iPod mini and Linux

[Zero102]

I am presently re-arranging the network in the house I am presently living in, and am facing a problem.
My room-mate has an iPod mini (I believe it's second-generation... it's one of the early colored ones), and for some reason he feels it necessary to always go downstairs and use my personal computer to charge it, and transfer songs to/from it (including ripping CD's). I am absolutely sick of this, and am moving one computer upstairs. (Stupidly I agreed to allow him to do this in the first place, but this is getting excessive. It frequently leads to him just sitting on my bed, eating and watching my TV while his CD's rip) However it won't be the one he was using (my only windows box), instead it will be an iMac running YellowDog 4.0. This is because space is limited upstairs, and I have my windows box and one of my linux boxes tied together with a KVM switch to make better use of the small amount of space I have downstairs. (So, the windows box is NOT moving upstairs)
I have heard of using crossover office or wine to run the iTunes program under linux (I already am using wine for a lot of programs), but I have also heard that it is impossible to rip CD's using this method. I just don't believe that could be impossible, but I can't find any way to do it.
Anybody on here able to help me out?
I have been digging through the sourceforge website looking for somebody who has picked this up as a project, and as of yet have found about 30 sites for installing linux ON your iPod, but not for interfacing your iPod with a linux computer.

[D'z Nutz]

Have you tried using gtkpod to upload songs from your linux box to your ipod? That's what I use and I haven't had any real problems with it yet. I don't think it does cd ripping, so you'll have to find something else for that; I can't remember what I used off the top of my head since I don't rip cd's that often.

[Zero102]

Haven't tried anything yet. Needed to update my linux distribution on the comp to work with some newer devices I had around (was running YDL 2.X), and for some reason my CD's got fubar'd, and I now have no OS on it right now... that's a whole different problem.

Somehow I can download the images, they pass the SHA1 or MD5 sum tests, and if I burn them using the 'burn and verify' option, they always pass. So, I stick them in the iMac, and about 50% of the time they fail the media check during installation....
Weird thing is every time I test a disc, it will always test the same, unless I reboot.
That is to say, I could do the following:
verify disc 1: pass, verify it again: pass
verify disc 2: fail, verify it again: fail
reboot
verify disc 1: fail
...
It's just fucked. I think the iMac can't read the CD-R's I used to burn the images onto. I guess I have to find some different CD-R's.... I wonder if the iMac will read a CD-RW?.... Hmm.