GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams
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Audio Formats

[mp3]Mp3 encoders are entwined in legal issues that are too complex to get into here. Recording your personal CDs to listen to the music you've already paid for appears to be a reasonable legal activity. However, the issue with mp3 is that the mp3 codec is patented by Fraunhofer in Germany, and a license is required to use it, and thus freely available players are in a bit of a bind. To address this a free audio format has been developed called Ogg Vorbis (with the ogg extension). There are many utilities that will rip CDs to Ogg Vorbis format.

Recognising the pervasive nature of the mp3 format, the encoder of choice under GNU/Linux is lame. The Debian package is available from:

  deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ unstable main