[aklug] Re: MP3 players

I don't know about the price range you set. I suspect that you'll find
lots in that range on craigslist or ebay. New? Apple took over the
market and drove the price up with silliness.

I use and enjoy an iPod and am happy to synch it with Amarok (linux).
Yes, I'm fundamentally an Xfce guy, but when it comes to iPod synching
nothing I've tried beats Amarok (although Songbird looks promising).

That said, getting it to synch reliably was a bit of a chore at first
because I have an iPod Classic (aka "6th gen"). The newest
iPod/iTouch/Nano products need the newest gtkpod libs (should be no
surprise) and there are some specific hoops to jump through even with
that (thanks a lot, Jobs). With Ubuntu (and derivatives) this means
Hardy (or newer). Or do a lot of DIY compiling and dependancy sorting
that will in the end have you upgrading or installing most of Gnome.
But if you have Amarok 1.4.9 (or greater) then life is much easier. Or
if you have an old installer for iTunes 6.x you can run that in Wine.
I've had zero luck with iTunes in vmware or virtualbox, but I've had
zero luck with a lot of stuff with vmware and virtualbox that other
people say runs fine.

Sidenote: aklug presentation and hands-on with vmware or virtualbox
for noobs would be awesome.

In the price range you're talking, I expect that you can find a decent
Zune. Never used one, never had the need for one since we're an iPod
family, but I understand they synch well with linux. If you're buying
a used iPod, get an older one. 5th gen or older. Then burn some open
source firmware to it, get native ogg support, and be much much
happier than I am.

Everything you buy new will say on the box "needs Windows or Mac".
They don't tell you that 99% of the time there is FOSS that supports
the player just fine, and that said FOSS runs like a champ on linux.
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Received on Sun Nov 16 14:26:26 2008