[GLLUG] linux friendly audio player

[Richard Houser]

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The first generation nano was fairly decent, but you would probably want
to put Rockbox on it.  I had used one for some time previously
(installed it for someone, then played around with it for several days
at a time) and it worked great.  When I went to buy a player, I looked
at a nano since I like the form factor and the click-wheel was better
than the controls on the sansa players.

I actually ended up with an 8GB Nano (second gen).  That was a HUGE
mistake.  Apple still marketed it as a nano, but swapped out all the
guts from the earlier version and changed around the case (so most of
the accessories for the original nano don't fit properly).
Unfortunately, I didn't even notice that the hardware had changed until
I'd broken the seal (at that time, all the previous nano were
supported).  At that point, I was stuck.

The 2nd-gen version won't run rockbox, and the Apple software is crap.
That does not support either flac or vorbis formats, and requires
special software on the machine used to add or remove songs.  On the
bright side, Amarok and a few other Linux applications can read and
write this database; the downside is that the database can get corrupted
from time to time and require a reload.  I've only seen the corruption
happen at runtime when using the device as a player (happened twice in
about 14 months), not when modifying songs.  By comparison, Rockbox and
other players will allow you to delete or modify songs from either the
filesystem or on the device itself.

I also periodically have issues with the player freezing (although this
happens slightly less since I got the latest software updates).  When
this happens, you have to hard reset the machine and settings such as
the current playlist (not the main archive itself) and play history are
lost.  The lockups might be manageable for you though.  I average a
lockup maybe once every four hours of play-time.  To be fair, though,
when I play it, I tend to get an interruption that requires a pause
about once every half-hour or so.  The lockups seem to be more frequent
if the controls are actually in use versus the device just playing back
a list.

Michael George wrote:
> I'm looking for a relatively inexpensive portable media player for my
> kids.  It needs to play nicely with linux, of course, and I'd like it to
> play ogg format audio.
> 
> I don't need a fancy color touchscreen or anything, just a way to
> navigate to the audio tracks.
> 
> What players to you members of the gllug list have?
> 
> Thanks!
> 

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