A while ago I blogged about the long process of managing my music on my laptop (opensuse 10.3 with KDE). I’ve been able to trim it down a bit so I thought I’d post my findings in the hope that someone else saves some time and effort. My requirements are simple:

• Somewhat painless CD ripping for importing my existing iTunes collection
• Easy management on my laptop (playlist, sort options, id3 tagging, etc)
• Synchronization with my Cowon iAudio 7

CD Ripping

I’m become a fan of  Amarok for my music management. Somehow, Amarok lacks that nice iTunes “do it all” feature set. I understand Amarok CAN rip cd’s using KIO, but I didn’t get a chance to try it. There are really two stages for ripping: