[Wine] Re: Newbie iTunes Question

[SpawnHappyJake]

Mmm. Looks like the iTunes-WINE situation is pretty bleak. Let me throw in a few things that might help.

First, I need to know what your needs with iTunes are. Are you using it purely for an imobile device, such an iPhone, iPod, etc? Or are you using it purely for purchasing music from the iTunes Store? Or both? Just the actual listening to music part has obvious replacements in Linux, and I don't think that's what's holding you up.

Banshee, a Linux-native music-player similar to iTunes, often has a built-in feature allowing you to buy music from the Ubuntu One store, if you'd like to ditch iTunes altogether. See here: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/itunes

PyMusique was written to allow Linux users to buy songs off the iTunes Store from Linux. It has a Linux-native iTunes Store client. I don't know if it actually plays the songs, but that can be done with Banshee, Rhythm Box, VLC, or any number of Linux-native music players. Of those 3, I would recommend Banshee as an iTunes replacement.

PyMusique (obviously written in Python, hence the "Py"), was latter written in C sharp and named SharpMusique. It too has a Linux version.

Most download links to PyMusique and SharpMusique have been taken down, but I hear that Muisk is supposed to step in and replace them, and be able to buy songs from both the iTunes Store and the Napster store.

>From what I hear, there will be a Linux version of Musik.

As far as imobile device maintenance/usage in Linux, there is libimobiledevice. libimobiledevice is really a suite of multiple programs.

One key aspect of libimobiledevice is that it allows you to mount your imobile device. That allows you to browse it like an external USB hard drive, and even copy stuff off, as well as put stuff on. At least with a non-jailbroken imobile device, you won't be able to browse _everything_ on the iPhone, but at least you can get to your music, and the pictures and videos you take on the device. I suspect you can get to videos put on by iTunes as well.

Since the music has been made accessible via libimobiledevice, that allows you to use your imobile device with Banshee. I haven't tried it myself, but I'm pretty sure at that point you can put on and take off music (and videos, etc) with Banshee, much like how you can manage the songs, videos, etc. on the imobile device from iTunes.

Another part of libimobiledevice is a program called idevicerestore. When you update your imobiledevice with iTunes, it downloads an ispw file and then blows that image over the imobiledevice, and I'm pretty sure it then deletes it. At least that's the usual. If you hold down a button, you can choose to "download only", which will download and not delete the ispw. Then you can go see the file for yourself. You can even tell iTunes to blow a specified ispw over your imobiledevice (have to hold a button down to get the option).

Given an ispw file, idevicerestore can blow that ispw over your imobiledevice, but all your stuff that was on the imobile device will be gone. I don't know how to copy the stuff off then put it back on yet, other than the music and videos and pictures. So just e-mail all your notes to yourself, save the music and videos with banshee, then blow the ispw over, put your music and videos back on with Banshee, redownload your apps locally with the iPhone, then copy your notes back in from your e-mail. I haven't tried it myself, so I'm not guaranteeing anything, but I think that's about how it would go down.

Oh, and since you don't have iTunes to download the ispw with, just download them from this site: http://osxdaily.com/2010/10/25/download-iphone-firmware-ipsw/


Once you get your imobiledevice updated to a certain point, you can update it and do stuff all through WiFi, so you shouldn't really need idevicerestore, but it's nice if you don't have WiFi setup, or if your Internet is slow and you already downloaded the ispw file once. Also, jailbreaking is done by blowing over a modified ISPW, so you could use idevicerestore to jailbreak.

Cheers,
Jake