MP3 players and Linux

March 17, 2006 3:43 PM

Which harddisk portable MP3 player is the best choice for a KDE Linux system?

It's now more than a year that this question has been asked, and as there are new developments in the market, I guess a renewal of the question is warranted.

I've been thinking about buying a new MP3 player, and as I'm a Linux user, I'm wondering if anyone has had very good/very bad experiences with players on Linux.

For example, I understand that certain iRiver models are not mass storage devices anymore, so that quite probably is a problem if you're used to just drag and drop music onto the player. Does anyone have experience with using AmaroK to transfer files to a player? And how about synchronization (especially playlists)? Are there any players out there that are actually actively supported on Linux?

So, if anyone has bought a player lately and is using it on Linux, pray tell!

posted by richardh to Technology (9 answers total)

The iPod, you won't be able to use iTunes and buy songs but it will work with *nix, there are programs that work with it, or you can just install iPod Linux on it, either way it works a-ok.
posted by riffola at 3:52 PM on March 17, 2006

http://pag.csail.mit.edu/~adonovan/hacks/ipod.html
http://neuron.com/~jason/ipod.html
posted by riffola at 3:53 PM on March 17, 2006

You choose not to reward a company that supports things like mass storage support and Ogg out-of-the-box, the upcoming version of Amarok is supposed to have much improved iPod support. Also, Rockbox is being ported to the iPod, which means it'll also do things like play Ogg Vorbis.
posted by zsazsa at 3:56 PM on March 17, 2006

If you choose...
posted by zsazsa at 4:03 PM on March 17, 2006

I've had good success for the past year with my iPod under linux. Right now the current kernel (2.6.15) has issues writing to HFS+ formatted partitions that use journals (it reads just fine), so I reboot into 2.6.14 when I want to change stuff around. Apparently the correct workaround is to plug it into a Mac and run:

diskutil disableJournal volumeName

which I'm too lazy to do. I use gtkpod under KDE because I don't entirely trust Amarok (yet) and haven't had any problems thus far.
posted by togdon at 4:13 PM on March 17, 2006

Rockbox runs on the ipod G5 and G4, and probably others. An id3 tag databse will soon make it usuable even with iTunes's onfuscated filenames. A patch support EXTINF playlists is also probably close at hand.
posted by orthogonality at 5:16 PM on March 17, 2006

My friend always loved the Archos MP3 players, which have good Linux support. Try them.
posted by autojack at 7:10 PM on March 17, 2006

Never had any problems with gtkpod here, either (1st gen mini, 1st gen nano)
posted by blag at 5:49 AM on March 18, 2006

I recommended the Archos Gmini XS on the thread you linked to. I know I'm a bit late to the party, this time, but don't buy an Archos unless you're unduly excited by the returns process. I returned mine TWICE, and between all three units, I never got one that didn't spontaneously turn itself off every few hours.

I got rid of the Archos and bought a Creative Zen Touch. It is much better. Sure, you need to download gnomad2 to put songs on it, but at least the thing plays reliably once you've loaded it. Archos has some good ideas, but they simply don't have the hardware quality to go with them.
posted by vorfeed at 4:24 PM on March 20, 2006