Sansa View 16GB Flash MP3 Player Linux Support
I’ve stopped using Apple products since they decided to screw all their customers over that unlocked iPhones. Luckily (at least that’s the way I’m looking at it) my 5G iPod died a month ago and I started looking around for another MP3 player.
I wanted a flash based player with at least 8GB on-board and a MicroSD (SDHC) slot that was as attractive as the 5G iPod. I found a great looking player in the Sansa View and the 16GB model was a great price at $200. It was a little hard to find but after a week of looking I got one straight from SanDisk.
It had some problems reading my ID3 tags from some of my music but they released firmware 1.06 which corrected the problem.
The other problem was mounting it in Linux. Normally when you connect it to USB it’s using the MTP Media Transfer Protocol (should be called Microsoft Transfer Protocol) which of course doesn’t work under Linux.
But by holding down the left arrow when you connect it will use the standard USB Mass Storage Protocol MSC Mass Storage Class (sometimes referred to as UMS) and mount as a normal drive. Then you can just drag and drop your music folders and all is good in the world.
Bottom line, it’s a nice player that should work with any OS and let’s you easily backup your music. The forums over at Any Thing But iPod where very helpful.
Posted in Linux Hardware | 2 comments2 Comments so far
Sounds good.. How about a post on music formats and Linux / Windows music players that you use to manage your library?
One of the to do’s on my list is to find an alternative to iTunes to manage music on the 2.5″ usb hard drive I connect to the Alpine iDA-X001 deck in my car.
I’m testing a couple different music apps (Amarok, SongBird) and a couple music retailers (eMusic, Amie St). I’ll put a post up this week.