Linux and iPhones / iPods

[winjeel]

I'm terribly sorry if this has been discussed before. I have done a search for "iPhones" and found little relevant. But, what is the best way to sync an iPhone when using Ubuntu? AND, what's the best way to update podcasts for the iPhone as well? I am weaning myself off of Windows, and this is one of two main issues.

[speedwell68]

If you just want to do music transfers then Songbird is fine.

[xir_]

There are a host of issues with this.

iphones cant usb sync to Linux i'm afraid, i think its due to encryption.

Best way is to create a windows virtual box and sync to that. There are some more hacky ways of doing it involving a jailbreak, but it only works over wifi and is alot slower.

[winjeel]

Thanks for that. I'd read up on all the ways to "jailbreak" an iPhone, but wasn't keen on it. I've tried Songbird (found the Ubuntu release in "Contributed Builds"), but I don't see a way to sync it with a media player. Also, I've tried iTunes with Wine, but for some reason, it can install QuickTime and Bonjour, but there's always an error for the iTunes software. I suppose I may need to increase the size of the partition. I was hoping to move away from iTunes, as it chews up as much as 20Gb if you let it get away (some sort of update files tend to be about 2-4Gb in size, and there are several undeleted older ones).

So, I'll have to keep XP in the other partition for the time being.

Edit: Thanks for the help, though

[Giant Speck]

I hope that the new OS upgrade Apple is planning to release this summer isn't going to screw up any progress people have been making toward syncing the iPhone with Linux. That would really suck.