No reason, really, other than to see what it's like. And because Amarok already wiped my ipod clean so it was as good a time as any. I think my real motivation is that I saw a screenshot of a gameboy emulator running on an ipod, but there's no way i'll get that to work.

will you have to call it a lipod?

i don't know. but i could call it "bipodal," since it dual-boots to the ipod os.

nerd

no doubt

Give Rockbox a whirl.

is it way better than ipodlinux?

I don't really know much about iPodLinux. I think Rockbox also has a Gameboy emulator, though.

EDIT: The only comparison I could find: http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=3890.0 Doesn't make Rockbox seem that appealing, unless iPL isn't working right.

looks aweome. if you dont like it can you reload the native ipod firmware?

are you sure you don't have that backwards?

I only half-read it. I read: "iPL plays music and video and makes me breakfast. Rockbox plays music."

Yup. The Apple firmware remains unchanged, you just have to hold menu when the iPod is booting and it will bring you back to the standard interface.

I should point out... that post is a month old. You'd be amazed at what they can accomplish in 30 days. Personally, I haven't tried Rockbox on an iPod, but I do have it on my iRiver and it's amazing. Just the fact that mp3s play without gaps (and it'll even crossfade) is worth the time it takes to install it. Add FLAC support, customizable GUI and countless other features and I'm hooked for good.

I want an update on this.
Does the Linux operating system work faster than the ipods?

Did the ipodlinux thing for a while last year in a futile effort to get video on my iPod photo. Worked for a while and was fun to play around in.

Rockbox sounds pretty cool, though.

No to ipodlinux, but rockbox is making me very happy. It's fast, stable, and 4 billion times more customizable than the apple firmware. PLUS you can get some great games like tetris & sudoku. There are some cool themes (including a decent approximation of the apple theme if you're married to it). My only frustration is that all of the available fonts are a little too small or a little too big, so I'll probably make my own soon.

Apparently you can only really get gapless playback by re-encoding your music (for example to .ogg). Not sure if I'm ready to tackle this yet, but I've got enough space on my harddrive to have 2 copies if I want to try it without dumping my mp3s.

LAME encoded MP3s should play gaplessly. All other MP3s should be gappy.

Perhaps a rockbox test is in order, so I can verify. I know they're gapless in fooBar.

More like, NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRD!!!

Does this also allow you to make playlists on the go ala Ipod?

This is the only thing that annoys me about my iriver

Yes, it supports on-the-fly playlists, and the shuffle is a lot more random than the original firmware's is.

I just confirmed the gaplessness of LAME-encoded MP3s. Unfortunately, the current daily build's playback on my iPod photo is still way choppy even with crossfeed, replaygain (!), and equalizer off and lots of space on the hard drive. I could see myself using this long-term once this improves. The developers have acknowledged as a bug.

my buddy plays the original doom on his ipod and its so fucking dumb and i make fun of him