Depending on how old the iPod is, you might have some luck installing rockbox firmware on it.
But, in any case, yes, moving your music over will functionally be as if copying it to an external drive.
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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Is it like a better software on the device than the stock one? I’m open to the idea if it’s fairly safe. Will take a look. Thanks.
It has better compability with Linux and different filetypes and also many more customization options.
Ok well it’s model A1136
That works according to rockbox's website (Apple days A1136 is 5th generation, which means it falls within the 1g through 6g "classic")
Heads up though: my primary use was through my car's stereo via USB; it does not work the same. It used to just pop up as a media device that showed the categories to sort by, now it's only treated as a storage device, meaning I have to search through the folders and select the file to open... At least, in theory. It actually just errors trying to index the disk, which it has to do everytime I start the car (which includes switching from only electricity running to turning the engine on). I think it might have issues with the iFlash adapter I installed to replace the hdd (i sprung for the quad microSD adapter, nowadays I'd probably try the SATA SSD adapter as SATA has much quicker read times than SD cards). That's not always the case, just this car, my old truck—with a non-stock stereo—could read it, but would take upwards of 10 minutes to finish indexing (once again, I think it's because of how slow SD cards are).
It took a lot of digging, but I found out the reason is because of the encryption on the Apple firmware, which locks down the hardware it uses to stream as a media adapter. Barring some act of generosity on Apple's part, we likely won't ever see Rockbox able to stream from the iPod to another device.
Well I just want to be able to use headphones. It doesn’t have any wireless connectivity.
In that case, you should absolutely do rockbox. It's FOSS, linux compatible, and supports so many other audio formats beyond just mp3, WAV and Apple's m4a and AIFF. E.g.
I've mixed feeling about that firmware, on paper it looks great but then there are annoyances here and there such as the stuff around the boot.
I used rhythmbox on a system running Mint to move music to and from an iPod nano 2. It was fairly straight forward. Save the transfers before closing the programme and you’re good to go.
It's not for everyone, but if "collection of perl scripts" sounds like your jam, GnuPod still works for a CLI option.
Does your iPod support Rockbox?
Strawberry for music transfer and GPodder for podcasts works perfectly on my iPod Photo, although both of them do have slightly clunky interfaces that may take a bit to get used to. Rhythmbox also works great, although I haven't been able to get it working on my current Arch setup yet.