iPod - Rockbox Vs iPod Linux

[TheDean]

Hi all,

Just discovered the above. Is anyone currently using either? What do you think of them?

 

[TheDean]

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.

FLAC is the main reason I'm interested in RockBox tbh. How usable is it? Also - Can you dual boot rockbox with the original OS?

 

[TheDean]

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.

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)?!

 

[TheDean]

You can't play Doom on Rockbox. Chalk one up for Linux.

Oh yes you can!