I got an iPhone 3g recently, and was really, really bummed out that I was having to fire up iTunes in a virtual machine so I could manage music, playlists and podcasts on it. Since I have my music library set up with a samba share for my wife’s laptop access, I just mounted the music directories there and added them to the iTunes library. But so much just isn’t cool about iTunes, and I have so many songs and playlists and ratings and such in Amarok, I just really didn’t want to switch.
So, like any good Linux user, I went bumping around Google to find a way to get the iPhone working in Ubuntu. I started out with a good article from FatButtLarry. I followed the HOWTO to the letter, but I could not get a successful sync. I could copy files to the iPhone, but the actual iPod software on the iPhone would not see it. So I went off on another search.
Fortunately, I stumbled on this excellent tutorial by StoneCut via WebUp8:
However, there is now a lot easier way using GVFS which will automount your iPhone for syncing with Rhythmbox, for example. And you don’t need to compile anything anymore. It works for Ubuntu Karmic and Lucid (only Karmic tested). The required PPA does not carry any packages for Jaunty, sorry.
I am now quite happily using Rhythmbox to manage music and podcasts on my iPhone. I reckon eventually I’ll have to hook up to iTunes just to back up the apps I have, maybe to install some new ringtones… Or maybe not. 
