Monday, June 23, 2008

Audible on Ubuntu

As an avid listener to the Twit network podcasts, each show typically is sponsored by Audible. As an Ubuntu user Audible has been a no-go. Audible software is available for Windows and Apple.

In looking for solutions for Ubuntu you will typically find a couple of solutions and/or opinions (some of the comments in this post highlights the following solutions):
  • Since the files are DRM'd the most common response it the DRM is a show stopper for many Linux users. Many Linux users disregard Audible as easily as Audible diregards requests for a Linux client.
  • Use a virtual machine or dual boot in Windows and burn CD's
I can understand both solutions. Secondly without eough demand to warrant development, it's not Audible's fault for not providing a Linux client.

Still I wanted to see what I was missing with Audible. I found this post which describes using Wine with Audible and Firefox to create a workable solution.

The added comment to the post makes this a great solution. Based on the comment I created an Audible.sh file containing:

#!/bin/bash
env WINEPREFIX="/home/ja/.wine" wine "Z:\home\ja\Audible\Audible\BIN\AudibleDownloadHelper.exe" $*

Make the above file executable (right click, permissions, check the make this executable then close).

Now log into your Audible account, go through the process of selecting a book, check out, then goto your library. By clicking the download link, Firefox provides the 'Save As' dialog. Select the above shell program in the 'Open With' options. This then fires the download manager and downloads the file. When complete the player launches and your good to go.

The above solution will allow Linux users to try the Audible service.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

There is a petition for Amazon to remove DRM from Audible.com. Please sign it, they will deliver it on 31 July 2009.

swizzlenuts said...

Don't know if this helps, but I had to alter the code a little bit. My audible.sh file looked like this:


#!/bin/bash
env WINEPREFIX="/home/swizzlenuts/.wine" wine "c:/Program Files/Audible/Bin/AudibleDownloadHelper.exe" $*

where swizzlenuts is my username.

I'm not sure why, but I had to switch the \s to /s