp3 and other audio files onto the iPod
- You can play FLAC, OGG, SHN, and other popular lossless audio codecs
- Video playback is possible in Rockbox through Pluginmpegplayer
- There are tons of free opensource add-ons for both iPL and Rockbox, including games, text editors, drawing applications, and more (play Bejeweled, breakout, PAC-Man (iPL has a MAME port you can play, and development is going on for iNES))
- The sky's the limit, as you can pretty much make your iPod do anything, within reason
For a list of applications for iPodLinux, click here.
For a list of applications for Rockbox, click here.
The easy thing about it is that you don't have to do a bunch of manual repartitioning on your iPod to get this done (unless you only use Linux or Mac, in which case I believe there are installer scripts), because there is a Windows installer for iPodLinux. Once it is installed, their wiki contains a guide on how to install Rockbox following the installation of iPodLinux. The forums and wiki on both development sites are very useful if you get stuck, but I must admit that this is a cool concept!
What are you wating for? Go try these out!
Note:THERE IS NO WAY YOU CAN BRICK YOUR iPod DOING THIS, UNLESS THE HARD DRIVE FAILS OR SOMETHING CRAZY LIKE THAT! IT DOES NOT VOID YOUR WARRANTY, PROVIDED YOU RESTORE IT TO FACTORY CONDITION BEFORE YOU SEND IT IN FOR SERVICE!
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