iTunes For Linux, Thanks To CodeWeavers

pizen writes "The folks over at CNet have the scoop that a new version of CrossOver Office (3.1) now supports Apple's iTunes. The preview version of the software is being tested and is currently only available to current CodeWeavers customers. They expect a final version to be available later this year." Reader snowtigger contributes a link to this screenshot. White demonstrated iTunes on a Linux machine at OSCON as well; a rendering glitch marred that demo, but he was still able to demonstrate playing back a song which he'd purchased from iTMS using iTunes on Linux.

Finally!!!

[h4rm0ny]

This is has honestly been the only reason that I still boot up in Windows.

Also seems I not the only one:
"iTunes has been our No. 1 most requested application," CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White said in a statement.

And presumably a free open source version cannot be far behind? Now, if I can just take this opportunity to ask the iTunes people to please add some (a lot) more to their back catalogue then the world will become perfect.

Re:Finally!!!

[moonbender]

Is that because of the music store or because of iTunes management capabilities? Because I never got that last one - I've got a lot of music, mostly my albums on my computer - they reside on their own partition, one folder per album. I can play them using the context menu entry that opens Foobar. I've never needed more management than that - why would anyone? Seriously, I'm asking. :)

This is a good thing

[tourettes]

I have been in love with iTunes since I first used it in Windows late last year, I have all my music in it, and allow it to keep everything organized. While in Windows, everything is nice and neat and tidy, however, as soon as i switched to Linux and loaded up my tunes in XMMS, or Juk, or Kaffeine or any other multimedia player, all the titles and ID3 tags would look messed up.

While some of the open source projects out there have been doing a great job emulating iTunes, none have yet to duplicate the easy of use and great interface that Apple gives us. I wouldn't say this is the only reason why I use Windows, but I would say that while in Linux, I rarely listen to any of my music because I find it too difficult.

Thank you code weavers, and I will be looking forward to the release.

AirTunes?

[mccalli]

Any news if this will work with the Airport Express? I'm guessing yes, because I'd imagine AirTunes to be a rendezvous (err... I mean OpenTalk)-based service working at the application level, rather than requiring any extra low level networking code. Still, worth a check.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:This is a good thing

[tourettes]

I should have said 'more difficult', i know it's not hard to pop in a song at a time, or even a playlist of a few hundred songs. However, I like how iTunes organizes everything when it comes to being able to browse by Album/Artist/Genre, and give you the options to create playlists and smart playlists. I have used Juk a lot, and while it is a good program, and does some of these things well, it always felt like there was something missing.

As for Zif, I did give it a try, but I kept having problems with it scanning my hard drive to find my music files, I haven't filed a bug report until i figure out if it's something with my system causing that problem.

Re:slightly off topic, but...

[mccalli]

What is a good program to use to batch change all ID3 tags to match the file name, or better yet, to match the file name minus the ".mp3"?

Which OS? I used to use Tag&Rename [softpointer.com] when I ran my music stuff under Windows - excellent program. Don't know for Linux, and under OS X I just use iTunes to manage stuff.

Cheers,
Ian

Hidden Significance

[ajs318]

Don't tell anybody, but this must actually break the iTunes DRM good and hard. CrossOverOffice almost certainly uses a standard Linux sound driver to get the sound data to the sound chip. This is bound to mean /dev/dsp, which is "hackable" in the sense that anyone with root access can snarf the digital audio data between when it gets decrypted by iTunes and when it gets sent to the sound chip. You can then make unlimited unencumbered copies. Additionally, knowing that the file was uncompressed from lossy AAC compression, it should be possible to recompress it in such a way as exactly to recover the original compressed file, just sans DRM encumbrance.

The same would, of course, also go for any successful attempt to run Windows Media Player under Linux.

DRM is a pipe dream. There is a fundamental physical reason why it will never work, though a formal mathematical proof escapes me right now. It's time to stop trying to do the impossible, even if that means having to swallow the unpalatable.

Heh I have been saying this for a long time

[dcstimm]

Why Apple Needs iTunes for Linux.. PHP-Nuke As of Late, I have been looking into buying an ipod, they are so cute and sexy, but I cant get over the fact that I cant download music legally for it. You might ask me, why cant you go onto Apple's iTunes and pay for your music, well because THEY DONT support Linux! I have been using Linux for the last 5 years and I feel that it is the perfect desktop for me. It has loads of functionality and it always seems like things are getting updated, so it feels like a new experience every time I turn on my computer. (most people don't like that, but it keeps me productive). I have everything I have ever wanted in Linux, except a legal way to download music. I have even gone as far as buying a ibook to play around with macosx and use iTunes, but I was soon disappointed that I couldn't transfer my iTunes collection I had just purchased to my Linux computer. Now there is a very cool open source project called playfair, that takes the DRM (Digital Rights Management) Software out of the AAC file that you download from apple and allows you to play it on your Linux computer. But this is again not legal, and it could be used for wrong doing. Apple doesn't understand if they would have supported the Linux community in the first place, they wouldn't have programs like this all over the Internet. The only thing they have done to support Linux at all is creating a ton of open source software that helps the open source community, but not Linux in general. I would even go as far as saying there are probably more Linux users out there than Mac users and it only hurts Apple not to create a Linux version of iTunes. Come on apple help stop Piracy and come out with iTunes for Linux!

