OK, so I got bored editing STATA output for my paper and decided to spend 2 hours of my life installing Linux on my iPod.
Turns out that, despite what the project claims, the installation was a pain in the wazoo. The installer does not run under 64-bit AMD – crashes with a seg fault. In the meantime, it managed to screw up my iPod’s partitions. So I had to backup my music, manually reformat the iPod, recreate all of the partitions and then manually install the ucLinux kernel. After messing around a bit, I got the kernel to work. The instructions were helpful.
Turning the iPod on, I got the boot menu — boots into Linux or Apple. The Linux program can’t access the Apple partition — although it should be able to (it’s FAT 32). That means you can’t play music from within Linux, which, again, you should be able to. Pretty limiting.
The Linux interface itself has a few utilities. Of these, perhaps the only marginally useful is the resistor codes table (if you are a physicist or engineer). The image editor has an incomprehensible user interface and the the text editor is unable to save. There is a big selection of games, but I was never big on gaming.
The clock resets when you reboot, which is pretty annoying.
I was pleased to find a terminal, and enthusiastically tried to open everyone’s favorite text editor by typing vi. I was disappointed to see that it is not fully supported.
In a move of desperation, I typed ping google.com. At least I got the comforting response: google.com: host not found.
For it to be a worthwhile adventure, at the least the iPod should be able to play music from your iTunes DB, while (remember, it’s Linux, so it should have no problem multitasking!) editing a text file.
The verdict: pretty neat, but completely useless.
