If a go to the store and buy a cheap MP3 player, will it work with linux?
What do I need to know before buying? how would I transfer files to the player? can i move the files back to my computer? are they certain brands to buy and NOT to buy. have you any advice please say

I also want to buy a mouse and a pen drive. same questions for these two items

please consider that I am in Inida, and don't have amazon or egghead at my convenience.

If "will it work" is: putting files on them so you can play them:
almost all such players are recognized as a USB storage device and you can manage files easily using your file-browser/file-manager.
If the player only supports WMA audio you (I don't know if there are such things) you should stay away from it, because you will not be able to easily create WMA in linux (WMA is a proprietary format from Microsoft).
ogg playback would be nice but you won't get that with the cheaper ones.
Some of the more expensive ones such as ipod are supported too - not by using it as a simple storage device though, you need different software which can sync to the player.
Pen-drives and USB-mice are working - just the "encrypt" function some of the pen-drives provide will not work in linux because it uses and relies upon Windows OS.
You can encrypt the drive (or a partition on it) using different means in linux.

thank you

is there a way to know the sound quality from the package?
should I buy better headphone? will better headphones give me the same quality as a more expensive model.

can anybody recommend a model/brand

is there an online rating system, I can trust.

My budget is about $60 dollars for 1GB.

I would suggest Cowon Iaudio players
They support UMS(universal mass storage) and play OGG and FLAC files out of the box.
After market headphones will usually sound better than the ones supplied with the player.
Here's a link for a player that might be of interest:

http://www.advancedmp3players.co.uk/...ade_.1824.html

I find Cowons' sound quality to be excellent,noticeably better than my old creative.
Happy shopping!
Regards.
The trooper.

Has anyone heard of the Meizu mp3 player? My girlfriend bought me one for Christmas. She said that she visited a few linux devoted web sites looking for information and she got a lot of recommendations on it (she doesn't know a thing about linux - she's so sweet). But I haven't seen or heard of it from anyone else. Apparently it is run with open source software. I have to be honest, I haven't really looked into it much. I just put some songs on it and rocked out. I've had no problems except it has some odd decoding problems every once and a while. Something to do with strange id3 tags *shrug*.