So I was having quite a bit of trouble trying to get amarok 2 compiled. I found that within the fc9 and livna repos, libmtp was 0.2.6 and amarok requires libmtp 0.3. I downloaded the correct libmtp version extracted it and compiled it, then I went to re-make amarok and got this error:
Linking CXX shared module ../../../lib/libamarok_collection-mtpcollection.so
CMakeFiles/amarok_collection-mtpcollection.dir/handler/MtpHandler.o: In function `Mtp::MtpHandler::iterateRawDevices(int, LIBMTP_raw_device_struct*, QString const&)’:
/home/shaun/Download/amarok/src/collection/mtpcollection/handler/MtpHandler.cpp:147: undefined reference to `LIBMTP_Open_Raw_Device’
CMakeFiles/amarok_collection-mtpcollection.dir/handler/MtpHandler.o: In function `Mtp::MtpHandler::init(QString const&)’:
/home/shaun/Download/amarok/src/collection/mtpcollection/handler/MtpHandler.cpp:85: undefined reference to `LIBMTP_Detect_Raw_Devices’
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make Error 1
make Error 2
make: *** Error 2

So I’ve been using Linux for the past couple of years. By no means am I an expert on the varying flavors nor do I think that there is one that is better than others for all circumstances. I think this is a healthy forum for discussion and I’m always open to input from the community.

First of all, I’ll list the flavors I’ve used. With that in mind, you’ll notice that I haven’t used all of the distros. My experience is from my limited exposure to those I have used. Keep in mind, my goal was to provide the best development environment for my laptop with my level of experience.