Most end users wanting to move to Linux, expect to play MP3 music and sync their music with their iPods, iPhone, and XXX (put your favourite mp3 player here.)
Apple does not have iTunes for Linux, its only available for Windows and Mac, I wonder why.
iPhone being extremely proprietary, makes it incredibly difficult to write open source software to do what iTunes does. We will get there someday, but for now, here is a work around.
Install Virtual Box.
Then Install Windows within the Virtual Machine.
And then install iTunes on Windows.
Run a script to enable USB connection and you are ready to go.
Here is the link to the script, its been tested on Ubuntu, but may work on other distros.
Who needs windows when you can use ipod-convenience and amarok.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/iPhone
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work with Firmware 2.x as “Apple introduced a cryptographic hash into the song database of the device”.
http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Media_Device:IPod#Devices_with_Firmware_2.x
unfortunately I tried this before I read this article, so now all the space on my phone is gone, and iPod reports no songs.. 🙂
//hk