I am a recent convert to Amarok and I love the features, it is clearly the most comprehensive music player/manager for linux BUT . . . I have had trouble with the iPod support.

I, like many I suspect, am still trying to find a complete replacement for iTunes. The 'features' that keep me booting windows are Playlists and Podcasts. Whenever I connect and transfer music to my iPod, all of my iPod playlists and Podcasts disappear.

Am I missing something, or can someone explain how to get this reliably working - once and for all??

What kind of playlists are you talking about? libgpod is not capable of handling 'On the go' playlists, these will disappear each and every time you connect your ipod.

Are you sure that your podcasts disappear? Recently, I noticed that itunes handles them a bit differently: they also appear among your music, sorted according to their author. But Amarok only puts them on the ipod's podcasts playlist and thus they are only shown below the podcast menu.

Does this explain your problems? Otherwise, can you describe your problems more thoroughly?

I mean all playlists, not just the 'on-the-go' ones. Music is transferring perfectly, and when I queue the podcasts they appear to transfer (and they may be listed under the artist etc, I haven't checked) but NONE of the playlists have any tracks assigned to them, ie the playlists are listed, but no tracks are in them.

Any idea how to fix this?

Sorry, not yet any idea. Works fine for me (1st gen ipod nano, Amarok 1.4.7 on ubuntu gutsy gibbon with libgpod 0.5.2).

Oh yes, wait: do you use smart playlists? These are not supported at all.

When do your playlists and podcasts disappear? Are your playlists and podcasts still shown in Amarok's media device view right after connecting your device? Or do they disappear right when connecting it?

What is it exactly that you are trying to achieve? Copy a playlist with all its songs? How do you try to do it?

What kind of ipod do you have? What version of Amarok? Which version of libgpod? Which distro?

Some basic statistics:

Ubuntu Feisty 7.04 (with an eye on the 7.10 release later this week)
Amarok 1.4.7
libgpod not sure which version (will check when I get home)

iPod 5G video iPod released late 2005 - Amarok does appear to select the correct version

In terms of playlists . . .

I guess most of my playlists are smart playlists (eg albums in rock genre from 2007 etc)
I will try a manual playlist to see if this works
The songs are already on my iPod (so I am not trying to copy them over again) but when I open the playlist on my iPod the playlist is empty
I'm not sure if they are present in my Amarok browser window for the device, but will check.

The podcasts - I can seemingly transfer these to my device, but they don't show up under podcasts