Portable MP3 players
Posted by creining | Filed under Uncategorized
Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra or iRiver iHP or Dell Digital Jukebox or iPod. That is the question. One of the most important requirements for me is that the device will work under linux (I quit that Windows habit almost 3 years ago now). This page contains great information on portable music players interoperability with linux. It appears that all except the Dell Digitial Jukebox have support under linux. It also appears that the most mature software exists for the iPod with the handful of software developments for the Nomad Jukebox Zen being in beta stages and only one software development existing for the iRiver. In searching google I find a lot of success stories such as this and this about people using an iPod under linux. The common application that they use is named gtkpod which is a GUI frontend based off of gnupod. Now if I do purchase an iPod, I’ve read that the latest generation is for Windows and Mac (filesystem format is the point here) and that it comes HFS+ formatted by default. The first time someone uses their iPod under Windows the conversion to FAT32 would be performed invisibly. In my case HFS+ support under linux is limited so either a Windows PC can do the conversion to FAT32 or it can be done under linux with fdisk, dd and mkfs.vfat. Also, here’s a graphical comparison between iPod generations that’s neat.
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