Written by tjchan on Friday, March 9, 2007

Linux for 5.5g iPods!


penguin

Great news from the iPod Linux Project! 5.5 generation iPods can now run Linux! Hurray! Why would I want to run Linux on my iPod? Well, for starters, try expanding the use of an iPod to much more than Apple designed it to be. Here’s a small list to whet your appetite….

  • Support for more CODECS such as Ogg and Mod
  • Ability to run games and applications (Calculator, Connect 4, Chopper, Phone Dialer, Wikipedia Reader, Word Processor, and much, much more)
  • It’s just plain cool – showoff your technophile prowess

Finally, it will still take sometime before many of the programs will work on the 5.5g iPods as the current success only means the availability of a bootloader (you can boot Linux but nothing really can be done yet). Be on the look out as applications and games begin getting to get ported over to work fully with the 5.5g iPod. It shouldn’t be long now as the bootloader usually is the greatest hurdle – after that it’s smoother sailing. For more information, check out the iPod Linux Projects FAQ.

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More in iPhone/iPod Touch | 5 Comments


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5 Comments

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dgoldring
Mar 9, 2007

How exactly would you do word processing on an iPod…and why??

Doug


tjchan
Mar 9, 2007

You would use Podwrite.
http://ipodlinux.org/Special:Module/podwrite

Why would you do that? Good question…even if you can doesn’t always mean you should.

Here’s PodWrite in action:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fhke/102481964/


dgoldring
Mar 9, 2007

This just makes no sense to me. Is Apple trying to turn the iPod into a sort of PDA? If so, then just say they are making a Linux PDA. But an iPod is designed to do one thing: play media. I don’t really understand why you would want to do wordprocessing on a screen that tiny.

Doug


tjchan
Mar 9, 2007

It’s not making it into a PDA – and remember, this is fan based. Programmers are re-writing and hacking the stuff for fun…Apple’s not doing it. It’s a challange for people and it just expands the limits of the iPod.

I agree with the wordprocessing bit…but the games ARE fun…that and some of the apps are just plain useful – like file transfer between iPods (both of them with Linux) with a firewire cable.


dgoldring
Mar 9, 2007

Yeah, I get playing games. Trust me. I will play a game on just about anything. I also get some of the utilities and that sort of thing. But in the article, you specifically mentioned word processing and I was trying to figure out how that would work. As it is, I can barely do word processing on my Axim screen. :)

Doug

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