Would anyone like to recommend a linux-friendly portable music player?

My requirement are simple, but AFAIK are not easily met by current commodity hardware.
1) I want to it play ogg and flac. These are the only file formats I care about.
2) It has to be USB mass storage device, with transfer of files being done using regular shell commands like cp, mv, rsync etc. I would prefer not to have to use any special software piece like rhythmbox, and under no circustances do I want to have to use microsoft's MTP.

I would welcome anyone's comments or suggestions. If you would like to hear about my experiences with the matter so far, see below. otherwise,
thanks in advance.

-mark

my experience so far with portable music players under linux:

The closest I came to meeting the requirements mentioned above was with an iriver t30. It plays ogg and flac. However, by default it uses MTP. Apparently, using gphoto2 allows you to transfer music files using this protocol, but I had little luck (after each file transferred to it via gphoto, the iriver would shutdown). Fortunately, there is a relatively undocumented firmware update possibility that allows you to change the firmware to allow usb mass-storage. This requires using a windows machine as the update software only runs on windows. However, once done, everything works properly with linux and my requirements were met. After a few months, however, the iriver started to malfunction. It would freeze up. Turning it off sometimes unfroze it, but eventually it froze for good. Returning it was not an option as it was an ebay purchase so I attempted to reinstall the firmware, using the firmware update program I initially used. However, no cigar. The update software will only recognize a mtp-enabled firmware which it will then update to ums-enabled firmware. Trying to reinstall the ums-enabled firmware did not appear to be possible. I have toyed with the idea of getting another iriver t30 or t-something-higher, but I am a bit hesitant lest malfunctions re-occur and there is nothing I can do to fix them.

how about an iPod (or other mp3 player) with rockbox installed on it ?

http://www.rockbox.org/

using rockbox sounds very promising. thanks for the tip.
-mark

how about a cowon D2. it uses a proprietary firmware but it is quite friendly to linux/macos x/windows: it is mounted as a usb disk. so a simple mount command does the trick, and on macos x a click automatically mounts it.
it has support for mp3,ogg,flac,wma,wav. it plays videos (formatted to the correct size). latest firmware has support for mini-flash applications, so you can have some games and/or useful little tools. +FM radio, +builtin microphone to record audio. it also has tv out but the cable isn't included with the player.
it has 4Gb builtin flash memory and has a slot for an SD/MMC/SDHC card (I have an 8Gb SDHC card for a total of 12Gb).
and it has a pretty good battery life. on their site they say 52 hours of music playback, it's a bit less but not far from it; cut it down by aproximately half if you have an sd card in it.

I've had one for about 3 months now and I'm pretty satisfied by it.

it's easy to use and you don't have to install a custom firmware that breaks the license

http://www.cowonglobal.com/product/p...D2_feature.php

this forum is full of enthusiasts ready to help you and answer your questions:

http://iaudiophile.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=53

Thanks LeLutin, the cowon D2 is a handsome looking device, and it's good to know it plays nice with linux.
-mark

I think any newer Cowon player is your best bet, since they generally support FLAC and are all mass-storage. They also sound better than average. There's also the Meizu M6 and Trekstor Vibez. Both seem fairly well received at HeadFi.org. I don't remember for sure, but I think they're both mass-storage.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html#hardware

I'll second the D2 recommendation. All the Cowan iAudio products play nice with linux, Flac and ogg. I used to have the x5 30G (got stollen). They also sound better than any apple product.

Any thoughts on a Creative Zen player? They seem to have linux support.

I haven't used one, but I'm considering the purchase. I'd love to hear from someone who's used one with linux.

thanks for all the discussion. it has been very helpful.
I am now trying to find a cowon iaudio on ebay uk.

-mark

According to this, it supports neither flac nor ogg.

I just got a SanDisk Sansa e260 and with the Rockbox firmware it will play ogg and flac. It also allows MSC file transfers - default is MTP but is easily changed in the settings menu. So far I'm pleased with it.

For a really good player, check out the vibez player. It plays ogg and flac, and much more. these folks bought the rights to the Rio Karma firmware, so has all the features of the Karma, skips the 2 second gap between tracks, does fade in/out from track to track, has a 5 band equalizer built in, and lots of other features.

The battery life was exceptionally long (20 hours?). The capacity is 12 GB, which is enough for lots of songs or 8-10 audiobooks.

You would like it!