Ipods

From The Linux Mint Wiki

[edit] Ipods are well supported by Amarok

First, here is a list [1] of supported devices.

As often with linux there are more than one ways to accomplish things. The following is done with Linux Mint gnome install with no command prompt sessions and no other libraries to install. This is a strong point of Mint, it works out of the box, so people new to Linux can enjoy their new linux system fully and then slowly learn the power of the command prompt. For more experienced users check out this sticky;

http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=9096

First plug your Ipod into your USB port , wait until you see the Ipod icon on your desktop.

Next you need to configure Amarok to recognise the Ipod.

No worry's here you open Amarok up and click on Settings -> Configure Amarok.,

Next scroll down to devices and click on this. It will bring up the 'Configure Portable Player Support' menu.

Select your Ipod ( sdf2 for me ) and change the plugin to Apple Ipod Device. Click 'Apply' then OK.

Thats it ! now when you click on devices you will see the contents of your Ipod . Like so ...
Note that the Ipods files are on the left, the Playlist is on the right. The Playlist is a temporary holding
cell for music files, these can be on the hard drive, cdrom, or other storage media.

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From here you can transfer music to and from your hard drive,or upload your favourite podcasts.
Podcasts can be difficult to set up for your first time. I will walk you through it.

First find a podcast on the web you like. For this example we will use Armstrong and Getty 

Radio show. Why bother you might ask ? Because there is over 20 min. of commercials per hour

and the podcasts leave them out! Nice , now first you get the address of the podcast, it is a xml url.

Go to [2] and click on one of the  buttons

This *should* open a dialog box that allows you to copy the url, in Firefox it does not. What you do is right

click it then select Properties from the pop-up menu. It shows you something like this:

Now you have the address to the podcast ! Copy it, right click->copy and return to Amarok.

Click on playlists, then right click Podcasts->Add podcast. Paste the url in and click OK.

now the Armstrong and Getty podcast is there with 8 million episodes! Note that they are not in chronological 

order. How to find the newest podcast? THere could be other ways but here is how I do it. Drag one of the new 

podcasts from the long list of podcasts into the playlist window. Double click it to start it playing, now go to the 

context tab and you will see something like this:

Nicely organised by date with smiling picture!

One curious feature here is that when you mouse over an entry like this,

Is that you can click on the part that gives the date in regular text and it will discribe the show, click on the 

bold date above it and you will add it to your play list, cool. Go ahead and add 4 to your playlist, then select them 

with ctrl and mouse clicks ( or shift for groups ) and then click on the device tab, drag the selected files into the 

white space anywhere and they will show up in your transfer que. Like this,

Next, note that the Transfer button up top is now activated, click on Transfer and go get a cup of coffee, it takes a bit,

5 min. or so to upload 4 episodes. 

Once you have these basic skills Amarok is easy to use with an Apple Ipod, or other portable player.