This morning I installed ipodlinux on my first generation iPod mini. I’m no hacker - I used the OS X installer available from kainjow.com. This is an unsupported version of ipodlinux, but it works really well.

The funny thing about linux on the iPod is that the thing it does really badly is play music. But that’s not why I installed it. I was hoping for the recording feature available with older iPods running linux, but no cigar. If I had read the documentation first, I would have known that recording doesn’t work on newer iPods yet.

The games, world clock and calculator all work really well, and I really like the ability to read text files of any length. It seems convinced that it’s 1970, though, no matter how often I tell it that it’s 35 years later. I’ve viewed a jpg picture and three videos! (no sound) and overall I’m terribly impressed.

While it may not be quite as useful as it is cool, I think ipodlinux is a testament to what passionate amateurs (as in people who do things because they love it not because they are paid) can accomplish.