I recommend Cowon. supports ogg and they are linux compatible by design

I have been doing a little testing with mp3 players, found that my Sansa Clip is
not seen in Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Kola, but an old RCA mp3 player is. By old it
is around 4 years old with only 250 megs of memory.

If anyone know how to have the Sansa Clip work with Ubuntu, please post.

I use Rockbox on my Sansa. It gives it more features.

I like the sansa devices. They are linux friendly, and relatively cheap.

I agree with you the Sansa is a *great* player, small with great sound. Which
one are you using with which version of Ubuntu? I would like to get my Sansa
Clip to work with Ubuntu 9.04.

This is the device I use the most - it's a 2 GB device:

[1966731.544249] scsi 18:0:0:0: Direct-Access SanDisk Sansa Clip
2GB v02. PQ: 0 ANSI: 0


I just got a 4 GB device, and when I plugged it in, it wasn't
recognized. So I checked the device settings, and set the usb mode to
"msc", then plugged it in again and it came right up:

[1967048.305226] scsi 19:0:0:0: Direct-Access SanDisk Sansa Clip
4GB v02. PQ: 0 ANSI: 0

The sansa disk works on my home computers (ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04) and my
work computers (ubuntu 8.04 and 10.04) and hasn't ever given me any
trouble. I think once it corrupted itself and I just had it reformat
itself but other than that it just works.

My ipod OTOH is very finicky and I tend not to use it as much.

I was given a Sony Walkman 8GB and despite it showing
"requires MS Media Player" and "MS Windows XP or Vista"
when I plugged it into my Ubuntu 9.10 machine it shows
up as regular storage device. I was able to load it
up with MP3's and off it went. The user manual was in
PDF form in the root directory. Since I use XP at work
I tried it with media player and all that adds is a
sync feature. Maybe there's something else "special"
about media player I'm missing but bottom line is
despite my aversion to Sony products it does everything
I need it to with Ubuntu. I don't download music off
the web so I can't comment as to transferring that kind
of content (I just rip my CD's).

Many MP3 players that require media player or iTunes need them to create a
database in addition to the music files themselves. Both Amarok and
Rhythmbox and perhaps Banshee can do this. I don't do Mono so can't say :).

They support MTP devices which connects to many such players including
iPods. My son has been through many players and likes Cowon and Sansa Fuze.
I have a Philips 8 GoGear GB that sucks. It works well enough but does not
support ogg, or flac. Fortunately I got it refurbished for a song. I would
not buy another player if it did not play these formats. I get most podcasts
in ogg format and like flac as a lossy format.