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We got rid of dual boot, as windows is rubbish, and it is easier to just use all our hard drive on one OS. I have used Ubuntu for a long time and have 12.04 version. Love it to bits, but the only problem is when we want to put different music on iPod products. Use Rhythmbox, but that doesn't work, it just seems to remove all the music. Is there a stripped down iTunes for Linux that means I can just drag and drop and not have any problems?

I imagine not, but is there just a basic way to do it? I would just buy new music players but don't have the money for such luxuries at the moment.

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    Could you provide details of what generation ipods they are? I believe some of the older generations you can access the file system directly and some plugins for music players work well, whereas at some point Apple changed the way it worked and made it much more difficult to use anything but iTunes. While apparently iTunes can be made to work on Ubuntu via Wine, the iPod synchronising doesn't work unfortunately. Aug 9, 2013 at 17:17
  • What generation do you have? help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/iPod Check this too banshee-project.org
    – user182768
    Aug 9, 2013 at 17:26
  • I think its 2nd gen Ipod Shuffle and a 6th Gen of Ipod Nano. Not completely sure.
    – user182765
    Aug 9, 2013 at 17:27

2 Answers 2

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Introduction

With all honesty my experiences with trying to get any Apple product to work properly in Ubuntu has not been great. I have found a solution that works great for me although may not be for you.

The solution in question involves a Virtual Machine with VMWare Player that the Windows operating system can be installed onto. This allows for programs such as iTunes to be installed and run.


Downloading & Installing VMWare Player

I have the free VMWare Player installed which you may get from here:

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/free#desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_player/5_0

After downloading the relevant .bundle file do the following to install it:

  1. Open Terminal
  2. Assuming you downloaded it to the default Downloads directory type the following:

    cd ~/Downloads

  3. Give the .bundle file permissions to execute (this may not be necessary) by doing the following:

    chmod +x VMware-Player-5.0.2-1031769.i386.bundle

  4. Install it through the following command:

    sudo sh VMware-Player-5.0.2-1031769.i386.bundle

It goes without saying that if your downloaded .bundle file is named differently then use that name instead of "VMware-Player-5.0.2-1031769.i386.bundle"


Setting up the Virtual Machine & Installing Windows

Setting up the virtual machine is quite simple.

  1. First open VMWare player
  2. Once select "File" from the menu and then "Create a new virtual machine"
  3. The following window will open:

enter image description here

Select "Use a physical drive" if you want to install Windows from a DVD or select "Use ISO image" if you have an image of a Windows installation disk.

In the next few steps you can tweak the Virtual Machine and set things such as how much storage space the Virtual Machine can use and how much memory. After that you'll need to power-on the Virtual Machine and complete the Windows installation.


Installing VMWare Tools

Once Windows is installed and running you will need to shutdown and close VMWare player in order to prepare for installing VMWare Tools.

VMWare Tools is a software package that helps to stabilise the running Virtual Machine a bit and also integrate its programs into Unity (Ubuntus desktop interface) should you desire.

The reason I have asked you to close VMWare Player is due to the fact that I personally have had many problems installing the VMWare Tools package. To fix this so that you do not encounter the same problems do the following:

  1. Open Terminal
  2. Type the following:

    sudo vmplayer

  3. After entering the above command you will be asked to enter your password. Enter it and then VMWare Player should open as the root user. You should now be able to start your Windows virtual machine as normal. Once it is up and running do the following to install VMWare Tools:

Select "Virtual Machine" from the menu and "Install VMWare Tools" then follow the instructions provided.


Downloading iTunes

After you have VMWare Tools installed you're all set to open your browser of choice (most likely Internet Explorer) and download iTunes. If you get stuck the information here may be of help to you:

https://www.apple.com/uk/support/itunes/install/


Configuring iTunes

After you have iTunes up and running you may want to setup some shared folders in the Virtual Machine Settings. To do this select "Virtual Machine" from the menu and then "Virtual Machine Settings". Once the settings window opens select "Options" and then "Share Folders". From there you can add different directories that you would like to access in the Virtual Machine.

For example I have a shared folder setup to provide access to my Music folder. From there I can adjust iTunes's settings so that my library is located within the shared folder as opposed to the default location in the Windows Music folder.

To change the default library location in iTunes do the following:

  1. Press CTRL + B on the keyboard to bring up the menu bar if it is not already visible
  2. Select "Edit" from the menu bar and then "Preferences"
  3. Once the preferences window opens select "Advanced" and then near the "iTunes Media folder location" select the "Change" button in order to change the location.

When the window to choose a new location opens select "Network" in the bottom left hand corner and then double click on "vmware-host".

Once vmware-host opens double click on "Shared Folders" and then double click again only this time on the shared folder that you would like to contain your iTunes Library. To confirm select the "Select Folder" button.

After you have done this you will then be able to access your entire Media Library both in the Virtual Machine and in Ubuntu.

After adding some Music to iTunes you should then be able to sync your iPod as normal.


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As all the players that syncs music, Rhythmbox asks you if you want to delete the contents to replace it with the actual content in the Rhythmbox library. This is by-design. If you install iTunes in other PC with Windows and try to synchronize your iPod the result will be the same. iTunes will (probably not, deppends on the owner of the system) delete all the content of your device and add owns. If you have the music already in the Rhythmbox library, I say, why not?

You can also "extract" the songs out your iPod, just dragging the songs out of it.

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