Re:This is a good thing

[Joe Enduser]

No, it is difficult.

Alsa? Oss? Esd? Artsd? Jack? Jackit? Wtf? How does one know that you need xmms-alsa.rpm installed when you play music in KDE with this sound system thingy enabled?

And it used to be isapnp+sndconfig. Hell, I used to not listen to music because it was too difficult in those days.

Of course, I do not know if this is the grandparent poster's point. I-tunes is certainly not going to change this situation, and you have pointed out some nice alternatives for sure.

iTunes does all that

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you raving about iTunes or Winamp? iTunes does everything you describe, and it looks better to boot. In fact, I'll bet you dollars to donuts that Winamp's media library is patterned after Apple's. Start by looking at the screenshots.

Takeover???

[Performaman]

I think this makes iTunes the first mainstream online music store to run under Linux. Apple should really try a native port, 'cuz if they did they would own the Linux market for music stores.
Step 1: Port iTunes to Linux
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!

One step forward, and two behind

[QCompson]

Great... now only if I could get firewire to work easily and reliably on linux.

Why iTunes?

[m5brane]

I'll admit to keeping a Win partition on my machine, so that from time to time I could boot into XP and play with apps like iTunes. I was pretty taken with iTunes at first, but the only thing it seems to offer over any collection of similar Linux apps is convenience. Why not use apps like rhythmbox (for gnome) or juk (for kde)? While neither app is as mature as iTunes (yet), they both do a great job. And both have better .ogg support than iTunes.
I would argue that ITMS, while convenient, isn't that great a value. Why not opt for one of the other services that lets you download files encoded at a higher bitrate? Or in multiple formats? Or from Linux? This is exactly the kind of application where Linux users should be looking to innovate, in the interest of offering more choices, and not just waiting for the CrossOver port. There are plenty of great projects out there doing just that, and they could all use the attention that CrossOver's iTunes work seems to be getting.

Re:Finally!!!

[pebs]

Lacking in what way exactly?

The Winamp playlist is much easier and more powerful than what iTunes has. iTunes' "Party Shuffle", gives you some of this functionality, though, but before they added that, there was nothing to match it.

Seriously, download Winamp and give it a try. I have compared with the latest iTunes, and I find Winamp to be more feature-rich and flexible. A bit more for "power-users" though, so I can see why some people may not like the interface.

Not to say iTunes sucks or anything, its a great player, and should satisfy most people. If I owned a Mac, I'd probably be using it. But I simply find Winamp 5 to offer more powerful features and a more useful interface.

As for the iTunes feature you mentioned...

BTW, Winamp does have ripping/burning in the Pro version, but that does cost $15 and I can't vouch for it. There is also an iPod plugin, but I can't vouch for it because I'm not willing to buy that overpriced, overrated player.

I don't particularly see having an online store integration as a good thing when you are locked into one store for that integration.

Re:Finally!!!

[2nd Post!]

Well, if you don't need it, you don't need it.

I love the search capabilities.
I love the 'smart playlist' which can filter songs by number of times played, last played, ID tags, and ratings.
I love not needing to worry about organization. It's like not caring which track, sector, and platter my data is on; there's no need to care when the OS takes care of that detail. All I need to know is enough meta-data for the OS to find the file.

Sharing is cool, streaming is cool, and so is the music store!

Re:What's so good about iTunes? Not a troll.

[SilentChris]

"AppleScriptable" ... one of iTunes biggest downfalls. I ran into a really weird situation a week after I bought my iPod. I wanted to create a "smart" playlist that would randomly select 20 minutes of music for exercising. Sounds simple, right?

Wrong. The ONLY way to do it was through AppleScript. You could create the playlist, but it would always have the same 20 minutes of music. I needed to script a way to remove all songs from the playlist so iTunes got the hint that I wanted 20 minutes of random music *every* time I opened the playlist.

And it's not that it was overly complicated, or differed much from what's already offered (iPod updates, for example, date-based playlists on the fly). Apple's reliance on AppleScript though, perturbed me. Basically, there was no way to get this functionality WITHOUT AppleScript. It's become an excuse.

Re:Finally!!!

