Ripping CDs in Linux

Hello, I have an older PC (about 5 years old I think) that I just installed linux onto. Its a system that had been collecting dust. I dusted it off last night and was about to reinstall XP. But, I decided - what the hell - I'll try out linux.

Installed Ubuntu 7.10 because I've read that it is noobie friendly. The install went well. However, the one thing I wasn't expecting was how long it takes to rip CDs.

I had planned to rip my small collection of CDs (about 150 of them) onto the machine. But, damn its slow - it takes about 15 minutes to rip a 75 minute CD. I swear I remember Media Player 11 taking about 3-4 minutes to rip cds on this same system.

So, is there another program I should be using to rip CDs? I used the CD extractor that came with the Ubuntu build. One thing I noticed is that the supplied extractor only gave me a few options for file types...and mp3 wasn't one of them.

Cliffs: Is there linux software out there that will let me rip CDs to Mp3 faster?

Thanks for any help you can give.

So I am assuming you are using gnome as your DE? I have never used ubuntu but a good CD burner is K3B, but of course that will need to install the KDE libraries since you use gnome.

I think the one that uses gnome libraries / GTK is xcdroast. You can try to install either one to see if that increases your speed.

That was kind of over my head. Sorry - don't know if ubuntu uses gnome as DE (what does DE stand for?)

But google is my friend and I'll check out K3B and xcdroast.

Thanks KevinO

The best tool for ripping CDs I've come across is "abcde" - it's amazing.

Oneil's basically DE is a desktop environment which is basically a Window Manager(WM) + tools etc all integrated. Examples of a DE are Gnome and KDE.

Window Manager is just a layer on top of Xwindows (which is the base for both DE's and WM's) that just provides you an interface. Examples are Fluxbox, Openbox and XFCE.
Gnome and KDE do come with their own WM's which are Metacity and Nautilus respectively.

Basically if you installed, Ubuntu (and not Kubuntu, Xunbuntu) then you are probably running gnome. You might want to start with xcdroast so you don't install unnecessary libraries (dll's) just for that application. That is just my preference. You can install any cd burning utility and it will work.

Hopefully I didn't confuse you any .

Cool. thanks for the info. I did a lot of reading last night. But, obviously, I still have a lot to learn.

I like K3B as well

in any case, to install them, try or abcde, whichever you will want to try out. That should automatically install dependencies as well.

Ubuntu comes with Sound juicer by default. Just use Sound Juicer to rip them. I have never used K3B for anything but burning CD's, not ripping.

k3b is a lot like nero, and the new version actually has links to rip directly within the menus. It seems to work pretty well for me.

GRip was always a good ripper IMO. I haven't been a gnome user much lately, but I assume grip is still there and fits nicely into to gnome desktop.

I'm mostly a KDE user, but none of the KDE rippers seemed to handle difficult discs as well as GRip for me.

Personally though, I still find EAC on Windows the best overall ripping app I've used to date.