iTunes for Linux?

15 Comments

“Although iTunes and Linux have been pursuing solo careers, one small software maker hopes to get them to make music together,” Ina Fried reports for CNET News.com.

“CodeWeavers, which specializes in software that lets Windows programs run on Linux, said on Monday that it has a new version of its software that adds support for Apple Computer’s iTunes,” Fried reports.

Full article here.

15 Comments

  3. Am I an idiot, or wouldn’t it be just as easy if not more so to do a port from OSX as it and Linux are both Unix-Based?

    Why go the long way, through inferior Windows code?

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  5. They’re porting win32 code, written for the x86 architecture, to Linux, running on x86 processors. That’s easier than taking PPC code and turning it into x86 code.

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  7. It would not make sense for Apple to release a Linux version of iTunes. With products like OS X Server and XServe Apple is trying to gain market-share from linux solutions.

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  8. Linux is the wrong target audience for iTunes. Most people running linux are tech junkies that think iTunes’ interface is bloated. They’re the type of people that like WinAmp-like, small footprint players. The linux-using people who would actually appreciate it probably already have a mac running OSX, so what’s the point of spending the money porting and supporting it (yes, there would be porting as linux doesn’t have the Aqua layer at all)?

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  11. Correct me if I am wrong-
    Open Darwin (x86) is the Intel/AMD equivalent of the Free BSD subsystem of OS X + some of Apple’s “enhancements”. Among these would be support for QuickTime file types although no QuickTime branded software exists for Linux/Unix.
    Why Apple has not released a version of iTunes for Linux is beyond me.

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  12. What on earth are you guys talking about? iTunes is NOT written for BSD. It’s not written for PowerPC. Nobody uses kernel services or assembly language to write modern application software. iTunes is a Carbon app written for Mac OS and the QuickTime Media Layer. It just happens that QTML was ported to Windows for QuickTime 3.0. So porting iTunes to Windows was a matter of updating the WIN32 version of the QuickTime SDK and porting the Mac OS-specific parts to Windows.

    QTML was never ported to Linux. It only runs on Carbon and WIN32. Porting QTML to Linux would be a huge undertaking and it’s never going to happen. Never.

    If iTunes were ever to be ported to Linux, it would be more of a complete rewrite than a port.

    And the thing that’s going to ship with Moto phones is NOT the iTunes app. It’s a new piece of software that plays the same songs as iTunes, that decodes Apple’s DRM, and that syncs with iTunes.

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