Happy Birthday to the Rockbox Project! v1.0 6 years old as of 1 June 2008!

[LambdaCalculus]

Although the announcement is a day late (sorry, folks ), we would like to announce that the first release of the Rockbox project, Rockbox 1.0,  is now 6 years old as of 1 June, 2008!

As a special birthday celebration, we would like to hear your stories about how you first Rockboxed your DAPs. And with that, I'll start.

I first encountered Rockbox back in October 2006, when I was looking for a way of playing my rather large collection of Vorbis music files on a DAP. I was in the market for an iriver H340, and that Xmas, I received a surprise gift: a 30GB iPod video.

I like Apple computers, but not their music players. Why? Two reasons... iTunes (I hate the proprietary database it uses, plus obfuscating filenames), and the fact that it doesn't play Vorbis files in its original firmware. I thought I was stuck, until I remembered a bookmark I had added to Firefox... "Rockbox"? Let me check this out again... hmmm... iPod video was supported, and Vorbis files are playable... done deal.

On December 28, 2006, my iPod video belted out its first Ogg Vorbis file that morning: "I Zimbra" by Talking Heads, from their album "Fear of Music". Since then, Rockbox has been a permanent addition to my iPod video.

I've watched this project grow, and new features and devices added to the project as a whole. I've seen the release of the Gigabeat F/X port, the iAUDIO M5 port, the Sansa e200 and c200 ports, and the m:robe 100 port. I'm running it on my newest device, a Toshiba Gigabeat S60, and have gotten many friends hooked on it. The sheer amount of options it offers to people is mind-boggling, but my friends love it anyway.

Although I now have a nice collection of DAPs (see my signature), I will never give up my iPod video. That was my first encounter with Rockbox, and it holds a special place in my heart with me because of that. I am very proud to be a part of the project, and I'm also very proud to say that I can happily run GPL'ed software on the vast majority of my gadgets.

And finally, thanks to Rockbox, my experience in programming in C and embedded systems development has grown. I have contributed back to the project that means a lot to me. That's the beauty of an open source project.

Keep rocking on, Rockbox! Here's to many more years of enjoyment!

[karashata]

In the spirit of things...  I first heard about Rockbox in an article in a magazine I'm subsribed to, and decided to check it out.  This was back when the H10 port was still fairly new and kinda buggy.  I ended up turning away from it after messing around with it for a few hours because it didn't work quite as smoothly as I'd have liked, and at the time I wasn't aware of the themes available for download on the Wiki (and most of the preinstalled themes are not exactly eye-candy... this was before album art was commited to the core and Cabbie 2.0 became the new default).  I kept my eye on the site, since I really wanted to get rid of the default firmware (not customizable and feature-limited), and ended up coming back after reading about some notable improvements to the H10 port.  After installing it the second time, I haven't gone back, and I've gotten, in my opinion, rather good at making themes for my H10.

Since I started using Rockbox, I've seen a lot of changes, one of the first notable ones being the addition of working FM radio to the H10 ports (something that didn't make it in until well after the Sansas became working targets and had their FM radio support working smoothly).  There was also the Metadata-on-Buffer project which had, for a while, made working builds rather scarce, the addition of album art support, the new and less scary default theme, and the addition of viewports.

I'm looking forward to upcoming viewports changes (though they'll mean having to rewrite the code for *all* of my themes, something I'm not so enthusiastically looking forward to since I've made quite a few...), and hoping to see more wonderfull stuff to come, whatever else may eventually make its way into Rockbox.

[Chronon]

My first DAP was an iPod Video (60 GB version) that I received as a gift for Christmas of 2005.  I had it for about a month before I became discontent and decided to see if there were any other things I could do with it.  I discovered iPodWizard, then iPodLinux and Rockbox shortly thereafter -- March of 2006, if I recall correctly.

I played around a bit with all 3.  But Rockbox really showed itself as valuable in my eyes.  It actually extended the abilities of my DAP as a music player.  iPodLinux provided some novelty with being able to run many simple programs on the iPod.  But with its (at that time) virtually non-existent music support it seemed like just that -- a novelty.

So, after my iPod "met its maker" in Fall of 2006 I opted to get a Gigabeat F40 due to its reportedly good performance with Rockbox.  Sadly, I had my Gigabeat stolen at a party a few months ago.  Happily, I have just used a small portion of my "stimulus check" to order a replacement from eBay.

