On The Linux Desktop, Music To Some Ears

Last week, OSDL released its annual "State of the Union" report on the Linux Desktop. While a lot of progress had been made in deploying Linux as a client-side technology, according to the group, key issues remained to be worked out -- including development of drivers and solutions to support PDAs, MP3s and other peripherals on PCs running Linux.

At the Linux and Open Source Blog, slow but steady progress is being reported:

For a long time I resisted buying a standard mp3 player because of compatibility concerns. On the advice of an openSUSE forum member, I picked up a Sansa E250 2gb player. This unit is very small, stylishly black, and will work seamlessly with any Linux distribution that recognizes USB block devices, like flash drives, CD players, etc. Sansa makes several units with this basic design, from 512 mb all the way up to 8gb. . .

Beware of some of the other players. Most of them require the use of a supplied utility to load content. Many require, for example, Windows XP SP1. Not good if you're a Linux user.

According to this report, the Sansa MP3 player can work just fine on most desktop Linux flavors.