[The Infamous Grimace]

I agree. I let iTunes organize my music, but I don't download it to the music folder. One way to get around this is to put the song(s) where you want them, then double-click to get them to play. iTunes will then find them. Crappy solution, I know, but there it is. Seems like an AppleScript that checks the date, or maybe checks your iTunes music list against your music directory. Another thing might be a folder action; every time something is added to your music folder, iTunes launches and adds it to its' list.

(tig)

Re:Hidden Significance

[foo23]

The easiest explication why DRM cannot work: Encryption means you have a sender, a receiver and an attacker. There are working systems for this. Now make the receiver the attacker ...

Also don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

that it allows you to use windows plugins in mozilla/konqueror etc. browsers in linux.

I love being able to use embedded quicktime in firefox in linux =) It rules.

Re:Finally!!!

[schussat]

The story doesn't mention the hardware side of things, but it's an important issue: Will I be able to sync my iPod through Codeweaver/iTunes?

-schussat

Re:Screenshot Confusion

[plj]

You're just joking, but actually my first thought was, that the desktop theme selection was really bad for that particular screenshot, as if someone would've shown that to me as is, taken out of this story's context, I'd have automatically assumed that it is actually iTunes for Windows running inside Virtual PC on OS X.

Re:Finally!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of native linux programs out there that can sync with your iPod, so what's the point?

Re:Finally!!!

[athakur999]

I used it for a couple of days... and then uninstalled it.

The only feature iTunes had that I miss in Winamp was the "smart playlists" thing, that wasn't enough to make me switch over.

Re:Also don't forget

[Minna Kirai]

I love being able to use embedded quicktime in firefox in linux =) It rules.

The dominant Linux video player, MPlayer, has a plugin version, which can play embedded QuickTimes in Firefox. Because it avoids the overhead of duplicating Win32 calls, it may be faster than the Crossover way.

Plus, the last time I looked at it, Quicktime on windows had some user-hostile features, such as restrictions on rescaling the playback window. MPlayerPlugin will avoid those too.

Re:It's still all unix

[Have Blue]

Damn HTML...

The Cocoa Finder has been a perennial rumor in the Mac community since OS X was launched, as though a Cocoa rewrite were some sort of magic spell that would solve all the problems in the <10.3 Finder with no further effort. In 10.3 it's just a much-better-written Carbon app.

There's an even simpler test for Carbon/Cocoa-ness: It's possible to use most Cocoa controls while a window remains in the background by holding down Command while clicking. If you can manipulate a window without bringing it to the foreground, it's Cocoa. If it always pops on top, it's Carbon.

Re:on Linux?

[AstroDrabb]

which was running on

emulator running on Linux! So we still have no Linux iTunes. We have only emulator support for Windows version of iTunes on Linux.

According to Wine [winehq.com]

Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.

Think of Wine as a Windows compatibility layer. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely alternative implementation consisting of 100% Microsoft-free code, but it can optionally use native system DLLs if they are available

Then name Wine stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. Wine does not emulate windows, it is an implementation of the Win 32 API. So iTunes running on Linux is not being emulated at all. It is running natively, though it is not using default Linux API's or traditional Linux GUI tool kits. Instead it is using Windows API's that were ported to Linux. This is no different them me writting a Windows applications using GTK+, QT or wxWindows. All three of them run on Windows, they are not the default Win32 API and they do not emulate. An API is just something you program to, a set of functions, etc that you use to make a program do something. Again, repeat after me, Wine Is Not an Emulator.

Re:As someone who runs both OSX, Windows, and Linu

[pjludlow]

The name iTunes refers to what it does - plays tunes (music). It has never been meant for video, although you can now have music videos through iTMS, and they could easily incorporate video because Quicktime is running the show underneath the GUI.

Why the crap do you want to make a thousand folders to put each individual song/movie in so that you can search them? In OSX I could do the same and search in the finder for "Rated-G Animated Movies" following your method of approach and still come up with the same results possibly faster. Using tags or metadata is much better to organize then making folders.

I can't say anything about your PC, but I have a Dual 2.0Ghz G5 and have iTunes running most of the time and it doesn't make a dent in slowing down what I'm doing. I work on Photoshop mostly and usually am not working on a file less then 100 MB. Buy some more RAM.

I can't comment on the iTMS quality as I haven't purchased anything. I do have 65 GBs of music on my drive though, and a 128 kbps AAC is roughly the same as a 160 kbps mp3 to my ears. I rip at 192 kbps mp3 though for compatibilitys sake.

And are people really asking for Ogg playback? Out of /. I don't hear much about it. The average person knows mp3, if I even try to explain AAC to them they get confused, so I tell them to think of it as mp4 and of course the higher number helps them see it as better (I do know what it is, so you don't have to tell me.)