So I am in the market for a nice hard drive based MP3 player. Something like the iPod 80GB or a Creative Zen but I just want to be able to connect it to my OS via USB and have it mount as an external USB drive so I can drag and drop my .MP3's into it. I have never used any media or MP3 players in Linux but I once threw my friends Creative Touch 20GB player in a XP box and it was recognized as a MTP device which I think is a propriatry Microsoft transfer protocol. Anyone know how this works in Ubuntu / Debian or any Linux OS using Gnome?

Thanks for any recommendations on players or what to look for.

iPod + Amarok = Marriage

I think you might prefer a player that supports the open formats of ogg/vorbis. The Iaudio X5 is one such player. You could also look into the Rockbox firmware replacement for the Ipod if you already have one.

Bob

No I don't yet have an iPod or other MP3 player. I was looking for maybe something like the iRiver Clix or Clix2 when it's released as it supports OGG as well.

You can check out some reviews of players that may support OGG at www.anythingbutipod.com

I (actually my son) have the iAudio X5, which works in the manner you have stated - freedom to move your files where you please and supports all the open formats. It is very nice - open source friendly. The Rockbox project has firmware you can load into it to replace or dual boot, but I have not done that.

The X5 works great with Ubuntu/Gnome, which is what I run.

My ipod shuffle works great with amarok but I really, honestly, don't know how to use it with itunes. Once I plugged it in a friend's windows computer and itunes erased everything in it. Amarok syncs everything, including statistics etc.