If I want open source running my machines, why would my portable music player be any different? And since I love freedom,
rockbox is my choice.
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Rockbox is an open source firmware replacement for a growing number of digital audio players. Rockbox aims to be considerably more functional and efficient than your device’s stock firmware while remaining easy to use and customisable. Rockbox is written by users, for users. Not only is it free to use, it is also released under the GNU public license, which means that it will always remain free both to use and to change.
Rockbox has been in development since 2001, and receives new features, tweaks and fixes each day to provide you with the best possible experience on your digital audio player. A major goal of Rockbox is to be simple and easy to use, yet remain very customisable and configurable. We believe that you should never need to go through a series of menus for an action you perform frequently. We also believe that you should be able to configure almost anything about Rockbox you could want, pertaining to functionality."
One of the best features for me are the Ogg support, awesome theme full customization (there are even some Ubuntu and Ubuntu Studio inspired themes), and seeing the music as a storage device (because sharing is caring). I've been using it for over 2 years and it works great and code is being improved daily.
Check the list of supported hardware, maybe you can switch and give a new free life to your player.
