I'm looking to buy a mp3 player and would just like to know what everyone recommends for a good flash one that works well with linux.

I'm not really married to the idea of a flash player, but if I plan on doing a lot of running with it isn't this the better choice over a hard drive based one? If this isn't right then please suggest some hard drive players as well........

My ideal player would NEEDS to have these features:
*easy to use in linux
*256mb or more storage
*FM tuner
*double as a usb storage device for all file types
*sufficiently small
*preferably be a product that's maybe a little bit older that I could find used/cheap on ebay, but I'm more interested in getting a good product than a cheap one.

Also nice to have would be OGG support, USB 2.0 or firewire connection, expandable storage, and record from FM tuner or voice recorder support.

Anyway, the main thing is that it's easy to use in linux. Thanks in advance for the help!

I've got a hard drive player (iPod) and I personally don't trust it running I killed my first iPod because it was jolted during the HD active period while it was refilling the buffer, thankfully they replaced it for free. I bought myself a cheap mp3 player for running and I gotta say its awesome.

I've got a Truly MP369, I went for a 128Mb version since I wasn't really after bags of storage but you can get 256Mb, and 512Mb too (I can easily fit 4 albums on it at decent quality (128kbits/sec) which is more than i need). It has a FM radio that is fairly good. Unfortunately it only plays WMA or MP3 but since my collection is MP3 anyhow that wasn't an issue for me. The battery life is awesome (better that my iPod I believe) and its only the size of a matchbox (plus its really light). It was also a doddle to start using it in linux, just plugged it in and that was it, drag the files I want onto the drive and voila! It does double as a hard disk as well but I tend to use my pen drive/ipod for large files.

Mind you the new iPod mini could be just what you're after

Thanks for the help dhbiker, I don't think I'd want to fork out the cash for an ipod or an ipod mini only to kill it by running with it. Plus I think 256mb is really enough for me. The player you mention sounds about what I'm looking for, can't seem to find any of them for sale on the web or ebay for cheap though.

Do you think that any mp3 player that works like a usb mass storage device would work as easily as the one you own?

Then maybe one of the earlier iRiver models (http://www.iriveramerica.com/products/flash_index.asp) might be what I'm looking for. They've gotten good reviews and there are a lot of them around ebay and discounters for cheap....... Can't seem to find much info about them and linux though, does anyone have any experience with them? Or should I assume they'll work if they can act like a usb mass storage device?

Theres a great usb watch at cyberguys:
http://cyberguys.com
for $120 USD that holds 128MB and plays mp3s and WMAs. However, I have not yet gotten it working in Linux, so I have to use a Windows compy to upload.

You shouldn't have any problems getting any usb flash mp3 player working in linux. Basically all you need to look out for is one that says it works in windoze 2k, or XP without a driver which is pretty much all the usb devices out there. It may require some tweaking (I found usb devices, notably my CruzerMini Pen drive, much easier to get working after I got a 2.6.xx series kernel)