[nmglug] portable players (mp3, ogg and Gnu/Linux)

[Valentin Guillen]

js at jasonschaefer.com wrote:

>Anyone have any experience with portable mp3 and ogg players on GnuLinux? Not
>many play ogg and I don't want to buy them all to find out if they work well on
>Debian.
>
>Please help
>
>-Jason
>  
>

Last Christmas I received a nice Emerson USBdrive/MP3/WMA player 
device.  It has 128mb of memory, a voice recorder, FM radio, and of 
course the media player.  Its a very small device with a USB connector 
at one end.  I use it in conjunction with SuSE Linux 9.2  Unfortunately, 
it doesn't play Ogg.  

It works fine with GNU/Linux.  I merely plug it into the computer's USB 
port, and I can then move files onto/off the unit, as well as delete.  
The system treats the unit as a USB Hard Drive, but the device manager 
sees it for what it is:  a generic Digital Audio device, DA00001.  I 
almost always am in a KDE  GUI when I use it, and almost always I 
usually cut and paste, or drag files onto it while in Konqueror File 
Manager.  It is extremely straightforward, as it is seen as merely 
another drive. 

If purchasing a unit, I would definitely go with a flash based device, 
but one with 4~6 GB of storage.  On a philosophical or moral basis, I 
would choose a unit which did Ogg, but I can live with a unit which does 
MP3, or AAC.  I can always transcode material if necessary.  I don't use 
the wma capabilities of the unit.  I use the device along with a tiny FM 
radio transmitter, so that I can listen to my music in my car.  I merely 
select an FM frequency NOT in use locally in Albuquerque, and hear my 
music there, usually on 89.5 FM.  The unit has a small, hard to read LCD 
readout of song info, player and batt status, etc.   It is simply 
insufficient to hold more than a couple of hours of music.  I have a 
couple of Flash Drives on which I also carry music. They work the same 
way on the SuSE system. 

Flash based units will save on precious battery power, as opposed to 
hard drive based units.  They will not be cheap, but a Digital Music 
player is a luxury.  I've seen some very nice players lately on 
websites, but willwait until they are more mainstream (read: cheaper).

Here are a couple of captures of what the unit looks like while in SuSE:

http://www.thuntek.net/~vguillen/art/da01.png
http://www.thuntek.net/~vguillen/art/da02.png
http://www.thuntek.net/~vguillen/art/da03.png

I've also used the player *many* times while booted up into various 
distros of Debian Live-CD versions, including Mepis Pro, Kanotix, 
Linspire, Knoppix, etc.  No problem there.  Just be sure to get one 
which has sufficient storage for several hours of jams.

Good luck!

vg