Sean’s Blog

I’ve never been a big fan of ITunes. When I first permanently switched over to Linux about a year ago, I had a bit of a quandary. Itunes wasn’t supported (although I believe it is now via Wine)and the IPod utilities that I was aware of just really weren’t appealing to me. GTKPod was kind of ugly and kludgy, but it worked for a little while. Then I ran across Rockbox.

RockBox isn’t an Itunes replacement, it’s a replacement for the Ipod firmware. What this means is that when your Ipod starts up, it loads a program that is basically a little operating system, which plays the songs, displays stuff on the screen, handles the click wheel, and all that other good stuff. Rockbox replaces that.

Rockbox has a pretty simple installer and works on a bunch of MP3 players, not just Ipods. What’s so great about Rockbox? Here are what I see as the pros and cons:

Pros

• More formats supported - OGG, MP3/4, FLAC, AAC, WAV, etc. You name it, Rockbox can pretty much play it.
• Folder Style Management - Folders are used, so if you want to have a dir called Podcasts, you can put that up at the same level as the Music folder so they are not mixed in.
• Customizable - You can change just about everything from how it looks (tons of premade themes are available) to how it sounds (more EQ settings then you can shake a stick at).
• Platform Independence - I manage Rockbox on my home computer with Exaile for Linux, on my work computer, I use MediaMonkey on Windows. As long as your computer can mount the player, you can use whatever audio program you like to manage it (including ITunes).
• No harm to the Apple Firmware - If you don’t like it, you can always switch back to your Apple firmware. It is still there after you install Rockbox.
• The Wow Factor - People’s jaws drop when they see what you’ve done to your ipod. Plus you can play Doom on it

Cons:

• Different Navigation - Moving with the ipod click wheel is a little different and take some getting used to within Rockbox.
• M3U Playlists - These playlists are a little primitive and if you move or rename files, the playlist cannot find them.
• Bye, bye warranty - You pretty much void your warranty when you install new firmware.

All in all, since I’ve been using Rockbox, I’ve really had no desire to go back to Apple’s default. There are a ton more things you can do with Rockbox which I haven’t gotten to try out, but give it a look. you just may like it.

Here is the link to Rockbox.