I’m working on pulling the thousand or so CD’s out of the attic and ripping them. I haven’t done it yet because all that old crap is only marginally interesting (nostalgia has a strong saccharin aftertaste that doesn’t take long to kick in with me) and therefore wasn’t worth the huge effort. But linux makes all things easy, so what the heck.
Steps:
Fedora Tracker pointed me towards grip, which rips cd to wav with the built-in cdparanoia ripper. Grip can also run a separate encoder that converts wav to mp3 (or ogg or whatever). FT once again led me to lame, an MP3 encoder. And that’s just about how easy it was.
Interesting mainly because this is the kind of stuff that makes linux rock. Attempting this basic task under Windows would require slumming through a whole lot of obnoxious product pitches. SOMEBODY (Gueedo Gates?) makes sure that there are no good free alternatives (I still can’t figure how this can be possible). You’d try selecting some inferior product because it claimed to be free, only to find out that was a lie. By the end you’d gladly dish out a wad of cash to make it all go away. Or be so pissed off at the process that you’re driven to spend two weeks finding a working cracked version that leaves you wondering if you’ll be the next RIAA target. All very unsatisfying.
TRY THE ALTERNATIVE! FREE THE BIRD! LEAVE THE PANE BEHIND! 😛
