For at least a year I have been saying “I will buy an iPod nano when they release an 8Gb version” and unfortunately they have just released one.
I was hoping for the ‘just work’ integration I have come to expect from Ubuntu, and sadly it doesn’t ‘just work’, lets take the apps I have tried one at a time:
- Rhythmbox – this is what dapper (and edgy) fire up when the iPod is installed, it detects the iPod but you can’t copy music to it, and in any case it doesn’t like most of my music.
- Banshee – This doesn’t find my iPod at all
- gtkpod – One look at that UI and it was off my computer
- gnupod – It claimed to copy music, but my iPod didn’t find it
- ipod – this is a little command line tool to test the libraries – it claims Not a Valid iPod!
- VMware + iTunes – When I run iTunes windows crashes
All in all not a very satifying experience. It looks like I’m going to have to either get used to that rubbish gtkpod UI (and hope it works) or re-install windows natively onto my laptop.
Are there any other programs I should try?
Update: Rhythmbox on edgy ‘just works’, so I’m happy now 
Update 2:VMware + iPod works fine through a USB 1.1 hub