This might be of use to some people on this forum. I've just managed to successfully buy, download and burn a set of iTunes songs to CD, only using linux. I was in the end asonished at how easy this was and how quickly it took me to work it out (about an hour or so).
The workaround relies on a tool called hymn (http://www.hymn-project.org/) which can quickly and simply strip out the DRM from the iTunes m4p files and convert them to m4a format. m4a can then be converted to a straight wav file using the faad (mandrake rpms are in the pengiun liberation front archive, http://plf.zarb.org, not sure about other distros).
The one (very minor) catch is with the hymn tool, this tool has both linux and windows versions, but if you try using the linux version, it has to have an iPod plugged in to the computer to work. However, the windows binary of hymn runs fine under crossover and is able to use the windows iTunes libraries instead instead of needing the iPod. So all I had to do is get the windows version of hymn and dump it in the crossover 'c:' drive. After that all you need to do is something like this (substitute 'itunesfile' for you actual music file) :
/opt/cxoffice/bin/wine c:/hymn/hymn.exe itunesfile.m4p
faad itunesfile.m4a
The resulting wav files can then be burnt to CD with no problems using k3b (or whatever you prefer). The one thing that is mystifying me is that when I try to set up these commands in a script so I can do the whole thing with one simple command, I get the following error :
Couldn't open file: (null)
I'm assuming that when running as a script, the file name argument is being passed through correctly, but i'm at a loss to explain why. The current version of my script is :
!/bin/bash
/opt/cxoffice/bin/wine --cx-app "C:////hymn/////hymn.exe" $1
However, I have tried an number of other variants, which either produce the same error, or an error from crossover telling me it can't run the programme. Any suggestions are greatfully received.
