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Monday, January 26, 2015

Fun with Chromebook, Part 2

For some value of 'fun'. I Like To Make Stuff recommended a Sci-Fi audio book on Audible, and since I like Science Fiction and I have an iPod, I thought I would see if I could download a copy of the book to my iPod via my new Chromebook (oooo, chrome, shiny). It looks like the answer is mostly NO. You need iTunes to load stuff onto an iPod*, and iTunes only runs on real computers, like Mac's and PC's. Chromebooks don't count. But then I came across this tantalizing little bit on an Apple support forum:
If you want the Chromebook to remain a 'Google Chromebook' than the answer is no, unfortunately. You're at the mercy of what you can utilize in the Chrome web app. store..however, Chromebooks with developer mode enabled make, in my opinion, the perfect little cheap machine to run your favorite distro of linux (Kubuntu for me). And it's literally a few key presses in the terminal and voila, you've got a linux box capable of running everything and anything. You don't even have to choose Chromebook or Linux either, you can very easily have them installed and capable of running concurrently, in a matter of a few keystrokes.
I'm not quite sure what 'everything and anything' means. Do you install Linux and then set up a virtual environment to run Windows in, so you can run iTunes? Is there even enough memory in a Chromebook to support such an abomination? And can you get back to Chrome afterwards? It sounds like a frigging nightmare.
     Probably should just wait a bit until someone develops an iPod loader for Chromebooks.

*This isn't quite true. CNET has a Windows program that claims it will load your iPod. Doesn't help me, but at least we aren't locked into Apple.

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