Hello fellow lemmings <3

I have been struggling with how to listen to music in a while now. I am on spotify but I don’t want to be. I despise the app for being inefficient, battery hog bloated crap that I don’t need in my phone and that’s not even beginning with my issues with the company.

So I have been looking into other solutions for my music needs.

I tried setting up my own server for streaming music, but it’s too much manual work, that still uses a lot of resources for a subpar experience. Going through the albums and sorting them and fixing the metadata and all that because musicbrainz insists this live track is the same as the studio one is not fun and I’m just over it.

So I’m going back to the roots, physical music player. I am looking into buying a device just like those old mp3 players but I’m not sure which way to go.

For me the most important feature (other than quality ofc) is it having FOSS software. I won’t be tweaking with the hardware but being able to modify the software, at least to a degree, for me is the main attraction. If it already has an active community then even better.

Do you guys have similar experiences or anecdotes? Perhaps device recommendations? Other solutions are also welcome I am still shopping for ideas

Thanks y’all!

  • √𝛂𝛋𝛆@piefed.worldEnglish
    9·
    3 days ago

    When buying hardware in the present age, shop for FOSS software you want to run first. Then, clone the git in full. Finally, use the gource package to create a visual tree video that plays against the commit history. This will show you who is getting their pulls merged, how often, and how they contribute to the project.

    What you’re looking for is who is consistent, and what they are using for hardware. It will always be obvious on larger projects. They will make little tweaks and changes a bunch between the hardware and software.

    You may see stuff like company employees and subcontracting devs come in and make large commits that support some specific hardware, but if you watch carefully, these are only a handful of commits, and then they never return. They likely had a checklist in a contract, completed it, and got paid. They will never return. Likewise, if one of the main devs gets a new device, they will shift to it and you’re unlikely to see them make any further commits to the old stuff. The timespan between this transition infers much about the state of the old device support. Maybe just ask them why they switched and what is missing on the old stuff, or just cd to the hardware supporting directory and do $ grep -rin todo or similar types of stuff like code comments or words like hack or need.

    Hardware specs and advertising nonsense are worthless and irrelevant. Don’t let highway robbers dictate your expectations. The only products that exist are those with FOSS support, so start with the FOSS and ignore everything else as criminal warlords. Who gives a fuck what products and deals the proprietary fascists churn out of Auschwitz or a Palestinian camp.

      • √𝛂𝛋𝛆@piefed.worldEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        I know, seems like a lot, but it really isn’t if you just try it once. It is the same routine every time.

        FOSS has no marketing department.

        • zo0@programming.devOPEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          No your points are completely valid. I just couldn’t find what I was looking for, that’s why I am asking the community directly. As I mentioned in my post this isn’t a spontaneous decision, I have been exploring every possibility that I could and didn’t find something to my exact needs.

          The closest thing I saw was android devices, but they bring bloat and not really FOSS under the hood anyway

          • √𝛂𝛋𝛆@piefed.worldEnglish
            2·
            3 days ago

            On that level, maybe invert your mindset and look in Maker spaces. Search by hardware like ESP32. You will likely get better (different) results if you search for devices that target EE students instead of those that target Makers in general. Like it is well known that Texas Instruments will send free samples of most common chips requested, to anyone with a .edu email. Projects on hardware like a Beagle Bone tend to be more advanced than more common Maker hardware. While a BB is like half of a Rπ in terms of hardware architecture, if a purpose made device is created without all of the extra overhead fluff, it is pretty good. The STM32 H7 stuff tends to have advanced projects at the handheld gaming level. The Nordic BT BLE chips are usually more popular with the advanced crowd.

            You might look at the hardware commits for Micropython or Circuit Python for people adding DACs or other peripherals. These are likely to lead to their project spaces.

            I’ve seen someone doing a drive swap on an old iPod to SSD and a software chain, but I think that was still only doing the Apple compatibility thing.

            OpenWRT is not a bad place to look either. Any small embedded Linux device is likely to run on OpenWRT, so you may find something interesting just by shopping their hardware support and commit history.

            • zo0@programming.devOPEnglish
              2·
              3 days ago

              Hmm… right

              Tuckerm also suggested an interesting device. It looks to be open hardware as well. I’m not that knowledgeable with hardware but I guess I could try to build something myself.

              Thanks for all the tips ( ദ്ദി ˙ᗜ˙ )