I’m currently dual booting Linux Mint and Windows. Love Linux, hate Windows. So why I am dual booting?
Because I own and use a Microsoft Zune HD.
It’s probably the best product Microsoft ever came out with. It’s so much lighter than my phone, it has a ton of my music on there, and it has an HD FM radio tuner. However, the software that runs it has never been released so there aren’t really any good options to try and manage the Zune on Linux (some people have tried, it doesn’t really work). So I keep a windows partition just so I can manage a 16 year old mp3 player and radio. That has to be the worst reason to keep a Windows partition, right?
(The reality is I would probably get rid of the Windows partition if I could, I’ve tried but something seems wrong with the BIOS on my computer idk I’m not a programmer. The Zune software is pretty janky at the point so uploading new music barely works anyway).
Couldn’t you just run a Windows VM instead? Something like WinBoat might be perfect for your needs. I use it to run Apple Music, but it occurs to me that I could probably run iTunes through it to sync my iPod.
Most likely yes, and if it works, this is one of the easier options (without needing to develop anything or change workflow). However, not all devices work properly with this. iPhones on iTunes are particularly difficult, as (iirc) they sometimes change device ID immediately after connecting/initializing. If you pass through a specific “USB Host Device”, an iPhone connected to a Windows VM with iTunes may not work.
If you pass through an entire USB controller, like an extra PCIe card or one from your motherboard (if it has multiple), this method should work on any USB device with any Windows tools/drivers.
If a Linux native method exists (which it does according to other comments), that is usually easier to set up than a VM with USB passthrough, but it might change the workflow.
I have an 8bitdo controller, and the software for customizing macros and updating firmware only runs on windows, and I just use a virtual machine with USB passthrough set up and it works amazingly.
I haven’t heard of WinBoat before, I will check that out thank you.
It’s pretty cool, albeit fairly resource-heavy. You are, after all, running a whole-ass Windows inside Linux.
However, you can shut it down when you’re not using it and you don’t run the risk of Windows fucking your boot drive.
The Zune software could be run on XP. Running that in a VM on a more modern system shouldn’t bee too difficult.
Windows XP is really lightweight. As long as your CPU supports VT-x or AMD-V, the VM will run fine.