can you tell me about itunes?
 

Hi All,
I have two students whose windows laptops are riddled with malware and not working properly. They want me to help them install Linux (which we use in school), but they are concerned about their iTunes.

Having avoided iPods as "defective by design", I know nothing about iTunes whatsoever. However I remember reading about DRM locking and such problems that have me concerned that I won't be able to do it.

Where does iTunes store its stuff?

Can I copy its data store to an external drive, and then into a linux home?

Then will it work on wine, or can another manager (rhythmbox etc) access the itunes data?

Alternatively, if I partition the drive and install linux, can rythmbox/wine/something access itunes data on the win partition?

Supposing they are buying music through iTunes, what will happen to that account?

Finally, one of them has an iphone. Does that work with linux?

Ironic that an apple application is blocking migration away from windows.

thanks for your tips on this

nigel

hi!
I am a little unclear on your end objective. if your end user wants to be able to USE itunes in linux thats one issue. However, if all they really want is to keep the ranking, playlist, ect then you might want to look into setting up songbird for them. you would need and addon ( plugin) to achieve this goal
(see link http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/9)

Also, as to the iphone issue...yes you can run a small footprint version of linux. as i am to broke to actually own an iphone...i have never set it up. google it.

hope this helps.

john

This is one of the main reason why I still dual boot… from what I have read I don’t think itunes will work in linux. There are articles that have some hacks using wine. But I from what I have played around with none of them really work all that well..

I think there are applications that do sort of the same thing as itunes on linux. But I am yet to find one that works as well…

What I do is have a windows partition (minimal) a linux partition and a shared data partition.

Thanks for that. It seems that iTunes music can be imported to Linux, then. Would that include DRM tracks, do you happen to know?
Anyway, I will do more research there myself.
cheers
nigel

From memory, the DRM will stop the migration. I use an older kde3.5.10 based distro, so I use Amarok 1.4 and it plays the non-drm itunes m4a files no problem, but the last time I tried to play an itunes drm butchered track, I was unable to. You will recognise them by their different .m4? extension.

As it's been 3-4 years since I tried, and I no longer have the one and only itunes song I paid for before ditching windows, I can't try it with the current players, though my first attempt would be vlc for drm butchered tracks, followed by mplayer and ffplayer If any of those players can reproduce the audio cleanly, you will be able to convert it to a standard format using their associated encoders.

check this links for info on DRM...itunes_drm_cracked_wide_open/

Remove-iTunes-DRM-Windows-Mac-

it looks like you may be able to rip the key using vlc to enable play on a linux based vlc install. however, if the machines in question have already been "foobared" then you may have to figure something else out. being that drm generates a key based on the serial of the hdd of the machine it was purchased on it could be an issue. i myself have no problems with drm related issues as i use torrents or irc to obtain media( not gonna get into that to much here on LQ). anyways, good luck. one thing to think of:>>if the user is migrating aways from win / win apps you might consider capturing another format. mp$(drm) file> ac3/mp3/etc..( via sound capture), reencode as needed. while this may seem like a little bit much...it MAYBE one of your only options. that is assuming you cant run vlc on the doner machine to get the key to use in linux. this workaround however will not take care of future drm whacked files...as to my knowledge and research it is only being talked about full support in linux. read the first post and you'll see what i am talking about.

from what i can tell this is not going to import your music so much as it will import the playlist rankings, etc.. as you said you'll have to look into a little more.

google has tons of stuff related to the issue. Seems DRM is gonna be the big foobar of it though.

hmmm... hadn't thought about future purchases.
Apple are microsoft's best friend in a case like this. I wonder if MS pays them not to do a linux version of itunes? After all a port to linux shouldn't be that hard if they wanted to do it.

Can people transfer their itunes to a new computer (win - win), DRM tracks and all? Is there a limit to how many times?

Can a computer host more than one itunes account? Can it "unhost" later?

Sorry to ask lazily here instead of doing my own research, please don't waste time on my behalf. (but if you know the answer already....!)

nigel

google macfruggal
 

heheheh...
well google would take care of your questions. i DO know that : yes you can have more than one "hosted" account per a machine. Its user based as far as i can tell.

also, while i dont love MS it is used in the real world and must be accepted. Moreover, its not so much MS as it is the companies holding the royalty right sto the media that are really backing DRM technologies IMHO

Good luck!!

You can purchase music through other sources than itunes as well...
see magnatunes as a start.

Yeah, I can tell you about iTunes, it sucks ! It's DRM'd low quality s*** !

If you want music just listen to streaming radio, works fine with mplayer. And, of course, there streamripper to help out with things :)