What is Rockbox and Why Install It
Rockbox is an operating system for classic iPods. It is an open source alternative to the iPod’s default software and it aims to improve on the original system’s deficiencies. In order to achieve that, Rockbox includes a better API for third-party applications as well as high resolution audio support. This means that, unlike the original, it is possible to run games and use higher quality codecs such as FLAC, Ogg Vorbis and Opus with your iPod. Not only that, Rockbox is constantly up-to-date with modern audio technologies. For example, it supports a Parametric Equalizer to allow you to adjust and balance your headphones. Lastly, Rockbox also has features such as Binaural Crossfeed and Gapless Playback. This can be useful if you are listening to classical or live music where concert albums are often split as separate tracks.
Which iPods Are Compatible with Rockbox
One important thing to note, however, is that Rockbox is not available for all iPod models. At the moment, it only supports up to the sixth generation of the original iPod and the first two generations of the iPod Nano and Mini. This means that you will not be able to install Rockbox on either an iPod Touch or iPod Shuffle. The reason is because these models either use an entirely different firmware or operating system.
How to Obtain Rockbox
Obtaining Rockbox is incredibly simple. To do that, you can go to their releases page where you can pick between an Automatic and Manual installation. The Automatic option uses a program that was created to streamline the entire installation process. It’s meant to reduce the amount of guessing that you might have to do and potential errors that you might encounter while installing. Because of that, the Automatic option recommended method by the Rockbox community. On the other hand, the Manual option provides you with a set of archives that you can download and extract to your device’s root folder. This gives you the most amount of flexibility during installation and it can also be useful if you are using an operating system that the installer does not yet support. Here we will focus on installing Rockbox through the Automated installer using Ubuntu Linux 21.10. Knowing that, you can begin by clicking the large “Download Installer” button in project’s releases page. This will then bring up the “Rockbox Utility Page” with a small table showing the operating systems currently supported by the program. From here, you need to click the link for the latest version of the Linux installer. In my case, it is the third row under “Current Version”.
How to Install Rockbox in Linux
Detecting Your iPod in the Utility
The “Device Configuration Prompt” is a small window that allows you to tell the Rockbox Utility about your specific music player. In order to do that, you need to first connect your iPod to your machine through USB. Once connected, the “Device Configuration Prompt” will attempt to automatically detect your music player. However, this feature does not always work. In order to fix this, you can press the “Autodetect” button to force the utility to redo the check.
Setting up the Rockbox Configuration Utility
Install Rockbox to Your iPod
Note: it’s good practice to install all the components listed in the utility. This is to ensure that your device has all the files that it needs to run. This will make updates easier later on.
Backing Up and Removing Rockbox
It is also possible to use the utility to create a backup of your current installation as well as completely uninstall Rockbox. Not only that, the process of doing either one of those is incredibly simple.
Backing Up Your Installation
Uninstalling Rockbox from your iPod
Similar to creating a backup, you need to go to the “Backup & Uninstallation” tab to remove Rockbox in your device. Once there, you can then choose between two removal methods for your iPod:
The first option only removes the bootloader from your installation. Doing this will turn your iPod back to stock but it will not remove the Rockbox files inside your device. This is only useful if you intend to update your system to a newer Rockbox build.The second option removes all of the associated Rockbox files from your device. This is the option to completely wipe your device clean.
In my case, I will choose the second option since I want to completely remove Rockbox from my iPod. From there, the utility will then display a small prompt where you can choose between “Complete” and “Smart Uninstallation”. As described above, in order to fully remove Rockbox you will need to select the “Complete Uninstallation” option. Image credit: Unsplash | All screenshots by Ramces Red Once done, you can go back to the utility’s “Installation” tab and pick the “Development Branch” in the version drop-down menu. From there, you then need to select and install both the bootloader and firmware components for your device. To switch back to the stock iPod, toggle the iPod’s lock switch on immediately after cold booting. Doing this will, in turn, tell Rockbox to disable itself and directly pass the control back to the original firmware. One important thing to note, however, is that you will not be able to access any files that you placed in the iPod through Rockbox while running the original firmware. This is mostly due to the fact that the original iPod uses a proprietary database format that only the iTunes program understands.
