ipod on linux

["Shiv Kumaar" <shivkumar@satyam.net.in>]

Doctoring an IPod to Run on Linux

By Leander Kahney  |  Also by this reporter
 Page 1 of 1


Ever since Apple released the iPod more than a year
ago, fans have wanted the portable music player to do more than just play
digital music.

The long wish list of features includes using it as a universal remote and
as a portable hard drive to store digital photos or movies when a camera's
memory card fills up.


However, there's been no way to do these things. Although the iPod has the
hardware necessary -- it's built like a PDA with a whopping hard drive --
the software is a closed system, with no documentation or tools to help
developers turn it into something else.

That is, until now.

After four months of stout effort, programmer Bernard Leach has managed to
get Linux running on his iPod. Although still in the early stages, this
development may allow hackers to bypass Apple's closed operating system on
the iPod by using Linux, an open and freely available operating system,
instead.

A Linux-enabled iPod could fulfill its users' longtime desire for added
functions.

Attach an external FireWire memory card reader, and the iPod may become a
roomy storage device for digital photos.

Add a keyboard plugged into the headphone jack, and it could become a fully
functional PDA, capable of adding to and editing calendars, address books
and e-mails.

It may also be possible to share files between iPods with a FireWire cable,
or add an infrared transmitter to turn it into a universal remote
controller.

Leach, an Australian programmer living in Germany, spent most evenings for
the last four months painstakingly figuring out how the iPod worked, and how
to tweak Linux to run on the digital music player.

Thanks to what he learned, Leach was able to install an embedded, or
pared-down, version of Linux, called uClinux.

The Linux operating system does little more than boot up and display a
string of text on the iPod's screen. It doesn't even play music when running
Linux.

Leach has added the capability of running Mad, a media player that supports
Ogg Vorbis, a free and open file format for digital music. However, the
Linux iPod can't play Ogg files in real time.

Nonetheless, Leach's work has been hailed as "supremely cool" by fellow
programmers and may be a significant step in grassroots efforts to transform
the digital music player into a general-purpose, wearable computer.

"It's now possible for the iPod to be turned into more than just a cool MP3
player from Apple," said Jay Vaughan of Access Music. "Not to mention the
intrinsic cool factor of being able to run any Linux app -- or develop using
the Linux universe of tools -- on the iPod itself."

Leach has turned over the project to the open-source development community
in the hope that other hackers will improve on his preliminary work.

Leach hopes, for example, that others may be able to optimize the Ogg Vorbis
player to replay tunes in real time.

The iPod was a present from Leach's girlfriend, who forbade him from taking
it apart and "ruining it." So Leach had to figure out its inner workings by
examining the operating system code, line by line.

"I wouldn't like to guess how much time I spent on it," he said by phone
from his home outside Frankfurt. "It was a lot of work."

"It is always neat seeing interesting pieces of hardware being hacked to do
things they weren't originally intended to do," said Rob Malda, one of the
co-founders of Slashdot. "It'll be cool to see what happens in the next six
months."

Apple did not respond to requests for comment.