Okay, I’m being a bit facetious here. I was thrilled to get a spiffy new video iPod for Christmas this year which meant I finally get to play with video podcasts.
“This is great,” I thought to myself, “now I can watch Democracy Now while I’m on my way to school, yay!”
However, after examining the state of video podcasts, I discovered that a good percentage of them were NSFW.
That aside, I got the interesting experience of building and packaging a gtkpod that works for Apple format AAC/M4A as well as H.264 videos. Most of this code is out in CVS already, but getting it to work with Ubuntu can be a hassle even for someone with a good deal of Linux experience.
For this reason, I’ve taken my build and packaged it as an unofficial deb for Ubuntu Breezy. It might work with Debian Sid as well, but you’re taking your chances installing it. I offer no guarantees that this package won’t replace all your music with David Bowie, but it’s worked for me. If you’re still interested in living close to the metal and don’t mind hurting yourself on sharp objects, download and install the package here.