gtkpod 2.0.2 April 2015
Posted: Fri 30 May 2014, 02:58
gtkpod is an iPod/iPhone/iPad manager for Linux. Mainly this involves managing a music file collection between an Apple "i-device" and a Linux computer.
UPDATED April 06 2015, to include the latest underlying libraries - libplist, usbmuxd, and libimobiledevice,
but unfortunately device compatibility is limited by the libgpod library, for which new models were no longer updated from early 2011, and only minor bugfixes were added until development virtually ceased around August 2014.
So gtkpod device support goes up to:
- iPhone4 (but not 4S)
- iPod Touch 4th gen
- iPad 1st gen (both WiFi and 3G models)
- Nano 6th gen
- iPod Classic / Mini / Shuffle should be supported across their entire range of releases.
Such device compatibility is a significant achievement under Linux, because Apple has made the communication methods on their i-devices more complicated with each new device release, and also with each new iOS release, clearly aiming to lock out access to any other application apart from iTunes.
This new gtkpod package was compiled under Slacko 5.7.0, and it's also compatible with older Slacko versions back to 5.4.
For recent Ubuntu-based Puppy releases I have provided a separate library-compatibility dotpet; at this stage, Puppy Precise 5.7.x and Tahrpup 6.x are compatible. Refer to the download information at the bottom of this post.
Older Puppies are incompatible; this includes Slacko 5.3, Lucid (5.1/5.2 series) and Wary.
This gtkpod package permits the addition of an embedded audio player, using gstreamer as the back-end application. The gstreamer dotpet I have provided is a stripped-down "audio-only" package, which supports all the important audio formats:
- AAC (m4a)
- ALAC (Apple Lossless m4a)
- MP3
- WAV (uncompressed)
- FLAC
- Vorbis (ogg)
Beware; if you install and run gtkpod-2.0.2 before you install the gstreamer dotpet, gtkpod will automatically detect that embedded audio playback is not possible, and it will disable the "Media Player" plugin. If you then install gstreamer at a later stage, you must re-enable the Media Player plugin, in -
Edit > Preferences
gtkpod will import all of the audio formats listed above, but i-devices will only accept AAC/m4a and MP3, so gtkpod will do the necessary format conversion when copying to the i-device. I have configured gtkpod to do the conversion to AAC audio compression. The mp4v2 library is included for this purpose. Under Edit > Preferences > Settings, you can change the conversion format to MP3 if you wish.
WARNING 1: To avoid possible harm to the filesystem on your iPod, before disconnection you should always unmount the device.
WARNING 2: in case of total music database corruption on your device, you should probably have your original iTunes music library still available on a Mac or Windows machine.
The 2 main dotpets are:
http://www.smokey01.com/tempestuous/gtk ... IL2015.pet
http://www.smokey01.com/tempestuous/gst ... .10.35.pet
for Slacko 5.4 - 5.7 that's all you need.
For Puppy Precise 5.7.x and Tahrpup 6.x this additional dotpet is required -
http://www.smokey01.com/tempestuous/gtk ... e-libs.pet
After installing the dotpets, reboot, so that pupevent/udev is restarted and will detect your i-device when it's plugged in.
UPDATED April 06 2015, to include the latest underlying libraries - libplist, usbmuxd, and libimobiledevice,
but unfortunately device compatibility is limited by the libgpod library, for which new models were no longer updated from early 2011, and only minor bugfixes were added until development virtually ceased around August 2014.
So gtkpod device support goes up to:
- iPhone4 (but not 4S)
- iPod Touch 4th gen
- iPad 1st gen (both WiFi and 3G models)
- Nano 6th gen
- iPod Classic / Mini / Shuffle should be supported across their entire range of releases.
Such device compatibility is a significant achievement under Linux, because Apple has made the communication methods on their i-devices more complicated with each new device release, and also with each new iOS release, clearly aiming to lock out access to any other application apart from iTunes.
This new gtkpod package was compiled under Slacko 5.7.0, and it's also compatible with older Slacko versions back to 5.4.
For recent Ubuntu-based Puppy releases I have provided a separate library-compatibility dotpet; at this stage, Puppy Precise 5.7.x and Tahrpup 6.x are compatible. Refer to the download information at the bottom of this post.
Older Puppies are incompatible; this includes Slacko 5.3, Lucid (5.1/5.2 series) and Wary.
This gtkpod package permits the addition of an embedded audio player, using gstreamer as the back-end application. The gstreamer dotpet I have provided is a stripped-down "audio-only" package, which supports all the important audio formats:
- AAC (m4a)
- ALAC (Apple Lossless m4a)
- MP3
- WAV (uncompressed)
- FLAC
- Vorbis (ogg)
Beware; if you install and run gtkpod-2.0.2 before you install the gstreamer dotpet, gtkpod will automatically detect that embedded audio playback is not possible, and it will disable the "Media Player" plugin. If you then install gstreamer at a later stage, you must re-enable the Media Player plugin, in -
Edit > Preferences
gtkpod will import all of the audio formats listed above, but i-devices will only accept AAC/m4a and MP3, so gtkpod will do the necessary format conversion when copying to the i-device. I have configured gtkpod to do the conversion to AAC audio compression. The mp4v2 library is included for this purpose. Under Edit > Preferences > Settings, you can change the conversion format to MP3 if you wish.
WARNING 1: To avoid possible harm to the filesystem on your iPod, before disconnection you should always unmount the device.
WARNING 2: in case of total music database corruption on your device, you should probably have your original iTunes music library still available on a Mac or Windows machine.
The 2 main dotpets are:
http://www.smokey01.com/tempestuous/gtk ... IL2015.pet
http://www.smokey01.com/tempestuous/gst ... .10.35.pet
for Slacko 5.4 - 5.7 that's all you need.
For Puppy Precise 5.7.x and Tahrpup 6.x this additional dotpet is required -
http://www.smokey01.com/tempestuous/gtk ... e-libs.pet
After installing the dotpets, reboot, so that pupevent/udev is restarted and will detect your i-device when it's plugged in.