iPod - Rockbox Vs iPod Linux
- Thread starter TheDean
- Start date
IMHO they are both equally good methods at bricking expensive audio hardware.
Rockbox seems to be a more usable alternative to the Apple firmware, whilst ipod linux is really a case of doing something "because you can". I have ipod linux on my old 2G ipod and it can be quite amusing logging into a serial terminal on it via Firewire. However as it can't even play 128Kbps music at full speed and struggles even more with higher bitrate recordings it is essentially useless for playing music on.
Rockbox seems to be a more usable alternative to the Apple firmware, whilst ipod linux is really a case of doing something "because you can". I have ipod linux on my old 2G ipod and it can be quite amusing logging into a serial terminal on it via Firewire. However as it can't even play 128Kbps music at full speed and struggles even more with higher bitrate recordings it is essentially useless for playing music on.
For me the decision came down to how each of them perform as a music player, and rockbox won because it has working FLAC file support (It seems some aspects of FLAC support are broken in ipodlinux at the moment).
With regards to what the above poster says about them 'bricking' the hardware, it's acutally pretty much impossible for software to do that. Both rockbox have their own routines for backing up the original firmware and then restoring when uninstalling, and even if that fails you can still restore an ipod to factory defaults with the apple updater. I've restored to defaults a couple of times while testing and all it costs is the time to copy your music back over to the ipod.
With regards to what the above poster says about them 'bricking' the hardware, it's acutally pretty much impossible for software to do that. Both rockbox have their own routines for backing up the original firmware and then restoring when uninstalling, and even if that fails you can still restore an ipod to factory defaults with the apple updater. I've restored to defaults a couple of times while testing and all it costs is the time to copy your music back over to the ipod.
TheDean said:
From the wiki: "Rockbox has a dual-boot feature. To boot into the original firmware, shut down the device as described above. Turn on the Hold switch immediately after turning the player on. Once Rockbox displays the message “Loading original firmware ...” you may turn the Hold switch off. Rockbox will boot into the original firmware."
In terms of usability it's as good, and with some plugins and themes is better, than the default firmware. The only problems are obviously HD space and battery life, which I clock at around 5 hours on my 4th gen colour. The sound quality increase and the ability to use open source sound files outweighs those problems for me. I don't use itunes anymore as rockbox doesn't require it and the music folders can simply be dragged over to the ipod like a hard drive and it will pick them up.
pxmm said:
That's excellent. I think I'll have a go at configuring it all this weekend as it certainly doesn't look like a 5 minute job! Bit dissapointed regarding the battery life though. I thought it was suppossed to last 20hrs (5.5G iPod Video)?!
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You can't play Doom on Rockbox. Chalk one up for Linux.
Rockbox has Tetris, it's all you'll ever need trust me.
I've been dual booting for a week, use rockbox for music in general just listening through albums, then go into ipod for watching movies and podcasts, i also use the default 'Shuffle Songs' feature on the ipod firmware as i can't seem to do anything as easily as that on the rockbox firmware, but i rarely listen on shuffle now. iPod's firmware seems to have a louder electrical hiss to it than rockbox as well, still not intrusive, but noticeable.
I've been dual booting for a week, use rockbox for music in general just listening through albums, then go into ipod for watching movies and podcasts, i also use the default 'Shuffle Songs' feature on the ipod firmware as i can't seem to do anything as easily as that on the rockbox firmware, but i rarely listen on shuffle now. iPod's firmware seems to have a louder electrical hiss to it than rockbox as well, still not intrusive, but noticeable.