I have come to really enjoy the existence of this project.  Its features really allow a top-notch music experience, in my opinion.  And this is the first free software community that I have really gotten involved with.  I have observed that volunteer-based free software operates on a similar sort of "gift economy" ethic that the festival Burning Man also promotes.

[SinthrillMeadear]

I first put Rockbox on my 60gb ipod color...last night at like 9pm.  love it so far.

I came across rockbox when I was trying to get ipodlinux to work. even though i would use the installer for it, no files would end up on my ipod. so i gave up with ipodlinux, and did a little more searching. i came across rockbox and was like, wow. that looks awesome. so i got it and installed it.

I just wish there were more games and other apps...snake2 gets boring after like 6 hours. 

[Michel347]

About 2 years ago my wife bought me a Sansa C150 that I used for 6 months and that thing went completely frozen. I search and search on the web to see if there was a way to fixed that and doing this I found the existance of Rockbox at that time, but there was nothing to do with the C150.
I wrote to Sansa since the player was still under warranty and they offered me to send it back for a replacement. To my surprise the one I received was a brand new C250 V1.

I used this new player with it's original firmware for about 2 weeks to find that the shuffle mode was not really shuffle, was hard to make playlist, time to times I had to reset the unit and there was some times a software bug making the left channel silent.

At that time Rockbox solved the battery life problem it had, so it was time to give it a try. I never looked back. I like it mainly for the numerous sound settings, true shuffle, crossfade, fade on stop/pause, car adapter mode, making my own WPS, the ability to use big size MicroSD memory cards.

[wintermute23]

Somewhere between 18 months and 2 years ago, I was looking to get a DAP, and I don't have much love for iPods, so it took a bit or research.

Anyway, I was mostly settled on getting an iriver H300 on eBay, and I was browsing on MisticRiver to get the ins and outs of it, and kept on finding references to Rockbox. A little bit of surfing later, and I'm convinced that an H300 plus Rockbox would be the best DAP ever made (and, yes, I know the H100 owners out there will disagree ). And as it was second-hand and out of warranty, and I've never been afraid to break my toys in the name of research, so I don't think I even booted up into the OF before I flashed it.

And I've never looked back. I bought my wife a Clix2 for Christmas, so I'll be very interested in that port, if it ever gets off the ground. But in general, I don't think I'm ever likely to bother with a DAP (for myself, at least) if it can't be Rockboxed.

[Sherv]

I've been using Rockbox since the AJB days I first loaded it sometime in the summer of 2002, haven't gone back to any original firmware since

[gnu]

In summer 2006 I bought an iPod nano. I read about IpodLinux in a magazine and installed it. In the IpodLinux forums I found many references to rockbox, so I went here and installed it too. I used IpodLinux for playing videos, but as soon as videos with sound were working on rockbox I uninstalled Ipodlinux and only used rockbox. After I accidentally fried my nano I bought a cowon X5 (a few weeks before it was discontinued). And a few weeks ago I started writing plugins for rockbox.
I don't think I'll ever buy a not-rockboxable DAP again...

[knight4led]

I found out about Rockbox back in the days when the H100 port was in its earlier days and those of us with H300 were just wishing that it would come to our beloved DAP. The day it became usable on H300 I installed in and never looked back.

I've seen the project grow from before it could even output colors on the screen of the H300 (the first color target), through basic color patches and am loving where things are today. We have built in Album Art, Viewports, a database and just about everything else I could want.

Rockbox also helped me get over my relative distaste in iPods. I hated the non drag n' drop nature of them, the obfuscated file names, being tied to iTunes and all of that jazz. But when my collection grew too big for my H320 and I knew rockbox was finally usable on the 5G iPod I made the jump without fear.

I know I am quiet most of the time and stick to the threads for custom builds, but I love Rockbox and can't imagine ever using any DAP without it. So much so that I am considering buying an S60 and enjoying watching that develop. That is a testament to the great work and support that the developers have been doing.

[krazykit]

Both my Rio Karmas died and that weekend there was a sale on new Gigabeat F40s.  Saw something about Rockbox, checked it out, and jumped in.

[Zardoz]

I came across Rockbox randomly in 2004, tried it out and haven't looked back since. My iAudio was stolen a few months ago so had to resort to a store-graded iPod, carefully sought out for compatibility. (works fine but not as good as the cowon.)  Really really don't know why manufacturers don't look at projects like this and learn - as in, why limit a piece of hardware???


edit:congratulations and maximum respect to the rockbox people! happy birthday. btw I donated all of 10 euros once before, I should get it together to give more.....