Migrating to Linux, wanting to preserve my music collection

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I have too many things I would NOT want to lose if I migrated to Linux. Is there an efficient way of doing this? The best options I can think up are:

-Uploading all of my MP3s to a server (Hotline, FTP, WWW or otherwise) and then re-downloading them.

-Doing the same thing with my foreign shell. (uploading them via ftp and downloading them from a terminal once i've migrated)

-Burning MP3 CDs? I don't know how much the average CD holds, and I don't really have money for a big stack of CDRs. Also, burning them all would get tedious.

-I don't have an iPod.

ALSO. Is there an iTunes clone or other [program of comparable dexterity]?

― Ian Johnson (orion), Tuesday, 18 November 2003 22:30 (twenty-one years ago)

i think uploading & downloading would be a lot more tedious than burning to disc.

you can get 700megs per cd

― JaXoN (JasonD), Tuesday, 18 November 2003 22:33 (twenty-one years ago)

I can upload in one massive batch through the magic of gnuzip.

and i have nearly 20 gig of files, so that's more cds than I can afford, probably. though if i zipped and then put onto CD, it would be easy.

I think they're both equally valid ways, both with advantages and disadvantages. But I'm not sure which one to try.

― Ian Johnson (orion), Tuesday, 18 November 2003 22:36 (twenty-one years ago)

If you don't have a router already (for DSL, etc.):

Buy a router. Plug in your old computer's network cable into the router. Plug in your new computer's network cable into the router. Get the IP address of your new machine on the router (probably something like 192.168.1.101). Ftp a tarred or tarzipped copy of your mp3s from your old machine to your new machine.

If you have no further need for the router, return it to the store for a full refund.

― direct_program, Tuesday, 18 November 2003 23:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, it'll be the same machine. So maybe migrating wasn't the right word. I'm switching.

I forget which terms are loaded when talking about computers, sometimes; sorry for any confusion.

― Ian Johnson (orion), Tuesday, 18 November 2003 23:20 (twenty-one years ago)

is it possible to buy a big hdd, format it in some way that is readable by both linux & windos (i'm assuming yer migrating from windows) and copy all yr mp3z to it?

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 18 November 2003 23:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Why would you want to use anything other than iTunes?

― Jazzbo (jmcgaw), Wednesday, 19 November 2003 00:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh wow, this is always fun.

First off gzip (or bzip2) isn't going to compress your MP3's much at all. You could make one huge tar archive of them or make a few to save the tipe spend creating and tearing down connections between the transfer of each file, but trying to losslessly (gzip, bzip, zip, rar, flac, etc) compress files that are already compressed with a lossy algorithm (mp3, ogg, aac, etc.) will probably result in either files the same size or larger, since there is little to no repition of data.

If you have a spare HDD lying around or enough free space sitting on the end of your current drive you can make a big FAT32 partition, which is readable/writable by both Windows and Linux. I'd keep them on this partition if you are considering switching back to Windows, to avoid having to repeat work, but if you are sticking with linux I'd ditch FAT32 and move to a more modern, efficient, and safe filesystem such as ext3, reiser, xfs, jfs, whatever your distro supports.

As for iTunes, you're in luck. I use a program called Rhythmbox, that I think is wonderful. I've used iTunes and love it as well, and Rhythmbox has a little ways to go, but its moving there quickly and is a pleasure to work with. There's another called Jamboree that's similar, but I don't have a lot of experience with it, and I'm sure there are others.

Feel free to email me with other questions, I'll probably forget to check back on this thread.

― Mike Salmo (salmo), Wednesday, 19 November 2003 02:27 (twenty-one years ago)

I found that the differing ways in which Linux and Windows handle filenames that contain spaces can be a bit of a pain in the ass.

So that's a caveat, but I can't remember exactly for what.

― fields of salmon (fieldsofsalmon), Wednesday, 19 November 2003 07:39 (twenty-one years ago)

As Mike says, Linux apparenty reads FAT32 partitions (have had problems with this though) so I'd burn them all to a hard drive.

― mentalist (mentalist), Wednesday, 19 November 2003 09:58 (twenty-one years ago)

ten years pass...

i just switched to linux at home, all the popular music playing software seems to suck balls. i had been using foobar. any reccs? anybody use foobnix? cmus looks pretty cool.

― brimstead, Friday, 12 September 2014 04:14 (eleven years ago)

try DeaDBeef. I remember it being foobar-like.

― Zachary Taylor, Friday, 12 September 2014 04:19 (eleven years ago)

thanks i'll check it out

― brimstead, Friday, 12 September 2014 04:21 (eleven years ago)

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