iTunes actually converts to m4a, if you ask it to. I think the iPod just uploads the songs, in whatever format they are in. So it's possible to have an iPod/iTunes system with only mp3 music. Thus, no problem doing it in Linux.
i finally re-visited this decision now that my wife has been recently converted to a linux user asked for a mp3 player for Christmas after much research went with the SanDisk 8GB Sansa Fuze MP3 Player just FYI follow up
Cool. How's it working for you? Actually you probably don't know yet since it's a Christmas present. :) I had bought an ipod for my boy as that is what he wanted. Turns out it interfaces very nicely with amarok. He seems to like it.
TheQuirk wrote:I use an iPod classic with Fedora 10 and all I have to do is plug it in and open Amarok (or gtkpod or whatever).
Did you downgrade your Amarok to 1.4? I didn't think the new 2.x Amarok that ships with F10 had iPod support. I had to downgrade to get it to work for my son. I don't like the new Amarok at all but the old one was great. The new one is missing half the features of the old one.
UPDATE: the sansa fuze is working great ..wife loves it .. and it works flawlessly with rhythmbox .. shows up as SANSA FUZE and just drag and drop to it like any other usb device .. even did a rsync to populate it
