FLOSS-/hacker-friendly music-players?

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

Arc Riley <arcriley at gmail.com> writes:
> On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 5:47 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen <rozzin at geekspace.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I'm looking for a new music-player to replace my iPod Video,
> > which died over the weekend.
> >
> > The reason I bought that iPod was that, at the time, iPods were not
> > yet particularly hostile toward projects like Rockbox or iPod Linux,
> > and the hardware was nice. It looks like that line of iPods was the
> > last one that was anything like open, and that Apple is now actively
> > hostile toward `homebrew computing', so...
[...]
> > I'd rather put my money (and time) into supporting something
> > that's actually open or `friendly'. I'm even willing to pay extra
> > for that feature.
[...]
> > My music-collection is predominantly Ogg Vorbis files,
[...]
> > Ideally, I'm looking for something with no built-in microphone,
> > camera, or radios. My FreeRunner is not a candidate to replace
> > the iPod for this as well as several other reasons, though
> > I suppose *another* FreeRunner might be.
>
> I was going to buy a Sansa Clip+ which supports Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, but then
> we got Android phones and I've found it just as adequate for music playing.

I actually bought my wife a Sansa e280, some time ago
(when they were still in production ;)), because
the (v1) Sansa e-series devices basically qualified
as better than the iPod in just about every single way:

    + Expandable storage via µSD (naturally, for SanDisk--
      the whole point was to sell more flash-disks!)

    + Less fragile (again, since it's SanDisk...)

    + Tactile feedback on the scroll-wheel

    + Actively FLOSS-friendly (not *much*, but they showed
      *something* like support to the Rockbox hackers).

    + User-replaceable battery

    + Also had an FM radio, and a microphone,
      and could even record audio from the radio
      (which were all extra benefits, for her use)

Her Sansa is, of course, still running.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that both the Sansa devices
and the `Android phone' options fail too many criteria,
including the most important ones.

The `Android phone' solution actually fails /all/ of my criteria
except for the `can play vorbis' criterion:

    - Hacker-unfriendly
    - *Several* radios
    - Microphone
    - Camera

> With a data plan, you can stream live music directly from Jamendo as you walk
> down the street.

That fails other criteria that I hadn't even thought needed mention;
it's basically the exact opposite of what I want :)

I do appreciate being told about Jamendo, though--I hadn't heard of it,
and though it's not related to the goal of listening to my current audio,
it looks does look like an interesting venue for acquiring new stuff.

-- 
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))."