Installing iPodLinux on the iPod Nano

Joe Barr over at Linux.com (also owned by VA Sofware) has an interesting writeup on how he took his iPod Nano and installed iPodLinux on it, making it into a "dual-booting, sweet MP3-singing, iDoom-playing monster."

Re:does it

[rmezzari]

Yes it does. I have it working on my 1st gen Mini. Im using Flydzilla too. I also have a game Boy emulator and several ROMs. You shoule be able to do the same using info from those sites below:
http://www.dansfloyd.com/help.html [dansfloyd.com]
http://ipodlinux.org/4G_Installer [ipodlinux.org]
http://ipodlinux.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6099 [ipodlinux.org]

google video

[missing_myself]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2998600329 06836240&q=ipod+linux [google.com]

oh yeah,

[sk8dork]

I was pretty active in the IPL community, and as far as I know they've got it working on every ipod so far, except for the shuffle. When I say they, i mean the forum goers, meaning only the 1st 2nd and 3rd gen ipods are 'supported' by the IPL Core Team. The forums are overflowing with helpful tutorials to do it on any ipod, yes including the nano and "video" (5G)

In fact, here's my personal instructional video [google.com] (for installing on nano) that I've had on Google video for some time. enjoy.

Re:Video Ipod?

[Dash_Rantic]

Yes, iPodLinux is currently running on 5G iPods. I think the screen refresh rate is currently pretty low, so it's not that useful just yet. They'll probably fix the problem soon, and then you wide-screen iPod people can be playing iDoom with the rest of us :) Read more: http://ipodlinux.org/ [ipodlinux.org] -Dash

Re:Vorbis etc.

[Fweeky]

Rockbox [rockbox.org] is a working solution for playing Vorbis, MusePack, FLAC, WavPack, etc on the Nano, provided you're happy using daily builds.

Re: ... and doom

[Anonymous Coward]

The doom plugin has made it into rockbox main cvs, so it'll also be in recent daily builds.

Re:playing compressed video

[josh42]

The iPod video has a special decoding chip for compressed video. It's a BCM2722, if I recall correctly. (And we still don't know how to work it.) The nano doesn't have that chip, so playing compressed video on it is going to be much, much harder, maybe impossible. We're working on it though. -- Josh

Re: ... and doom

[Fweeky]

Yup. Just confirmed it working in build 20060406. Runs pretty well too; better than some of the desktop machines I've played Doom on, ignoring the tiny screen and awkward controls ;)

Now, where's my iPod keyboard, mouse and VGA-out adapter...