Itunes/ipod replacment

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

so the one apple product i have ever bought and use every day, at work i listen to audiobooks and podcast. is there an app that will allow me to sync and download my podcast maybe through an RSS feed or something? i don't know i'm pretty newb at this. and i'm not opposed to buying a new device if needed as this is something i use every day. and would really like to get fully into linux, this is a big thing keeping me into windows.

 

i've done a little digging online and keep finding older post so i'm not sure if they are still relevant.

 

 

2

well shit that was to easy. and yes very cheap ! recomend a media player? i think my manjaro came with clementine. but i haven't played with it.

 

3

I think the best music player is, by far, MPD. It takes a few minutes to setup, is low resource, and runs as a daemon. There are tons of clients for it, but my favorite is Ncmpcpp (make sure you pull the most recent one from the Git repo. Since you use Manjaro, grab the ncmpcpp-git package from the AUR if you are interested), but there are many others, and graphical ones, that you may prefer.

4

cool my Sansa clip+ should be here thursday. so i'll be trying a few different players out.

5

I found Phillips Songbird to be a good replacement to iTunes

6

iPods and iPhones sync just fine with linux, should work right out of the box. If not, there are packages for that also.

As for iTunes as a music service... in Steam, the Steam Music Service has now also been launched (at least in linux, but it's a Steam client feature, so I guess also in Windows and OSX, but I wouldn't know).

Another thing that's really interesting is that AMD has open sourced it's VCE video encoding functionality a few days ago. That is the thing that allows for hardware compressing video (like h.264) on GCN GPUs and APUs. The benefit of open sourcing VCE, is that it will give this functionality to the linux kernel for integration in the KMS driver. That is way more efficient than having it in a bloated non-KMS userspace driver.

VCE will be integrated from kernel 3.15 on.

This means that with the optimizations that AMD has already brought in GCN, streamers will have low CPU usage in MantleAPI optimized games, AND will have kernel-driven hardware compression in linux, which means that streaming will have practically no impact whatsoever on the gaming performance, even on a cheap APU system. This is a really big thing. SteamOS now uses userspace compression to stream games for instance, and they're on Debian so a pretty old kernel, but more modern distros will soon be able to deliver hardware compression with that, with much lower latencies (and the latencies were pretty low already). Just another step in the right direction...

Another thing that this will do, is help a lot with rendering. The AMD HSA system will very efficiently use the CPU and GPU cores together to do video rendering jobs without quality loss. The fact that the video compression will be in the kernel itself instead of in userspace, will make AMD APU and GP-GPU systems a compelling value for efficient video rendering. Right now, the only way to render in high quality, is to have pure CPU power, because software manufacturers often don't use OpenCL to accelerate rendering, and proprietary video rendering acceleration technologies (like CUDA) cause a big deterioration of the image quality. So it's a really good thing and a complete game changer for linux and AMD hardware. It also means that in a couple of weeks, video rendering in linux on fast bleeding edge distros using AMD hardware will smoke pretty much everything else.

7

But first we need Mantle on Linux and in Radeon as well ;) they only released it for windows so far, it might be a couple of iterations before we see it in Catalyst let alone the Open source driver..

Back to itunes, if you want to buy music there are many drm free music stores on linux, names fail me now but major players on linux usually have a couple of suggestions. 

8

Nope, Mantle is just an alternative API for application developers.

With VCE in the kernel, it means that the KMS driver has native accelerated video encoding. There are no KMS drivers for Windows, it's all userspace there. It's strictly a linux benefit that won't be accessible to Windows users. The only thing that is needed, is the kernel in which the VCE is merged, and that is not released yet, we're only at 3.14rc1 for the moment, so it'll be a couple of more weeks before the first development releases of 3.15, and it doesn't require Mantle at all. All the tools in Mantle, are already in the normal linux tools, but linux can also do more, that Mantle can't do. Applications developed with the Mantle API, will also work in linux, which makes it easier for developers, but where Mantle needs a corresponding part in the userspace graphics driver, linux doesn't, and can use it with the KMS driver, so much lower level, much more performance...

