Group: Hardware/Computers/PDAs/Music players/Rockbox

Introduction

Rockbox is a free software firmware for various music players. It can also run on some operating systems like GNU/Linux, though the status about that is unknown so someone needs to test if that works fine.

There is already an entry about Rockbox in the free software directory but it needs to be updated.

GNU/Linux

Rockbox can also be built and run on GNU/Linux. This makes it easier to review and test.

You can configure the build to build it for GNU/Linux with the following commands:

$ guix shell -F -C alsa-lib bash coreutils gawk gcc-toolchain grep libxrandr libxrender make perl sdl sed zip
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ ../tools/configure

You then need to select '200' for '200) SDL'

You can then select the resolution and orientation (portrait/landscape) you want.

Then select Normal build with 'N' for '(N)ormal'

And then you can finally launch the build with:

$ make

The GUI works fine but audio still needs to be validated: we probably need to initialize the database somehow before being able to play some audio and that takes a very long time.

players

Rockbox supports various music players. Before getting a device it might be useful to check the freedom status. Long time ago the Sensa Fuze + uses nonfree software (in the form of a binary file that was extracted from the nonfree bootloader and then included in the new bootloader, nowadays, maybe it was replaced by u-boot or barebox or maybe it's still there).

• here's a comparison of all the Rockbox compatible players
• You can find the status of the ports here
• Someone needs to review the freedom status of the devices. Some device use nonfree bootloaders for instance. Somtimes the nonfree bootloader can be replaced with free software like u-boot or barebox.