I’m finding myself more and more engrossed in the ongoing efforts to make the iPhone/iPod touch usable with Linux. As it stands, they can’t mount via USB, and can’t be synced over ssh under the 2.0 firmware. I know that I could easily revert the firmware on my ipod and do it that way, but I thoroughly enjoy the apps, whether they’re from the App Store, Cydia, or Installer. So I’m resigned to tracking the efforts of others.
The first effort is the project. There’s not a lot of information there, but the goal is to break the hashing algorithm used on iPhone OS 2.0 so that Linux users can sync their iPods/iPhones. I’m wondering if they will contribute this back to the , they don’t have much information about this.
The other effort is , a project to mount an iPhone/iPod touch via USB. It looks like they have been successful to a degree, but are only recommending that developers install it. Syncing via USB is also still impossible because of the new hashing algorithm. This interests me because I’ve tried using my Touch with iTunes on VirtualBox, but since it doesn’t mount to USB, it can’t be connected to the VM. If the hash-breaking efforts take longer, I may have this to fall back on.
In the meantime, I’ll try to learn more useful and scholarly stuff. That oughtta kill some time.
Once again, I had a post on the go but it wasn’t very interesting, but now I definitely have a reason to blather.
Through a complicated series of transactions, I find myself with a new ipod touch. This was pretty high on the list of things I wanted, because I love computing on a small scale, and this lets me do a lot more then with my old iPod 5G (Classic, if you accept the retrograded title).
First I wanted to see what the official store had to offer, but I didn’t want to pay the $10 for the iPhone 2.0 firmware update. Who wants to pay for firmware? Luckily, it is very easy to I actually didn’t end up looking at much of the apps there, so I moved towards jailbreaking it. Unfortunately, I felt the repercussions of that misdeed quite quickly.
I had every intention of syncing music to the touch with Amarok, but with the 2.0 firmware, Apple changed the hash algorithm used to sync music with iTunes. So I am stuck waiting for the algorithm to be broken again, unless I go and reinstall a Windows partition and run it by VM.
Another problem I have is with having to use iTunes to do podcasts, even though the thing is web enabled. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I’ve always wanted a DAP with Wi-Fi that could download them directly. But as I found out (and expected), the touch doesn’t work that way. The file system on the touch (which can be viewed from the MobileTerminal app from Cydia or Installer) is only half there, the music and movies locked into the iTunes proprietary filesystem. Safari’s downloading capability is limited to saving photos.
The only respite from that particular issue is a webapp, the , which can manage subscriptions and stream them. Originally, I didn’t really think it was useful because I had to be in a hotspot, and it’s hard to find those on the subway. However, I’ve grown fond of it, being able to listen to podcasts at home. It is a little buggy, but its in beta, so that’s expected. It also doesn’t remember where you last paused it, which is great for long podcasts that you can’t listen to in one sitting.
By this point, I should be pretty annoyed at the whole process, but I find myself becoming less fanatic about things. It’s really all my fault for buying the thing in the first place. I jumped on an opportunity (thanks, sis!) and then working to make it useful to me. And I’ve had a lot of fun in the process. I’m playing with applications and enjoying how much better the Cydia and Installer applications are then the App Store ones. I can read books on it, I can use it as a flashlight (with maximum brightness, something you won’t get from the App Store)… who needs music?
In life news, I moved, started 4th year of university, and am helping to take care of a lovely Golden Retriever named Ollie. More on that later.
I know it’s been a while since my first post, but nobody’s reading this anyway. Also, I am not getting nearly as much time online, working 9-5 in the shop and never being home to user my own computer.
To solve this problem, I am drafting this post on my BlackBerry. This is mostly to kill time on my 30 minute subway ride from Yonge-Bloor to Islington, and because BrickBreaker is one of the most frustrating games in existence, crafted by RIM to drive people crazy enough to get back to work.
The only problem is that I don’t have any way to transfer it from the BB to my computer. There is a program for Linux called barry that can sync a BB with your mail, calendar, etc, but to put it simply, there is no 64-bit .deb package to rely upon, meaning I would have to compile it from source. Embarrassingly, this is something i still don’t know how to do. It also requires Opensync, which seems also needlessly hard to get to work properly. However, in the interest of bettering myself and then displaying it for all (more likely none) to see, I will investigate this further. Eventually.
Despite all the mess, I recently discovered when i switched to Hardy that my BB can charge via USB, something I couldn’t do in Gutsy even with barry installed.
Another Linux issue I’ve encountered recently is WPA. I wasn’t able to get it working in Gutsy even with barry installed. I believe this is because i was using ndiswrapper as the driver for my wireless card, rather then using the one from the restricted drivers manager. Luckily, I rarely encounter WPA.
Otherwise, I’m pretty happy with my current setup on Xubuntu. My desktop is pretty much a copy of Random’s xfce layout. I also followed a that detailed how to get changing wallpapers in xfce. Apparently, xfce can create lists of wallpapers, but only changes them on startup, which seems pretty dumb. A simple hack completes the process, with no resource-hogging deamons to manage that task, all handled nicely by cron.
As I was looking at this post on the BlackBerry, it looked unbearably long, but it looks okay on screen.
I’ll be back soon with more subway-boredom-induced rants.