The iPod just blinked back at me. It saw the songs, but couldn't play them. Any of them.
I was describing this to #1 Son in the car this morning, and he had an observation that was pretty stunning in its simplicity: the iPod only understands a few file formats - m4a, m4v, MP3.
Hmmm. I wonder what Ubuntu is using? A quick check when we got home gives the answer: Ogg Vorbis.
Now Ogg may be the
Worse, Ubuntu doesn't install MP3 support. Oh bother.
But want to know what's cool? An instant of Google-fu led me to a link at Ubuntu that had what I needed. Even more impressive, rather than the usual Linux now what the heck are the command-line switches/oops I forgot to sudo/dependencies aarrrghh! experience, it was a "click here to download and install from Ubuntu." One click, and it needs your password to install (from a security perspective, this isn't just A Good Thing, it's The Right Thing).
And extra credit to you for pointing out that I keep telling you not to download stuff from the Internet, especially if it's a codec. Yes, yes, "free Internet download" is high tech jargon for "open your mouth and close your eyes."
What's different is that I know who I'm downloading from, and I trust them. Heck, I got my whole darn Operating System from them, so if they really wanted to trojan me, then all my computer are belong to them. It's like a Windows user downloading a patch from Microsoft - if you don't trust them, don't use them.
So my iPod is getting stuffed full of music that it's happy to play. Yay me!
No comments:
Post a Comment