Ubuntu 10.04 has really improved over previous versions of Ubuntu in the syncing to devices support. In particular support for syncing music to IPhones and ITouches. They have also added support to Rhythmbox to reconize when a Nexus One has been connected to the machine (this may also work on other Android devices, I’ve just not tested others).

When you plug your phone into your Ubuntu 10.04 box, on your Nexus One an alert will appear asking you if you’d like to enable USB storage. Once you have enabled this, the Ubuntu system will see the phone has a USB mass storage device. Now you should be able to download all of your pictures and in Rhythmbox the phone appear on the device list. You can just drag and drop your music like you would for a playlist.

Since Ubuntu is treating the phone as a mass storage device, Rhytmbox does not know by default where to upload the music. So it defaults to the root of the SD card. If you would like to not fill the root up with all of your music you can opt to put all of your music into a music folder. To do this, you need to upload one song to the Nexus One, then open up the device in a file manager. Create a new directory called “music” and move the one song you uploaded to that folder. Now Rhythmbox will be smart enough to know to upload to the “music” folder and all the media applications on the Nexus One will auto detect the music in the “music” folder.

If you are looking for a good music player I have become a big fan of DoubleTwist. Plus if you are on Windows or a Mac you can use the DoubleTwist desktop client to manage music on the phone.