iPod and Kubuntu 9.10?

[wrender]

I wish to use my friends ipod and "borrow" music with my kubuntu laptop. Does anyone know how that works?

Is it like a portable drive that just shows up? Do I have to sync it with something?


Also I have read that people say it will erase all the music on the ipod if they plug it back into their mac/win computer.

Does anyone have experiences to share?

[Ptihibou]

Re: iPod and Kubuntu 9.10?

I do not have an Ipod but I daily transfer podcasts and music to my Creative Zen X-fi device without any problems. I use Banshee which recognize it right away or gpodder podcast reader. In the latter case I had to install Python-pymtp using Synaptics. I did not plug it back to a laptop using Windows as I finally got rid of Windows for good

Hope this helps

[arist]

Re: iPod and Kubuntu 9.10?

The iPod is recognized by Kubuntu as an iPod, and it will open your file manager as though you had just plugged in a portable drive. But you will not be able to transfer music back and forth using the file manager: in fact, you won't find the music on the iPod at all. Apple doesn't let you access it that easily. You need an application designed specifically to sync the iPod, such as iTunes, which Apple has not made available for Linux. There are several apps in the Kubuntu repositories that will do the job. I have used only gtkpod, which works. I find it to be a tremendous hassle, which is why I would never buy an iPod for myself: other mp3 players can be handled with Dolphin or another file manager. If all you want is to transfer tunes from iPod to laptop, gtkpod will work fine.

The bit about the computer erasing the tunes--as punishment?--sounds like a myth. I've synced an iPod with gtkpod, and later with iTunes on Windows, and nothing was erased.

[wrender]

Re: iPod and Kubuntu 9.10?

I was hoping just to get music off of his ipod and transfer it to my laptop.... I'll give the gtkpod a shot. See how it goes.

[Tecumseh]

Re: iPod and Kubuntu 9.10?

iTunes has a default setting of syncing the ipods with the local database. If you transfer music from a different iTunes installation you'll lose the songs that were on your ipod.

[kapil]

Re: iPod and Kubuntu 9.10?

yes.. you can sync music from computer to ipod, to do so.. you will either need iTunes or Songbird.

while saving data in ipod. different format is used and single song is saved in fragmented pattern so that it will not be possible to drag drop the song from ipod to laptop/computer. (since apple believes in and promotes copyright protection)
still there are plug-ins in Songbird which allows to transfer music from comp to ipod without fragmenting procedure (though i haven't used it yet so can't give review on that)

in simple words.. you won't be able to transfer music/videos from ipod to computer.
computer => sync to => ipod .. is allowed..
ipod => sync to => computer .. is not allowed. by default iTunes will delete all the songs from ipod and will sync whatever you have selected in iTunes with ipod.

[ScottyK]

Re: iPod and Kubuntu 9.10?

Thanks for the heads up about Banshee. I've also got a Creative Zen X-FI, and I was looking for something to get it to be "found" by Kubuntu. I'll give the program a try.