FOSSwire

Audacity is a very good free and open source audio editing application for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

Unfortunately, due to patent restrictions, it is unable to import, export and manipulate MP3 files in the default install and this problem is usually present in the Linux version.

It is quite easy however to get the MP3 support up and running however, with a simple install of the LAME MP3 encoder and then providing Audacity with the correct location of the library it needs. Once you have this in place, MP3 support should work across the board.

I'll be showing this process on my Fedora 7 system, using Audacity 1.3.2 beta from the Fedora repositories but it should work with other Audacity installations on Linux (and other Unix-like operating systems too).

If you try and open an MP3 file at the moment, you'll probably be greeted with a message such as this one:

So let's get some LAME. You might be able to get this from your distribution, but that will usually involve enabling custom repositories, so it's often easier to compile yourself.

Head over to the LAME site and download the source code for the latest version (that's 3.97 here). Now it's pretty much a standard compile install.

$ tar xzvf lame-3.97.tar.gz
$ cd lame-3.97
$ ./configure
$ make
$ su -c "make install"

Now that we have LAME installed, it should be a simple case of pointing Audacity back in the right direction. Back in Audacity, head to Edit > Preferences.

On the File Formats tab and under the MP3 Export header, click the Find Library button. Provided you installed lame in the default locations and didn't change any options, the library you need should be located at /usr/local/lib/libmp3lame.so.

Choosing this file in the file selector should enable MP3 export (although I did have difficulty importing MP3 files and this may unfortunately involve a recompile of Audacity or finding a third-party package built with MP3 support enabled).

Done!

If you deal with Macs at all, you might be curious as to whether Linux is capable of dealing with disks and drives formatted for Mac OS X. The answer is - yes, in most cases, and it is actually quite easy to get your Mac-formatted stuff mounted on your Linux system with read-only, and in most cases read-and-write, support.

In most modern distributions, the capabilities for mounting media formatted with Apple's HFS and HFS+ filesystems is actually built in, and you don't need to install any special software. However, most distributions do include a package called hfsutils which might come in handy if you'll be regularly dealing with HFS/HFS+ formatted media. You should be able to install it by searching for that in your distribution's package manager.

Mounting a Mac-formatted volume

Whether it's an optical disc, external drive or other storage device, mounting a Mac-formatted volume usually is pretty simple. Depending on your exact setup, it might be as easy as plugging in or inserting the media and having it automatically pop onto your desktop. If this is the case, great! You can get started straight away, no more configuration needed.

Sometimes this doesn't work however. Usually, mounting the volume should be a simple process of following the usual command line mount procedure (as root, or sudo-prefixed). In this example, I'll mount my external drive (at /dev/sda1) to a folder:

# mkdir /mnt/macdrive
# mount -t hfsplus /dev/sda1 /mnt/macdrive

At this point, you should get at least read support, or you may get read-write (but will need to be root to write to the volume).

Some read-write caveats

In my experience, Linux writing to HFS and HFS+ is extremely reliable (thanks to Apple's relatively open documentation of their technology and the open source implementations of the filesystem). There are some cases, however, where you won't be able to write to the drive.

Particularly, newer volumes that use HFS+ with Journaling can't be safely written to under Linux. Since Mac OS X 10.4, your Mac's boot drive will have journaling on by default and it's possible that formatting drives with the default Mac OS Extended option under OS X's Disk Utility will turn Journaling on.

There is a way to retroactively disable Journaling on an HFS+ drive however if you're determined to write to it in Linux. Bear in mind that this process is potentially risky and definitely don't do it on your boot drive. From the Mac OS X Terminal, run this:

$ sudo diskutil disableJournal "/Volumes/nameofdisk"

Now the journaling feature is disabled, Linux should be able to get full write access safely.

Troubleshooting

If you're experiencing problems with mounting Mac-formatted volumes, you might want to remember these things.

$ dmesg | tail

The above command is definitely your friend when dealing with filesystems. If for some reason a mount fails, or you get read-only access when you wanted read-write, looking at the output of dmesg can prove extremely useful in helping you find a solution.

Also, remember to check your permissions if you can't write to something. If in doubt, try it as root before moving onto attempting to troubleshoot (also remember you can mount with -o uid=youruserID to force ownership if you know how.

Slashdot is reporting that the BBC Trust are going to be meeting with the Open Source Consortium over the BBC's new on-demand iPlayer video service. The service is currently planned to utilise Microsoft DRM technology, which of course will be a problem for anyone wanting to enjoy the content somewhere other than Windows.

"With the Launch of the BBC's iPlayer imminent, the BBC trust has agreed to hear the Open Source Consortium's concerns regarding the BBC iPlayer's tie in with Microsoft's software. The move by the BBC to use Windows Media DRM & their apparent lack of commitment towards other platforms has caused outrage in many circles and prompted several online petitions."

The BBC have previously been petitioned by free software users and user groups over the decision to utilise Microsoft DRM, which will lock the on-demand video services so that it is only usable by Windows users.

As a public service broadcaster, the BBC pledge "to serve everyone and enrich people's lives" and so it has been argued that by locking people into Windows technologies, the BBC aren't fulfilling this.

The willingness to talk however should be a good sign that the BBC are hopefully treating this concern seriously, and so I do hope that all computer users, regardless of which platform they use, will be able to benefit from the iPlayer service.