As I type, my iPod, in Linux, is having songs transferred onto it. Dana, you ask, what on earth did you do to get your iPod to work under Linux? Well, I answer, it was a long process, involving a trip to Fry's, two kernel recompiles, and a whole lot of TV watching to calm my nerves.
Basically, the iPod mini needs to be formatted. Once that happens, you can hook it up to the firewire port on your Linux box and it'll detect it as a new drive. From there, you run the lifesaving program, gtkpod, and you're jacked up and good to go. For those of you who had NO idea what the hell I was just talking about, the moral of the story is, although Apple says that you can only use the iPod mini on commercial, closed-source operating systems, Linux and the open-source community gives Apple the middle finger and finds a way around it. Almost puts in a tear in your eye.
PSA TO SLS PEOPLE: Go to the meeting this Wednesday at 4 to learn more about some of the cool projects CIS has going on.