I Pod Touch

[Shankar Viswanathan]

On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 12:09 PM, James Kramer <kramerjm-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> I need to find a good gift for my daughter.  I like the IPOD touch but do
> not like their unfriendliness to Linux.  Is their a linux/google version of
> the IPOD touch.  Does anyone have any good suggestions for a gift of simular
> nature.  I guess that the netbooks are good but a little expensive.  Thanks
> in advance for any suggestions.  Is it possible to run Linux on the IPOD
> touch?

The Rockbox firmware for the iPods (based on Linux) doesn't support
the Touch and some other current generation iPod models. I'm not aware
of any Linux based firmware known to work on the Touch.

Regarding other media players that run Linux, the one I stumbled
across is the Archos Internet tablet:
http://www.archos.com/products/imt/archos_5it/index.html?country=ua&lang=en

It runs Android, but there are a couple of cons:
 - Doesn't seem to support multi-touch (at least currently). May have
a resistive touchscreen as opposed to capacitive. So it may not have
the Touch-like user experience.
 - Doesn't support the standard Android Marketplace (app store) --
only  Archos' own proprietary store. I'm  guessing this could be
hacked around, but it may depend on how Linux-savvy your daughter is.

-Shankar