Well, I got tired of waiting for Apple to add Ogg Vorbis support for
the iPod. So I installed rockbox, an open source replacement for the
Apple firmware. Here are the bullet points in case anyone is
interested:
Pros:
*Full Vorbis support. It works great.
*Full FLAC support. It works great.
*Fun options, like an oscilloscope.
*Neat free games.
*It's easy to go back to the apple firmware, and nothing rockbox does
to your iPod can do permanent damage (so they say).
*No more iTunes! Just copy over your mp3/vorbis files.
*Doesn't require repartitioning or an ext2 filesystem like ipodlinux.
*FOSS!
Cons:
*It crashes sometimes.
*Power management isn't good. The battery lasts four hours on my
(very) used iPod.
*It could be a lot easier to install.
*The menu system is hard to navigate. Depending on where you are in
the menu, the "take me back" button could be Menu, Previous, Select,
or Menu+Select. You could eventually get used to it...
*Dang it, it just crashed again.
Conclusion:
I could get used to the funky menu, but the crashes just suck. Maybe
I'll write some vorbis->mp3 conversion support into gtkpod to get my
music where it should be. And when I actually buy a music player for
myself (instead of repairing a broken ipod out of the trash) I'll get
one that supports vorbis natively....unless Apple decides to add
Vorbis support.
Eric
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