9

I understand that advantage, but when you say API should there not be hooks somewhere in the kernel or userspace where the Mantel specific codes hooks in, meaning once an application or a game uses mantle, like Libreoffice spreadsheets, would this not need to be translated somewhere as well? Otherwise it means there will still be separation of windows and Linux user code in this area, which again causes developers to stick with what's popular and not with the one that provides the best advantage. 

Maybe we could make a new thread about that so that we don't drive this one much off topic?

10

LibreOffice for Windows uses Mantle. LibreOffice for linux has had OpenCL acceleration for quite a while, as well as OpenGL acceleration.

Windows has the problem that everything is locked in, and that the tools for developers to target OpenCL and OpenGL, which are basic APIs in linux, are different from the tools for targeting DirectX. This means that developers have to invest twice if they want to target Windows and something else, like linux. That is the problem that Mantle solves, it bypasses the DirectX API and offers developers a standardized API that targets the Khronos spec API trackers in different operating environments. Most linux devs are quite experienced with working with the standard Khronos spec API's though, and because it's open source, it's not necessary to redo all the work that has been done before, like for instance, the display server will take care of stuff, existing engines and modules will take care of stuff, and the devs can recycle those without having to develop from scratch like in Windows. The end result between using Mantle to develop for Windows and linux with the same effort, or developing for OpenCL/OpenGL in separate efforts for Windows and linux, is the same, Mantle API just makes it easier to develop because it offers an alternative API, but it just taps into the things that are already there in linux, while it adds some of these things to Windows (like CPU scheduling, etc...), but it can't add all the things to Windows, linux will still have an advantage.

On the other hand, the KMS drivers in linux right now are only compatible up to OpenGL 2.3 or so, whereas the proprietary drivers are compatible with OpenGL 3.3 instructions. So there is still work to be done on the drivers, but those are evolving really rapidly.

In any case, the VCE thing is not available in Windows to the same extent, because Windows doesn't have KMS graphics drivers. Like if Adobe for instance would decide to develop their newest Premiere version with Mantle API, it would benefit the performance in Windows, but not to the same extent as in linux, because in Windows, the Mantle API programmed calls would tap into a userspace subsystem, whereas in linux, they would generate the ordinary OpenGL and OpenCL calls that tap into the kernel itself. The difference in performance should be rather phenomenal just because of that, and so is the difference in features. With less code, you could do more by targeting KMS drivers than you would be able to achieve by targeting userspace drivers, even if you would be using the same API (Mantle) to target those features in your application. Open source software would also not really need Mantle, because even if it were developed initially with the Mantle API, the community would jump on on it and optimize it for the most features and direct tracking by the instructions merged into the KMS driver in the kernel. So Mantle is primarily a Windows-targeted product, but it also serves to unlock extra performance in linux for applications that were developed with Mantle API for Windows.

11

According to this, AMD has support for OpenGL 3.3 in the open source drivers: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU5MjE

12

Pretty cool! Yup, it's evolving fast. Wonder how long it will take to get OpenGL 4. I don't think it will take very long lol.

13

the main reason for asking this is to get away from the apple products. this ipod touch is the only device i have ever purchased from them and it works great but i stopped buying from the store because of the DRM crap. that shit drives me insane! so this cheaper and more open device i hope will serve my needs (and i think it will do great) 

 

also all the info above is a little above my knowledge level but the parts i did get, it's starting to sound very very promising for linux in the coming months/years. that i'm very excited about !

14

ok so i've been trying to get Clementine to do what i want it to, but i can't figure out how to get the RSS feed to work for a podcast that i pay for. it requires a log in and i can't find where to input my log in info, or if it even has this feature. 

so if you happen to know of a media player that has that feature as well as auto sync with my device that would be awesome. the auto sync isn't as big of a deal as the RSS feed for my podcast though. i'd also need a graphical client. i found this http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients....

15

After taking a break from this. i figured out how to do exactly what i wanted. the actual gpodder app will allow me to use my log in credentials for the podcast that i pay for. it will also auto sync my sansa clip+.  

this whole linux experience is starting to remind me of my first PC with win 95 i couldn't figure out how to do something so i would just move on to something else and come back at a later time, then it seemed so easy!