Linux Task: Rip an mp3 from a CD.

Results: Failed! Then Succeeded!

Okay, so here's the report on the last few (highly frustrating) hours.

Sounds like a simple task, make an mp3 from a CD. Windows comes with this functionality built into Windows Media Player, you don't even have to connect to the internet. With Linux, it's a different story. Turns out that MP3 isn't a “freely” available format. Most of the software that comes in the box (so to speak) with Fedora will pretty much only make .ogg or .flac audio files.

As a novice Fedora and Linux user, I had a rather steep learning curve in front of me.

First, I did the obvious – fired up Sound Juicer which comes bundled with Fedora 9. That even came with a handy little “Rip it now” button. Sounds good, right? What should have been an easy one-click operation turned into a six hour saga.

I won't bore you with the details, but if you found this through a Google search I'll be nice to you and jump straight into the answers on how to get MP3's from audio cd's in Fedora 9 (or most Linux distro's).

First, you will need to get Lame (or another mp3 info-library thingy) onto your computer. If you want to check if you have Lame installed, go to the Terminal and type “whereis lame” (note: it does not matter which folder you are currently in or which user you are logged in as). If you get “Lame:” and nothing else then that means that you don't have lame installed.

To install lame: simply Google “Fedora +lame +install” and you should find a couple of pages that tell you how to go about installing lame. I didn't link directly to one because several of the tutorials that I found pointed to pages that were no longer available. It seems that Lame tends to move around a lot.

Once you get Lame installed, run the whereis command again and you should get something that looks like /usr/bin/lame – remember this bit of information.

(Quick note – I tried several different methods of ripping in Linux. The most recommended programs were Sound Juicer {comes with Fedora 9}, abcde {A Better CD Extractor} and Grip. I ended up with all three installed but wound up liking Grip the best. To install Grip on Fedora 9 either type “yum install grip” in the Terminal or go System > Administration > Add/Remove Programs and run a search for Grip. The second option is the one I did.)

Okay, Sound Juicer was a little hard to configure, so I went with Grip. This didn't work for me at first, but once Lame was installed, it was a breeze after that.

With Grip running, I tried to rip and encode but it wouldn't let me (or it wanted to do it as an ogg file). In Grip, I went Config > Encode > Encoder. In the box marked “Encoder Executable” I put in the path from the whereis lookup for Lame (/usr/bin/lame).

I left all the other options as default and guess what – it worked!

Or so I thought.

I put in an a disc from an Australian band and the track information was incorrect – it gave me some American group. But it gave me the right information in Sound Juicer! What to do? A quick search on the net turned up that Grip uses freedb.org which is somewhat limited but Sound Juicer uses the better Music Brainz. So in Config > DiscDb > Primary server I put in “freedb.musicbrainz.org” and the correct track information came up! (Note: I needed to click the “Initiate DB lookup” button on the bottom for it to refresh with the correct data.)

So now I had correctly named MP3 files sitting on my computer. Success!

But no! There was one more problem: Fedora 9 won't play MP3 files natively. When I tried to play the mp3 files, the built-in player had a whinge and said “we don't support non-free formats”!

However, there was a little button underneath that said “Show me options”. Clicking that brought up a few places that provided mp3 support for Linux. A small download later and finally! MP3 files playing on my computer.

If I'd known it was going to be this hard, I wouldn't have bothered going over to Linux.

Okay, I lie, I still would have. But it'd be nice if there was a “Linux Noobs start here” with a list of common tasks (ex)Windows users might want to do and how to do them...

Finally! A new article!

Well, it was a long time coming but I finally managed to post an update on my main site.

I've started using Linux (specifically, Fedora 9) on a resurrected PC. Part of that was the effort to make it quieter. You can read about it here and see how it went.

In other news - Firefox with Foxmarks absolutely rocks on multiple computers. I have my laptop, the main internet computer (I use Firefox, everyone else uses Internet Explorer) and the Linux computer all using Firefox. With Foxmarks, I can keep my bookmarks synchronised across all three computers.

Go me!

Solitary Man

Melinda was mine
'Til the time
That I found her
Holding Jim
Loving Him
Then Sue came along
Loved me strong
That's what I thought
Me and Sue
But that died too

Don't know that I will
But until I can find me
The girl who'll stay
And won't play games behind me
I'll be what I am
A solitary man
Solitary man

I've had it to here
Bein' where
Love's a small word
Part-time thing
Paper ring

I know it's been done
Havin' one
Girl who'll love me
Right or wrong
Weak or strong

Don't know that I will
But until I can find me
The girl who'll stay
And won't play games behind me
I'll be what I am
A solitary man
Solitary man

- Neil Diamond, "Solitary man"

That abominable noise!

I'm sure I'm not the only one:

I have become accustomed to the laptop which makes very little noise. I mentioned earlier that I have fired up an old computer to run Linux on it as an experiment. Half the point of that computer is to write stuff (such as for loneverse.com) but it has a small problem - the incredibly noisy fans!

So this weekend I might see about ripping out the current fans and dropping in some newer, quieter ones. I might replace the power supply as well.

Linux task one: make an mp3

The whole point of having a computer is so that you ca do stuff with it. So I've set myself up with Fedora 9 as an experiment to see how a novice like me fares trying to do a few simple tasks without any external help
.

Task One: Make an mp3 from a disc
Result: Failed!

Fedora 9 comes with a built-in audio extraction program (at least the distribution I got does). It seems fairly straightforward and easy to use, but I've hit the first obstacle: there is no mp3 format available as an output option.

It's interesting that the help file shows mp3 as being the default option. However, on mine it does not come up. I know from my experience with the old AudioGrabber software that sometimes you need to go and grab the mp3 dll library and install it manually, so that might be the case. The program works and successfully extracted several songs straight away but it took me a moment to realise that they were in ogg format.

It then took a bit longer to find how to change it and then another few minutes to find that the option wasn't available. Though it is kind of strange since it shows that mp3 is an option and that itought to be selectable, it just won't let me.

Gonna have to ask for help on this one.

Fedora - take two (includes kittens)

Well, I decided to give Fedora another try.

I have an old computer that was gutted and gathering dust so I dropped a new old harddrive in there and installed Fedora 9. I thought it might be a bit too new for that box, but it's handled it really well so far.

I think it's because I installed it on the laptop that I had such difficulties the last time. It had a webcam, infrared, bluetooth, wireless network and a bunch of other accessories built-in that Linux didn't handle very well (or to be more accurate - I couldn't get Linux to handle very well).

Most of the other stuff I could have lived without, but setting up the wireless connection was just beyond me. With this box, it's pretty much just the mainboard, video card and a keyboard so it found everything straight away and has been working flawlessly thus far.

Of course, by "thus far" I mean "since I installed it this morning". I'll have another play with it once I finish here and see how it goes.

And now, the promised kittens:

Cleaning time

So very tired...

Been spending the weekend cleaning and re-arranging my room. Found lots and lots of dust, and also some stuff I hadn't seen in years. I've slao got a bunch of stuff that I've marked as "has to go" so I'm looking around to see if I can find anyone who wants an amp and some speakers, a mixer, a drum kit and a bunch of other assorted junk.

Might take some of it down to the pawn shop, or donate it to the op shop to sell or something...