Lo there,

this weekend is my sons 14th birthday, he wants me to get him a digital audo player. Little bitty thing that holds like a gig of music in mp3 format. Now, what i need to know is..
what do i look for in a brand that would likely be linux friendly? I am sure the thing needs to mount as a usb mass storage device and we should be good to go, right?
The HCL here does not have the devices he pointed out. But i suppose i could newegg one. Just looking for a simpler way. One of them list in the specs that if you have windows 98se you would need the included driver disk. That should be a good sign, right?

thanks

If the player acts as a mass storage device (like a usb-stick), it most probably "just works" in Linux. The reason why you need a driver disk for Win98 is that it doesn't have the needed drivers installed already (but many cadgets can be get working after one is installed, without an external driver disk, if you're lucky -- that's enough about Win98).

If the player needs some special software to transfer music, then it's not probably going to work under Linux, not easily at least. Having said that, nearly (if not) all the Apple's iPod players do work under Linux - have a look at GTKpod (google). So buying an iPod is safe, though using it is not just as easy as using an ordinary flash-memory-mass-storage-usb-player (like the most of the mp3-player keys today).

Good signs:
- the player acts as a mass storage disk
- the player does not need a special software for transferring the music
- the player does not have an updateable firmware

Bad signs:
- the player cannot possibly be used for anything else than listening to music (not storing data)
- you need to install a music-transferring application in order to use the player
- you can update the firmware or operating system of the player (iPods do work, though)
- the packet says "Does not work under Linux by any sane means"
- You can use the player for viewing videos and pictures too (except for iPods, they do work) - this means the player has an own operating system and probably needs special program for transferring the music etc.

I'd say that if you just blindly buy a player, you've got great chances it just works under Linux. The more complicated the player is, the less probably it works without a special driver/program (and most of the manufacturers do not do them for Linux). Ask the guy who's selling, if the player can be used to store other data than music/video/images as well, if it can, good. Or if the seller knows if you need a special program for the player that is not written for Linux.

I just went through this exercise, so I'll tell you what I found out.

First off, just about any product out there will play mp3's. The thing to consider is if you want one that will play .ogg files. There are some that will, including ones from i-River. A lot of them do not have the codecs for .ogg files. If you don't care about any format of music except mp3, then you have lots of choice.

I found out I needed to avoid any one that claimed to be a 'juke box'. Sounds fancy, but it implies you need specialized software to control it. Most makers only supply this type of code for windbloze, no surprise there.

You are correct, if it appears as mass storage, it will be linux friendly. The one I bought is a Creative Zen Nano. I bought the 1/2 giger, and they also have a 1 gig model.

It tok me an hour to install the windbloze software on an XP system to talk to the thing. I plugged the Nano into the usb port on my Mandriva 2006 system, brought up Konqueror, and dragged and dropped my files. That was it. Works great. It outo mounts in /mnt/removable, brain dead simple.

I'm sure there are a lot of other brands out there that will do the same thing. Costs vary a lot. I didn't get much of a price on the Nano, but for ease of use with linux it is hard to beat.

Thanks, gents, for the tips. My wifes computer runs ubuntu dapper, so if anything should be able to automount under linux, dapper should do it. brain dead simple is what i am after here. I had not thought about it before, but about 15% of our tune drive is in ogg format.
thanks guys again.

You might look at iAudio. one the few companies that support .ogg, flac and Linux
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...684722?ie=UTF8
or iRiver
http://www.amazon.com/iRiver-CXW-2G-...684722?ie=UTF8