[SWLUG] linux mp3 players advice please

[Gareth Bowker]

On Sun, 2005-09-18 at 13:31 +0100, Neil Jones wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I am at present looking into the possibility of buying an MP3 player. There 
> are  a lot available on ebay quite cheaply.
> 
> 
> Are there any issues that I should be aware of when using one with Linux?
> Is it rather like digital cameras where they will work anyway?
> Or are there other problems?

For the most part, it's a lot like a digital camera - it just appears as
a mass-storage device which you can copy files to/from. However, some
players also have the ability for the host computer to index the files,
so you can search through the id3 tags in the files quickly.

I own an iRiver which can do this (so you can search by artist, genre,
that sort of thing) and I believe the iPod has the same sort of
capability. There's free software to index the iRiver and I've read that
there are plenty of iPod tools too, but I can't verify this.

One last thing re the iRiver, there's some firmware for this,
rockbox[0], which is free software. It takes the boot time for the
device from a pretty awful 20 seconds down to 4 and adds a host of new
features too, such as crossfades between tracks. The standard iRiver can
play ogg files, the rockbox firmware adds FLAC too. The iRiver firmware
is still under active development and hasn't got an "official" release
yet (only daily builds) but it Works Well For Me [tm].

Cheers,

Gareth

[0] http://www.rockbox.org/
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