Is this a good idea?
 

Heya guys. Just a quick question. I'm home sick today, bored out of my skull when I came across, yet again, the iPod linux site!

Now last time I came across this I didn't have a iPod mini and thought it was a great idea.

Now back to reality, I have a iPod mini. Its' the one with the 4 gigabyte hard-drive (I think that means it's 1G) and there is an experimental linux thing to put on it.

Has anyone done this? What are the dangers? Actually also; I need a more comprehensive guide to it, cos I have no idea how to install it.

I'm running Windows XP Pro, and I have my iPod mini as drive F:. Any help is appreciated.

I have seen this linux on ipod thing before, but when I last saw it you couldn't do anything (and I really mean anything) with it. it just sort of booted linux and sat there. No really it just sat there the scroll wheel and buttons weren't even active.
Has there been more development on this? Does it allow you to do anything useful or not? Is it just a party trick?

personally I don't like to fuck with my gadgets in a way that may make then inoperable. If you're willing to risk it, go for it.

http://ipodlinuxinstl.sourceforge.net/index.shtml
they say there's no support for minis yet.

The one awesome thing that you with Podzilla is record at a much better bitrate than the iPod ordinarly allows. However, I think that only works at present on a 3rd gen iPod. I haven't tried it.

There was a good how-to article in MacAddict, probably the May or April issue. It rated this as 'easy', and since it is just software, you should be able to get back to square 1 using Apple's software installer.

I don't have an ipod so I'll give you general answers: 1. If you really can make use of whatever features the software gives you then it may be a good idea. 2. The potential danger is your ipod becomes a stylish expensive paper weight.

If it was me doing this I'd make sure I could restore the orginal software regardless of what happens.

Rightio: Response time.

Yes it worked.

Yes it worked really good.

Yes I'd do it again.

Yes it's under 100 megabytes (the OS)

Yes it can view images

Yes there are a sh*tload of other games

Yes it's generally good.

Yes it works

Yes you can restore it in case you screw it up.

Yes you can go to either Apple Firmware or Linux (UcLinux)

And yes, I did answer all the questions. I will give pictures and a proper review later.

nice.........

Just to let you know, I believe the iPOD minis are considered to be 4th Gen. The reason for this is because they came out at the same time as the 4th Gen iPODs and have the same interface and setup, albeit smaller form factor..

i could be wrong with this though.

I thought the Ipod minis were flash based & the others were Hd based, right?

Every iPod has some flash memory; that's the skip-protection feature. The regular and mini iPods have hard drives. Only the shuffles have only flash memory. This statement is only valid today, and may change with the next iPod releases.