iPod under Linux – I give up!

After spending quite a bit of time trying to get my iPod Nano to work reliably under Linux, I have finally given up!

I have tried Rhythmbox, Banshee, gtkpod and gPodder but can’t find any combination that works as I need for both music and podcasts. Rhythmbox worked for a while (even though it does not provide a “by random” option for its smart playlists, which was a pain) but eventually failed.

I could get all of the above programs to work after resetting the iPod using iTunes but after a few sync cycles the iTunes database on the iPod would get corrupted. Sometimes this could be fixed by attempting to delete everything from the iPod and putting it back on. However, this left more and more “ghost” files that could not be deleted and eventually the iPod stopped working.

I have now ordered a SanDisk Sansa Clip+ and hopefully this will work better. At least with this mounted as a USB drive I can simply copy on the files I want even if I can’t get synching to work. This option is simply not available with an iPod!