Ubuntu :: Transfer Windows ITunes Library ?

After recently converting my old pentium 4 pc into a linux machine because of being sick with viruses and malware I was very happy with how robust Ubuntu is. The only problem I had when converting it to Ubuntu was that Apple doesn't have iTunes for linux. In the meantime I had been using my netbook pc with windows xp for my itunes needs, podcasts etc. Because I have 2 iPod's I wasn't going to bother with the hassel of getting iPod's sync'd to Ubuntu as well.

So today I finally decided enough was enough and was going to figure out how to get iTunes working, I had been using Wine since I installed Ubuntu to run uTorrent because it enable schedule downloading.

So enough blabbering, here is a quick explanation of how to get your windows music library onto your Ubuntu machine.

NOTE: ITUNES STILL ISNT COMPLETELY STABLE, FREEZING MAY OCCUR EVERY NOW AND THEN DEPENDING ON YOUR MACHINE AND SOFTWARE UPDATES! PROCEED WITH CAUTION!

1) First off, you need to install Wine which you can find at winehq.org
2) You will need to make sure you know EXACTLY where all your songs are. I suggest putting them on an external hard drive to transfer them over to your windows machine.

3) On your windows machine go to File > Library > Export library. And you cant put that file onto your external harddrive as well.

4) So now you have a copy of your itunes library and you have installed Wine, you now need a windows version of iTunes which you can find at any old apps related site. So far iTunes 7.2 works with best for me with Ubuntu 8.10 you can get this from many sites that still host old apps. The latest version of iTunes does not work at all for me, but this doesnt really matter.

5) After installing iTunes you may get an error explaining how you cannot burn discs to itunes, click OK.

6) Now you are ready edit your itunes library xml. Right click on your itunes xml and click 'open with text editor'. Click 'REPLACE' at the top of the screen and type the file path for the song in the 'FIND' field. {For example if the song was 8 Mile by Eminem then in the itunes XML it will say something like C:/my documents/my music/eminem/8mile. You would now type in the FIND FIELD C:/my documents/my music/.} Now that you have typed in the file path for your old music library it's time to time type in the path of the location of your new music library. {For example if your new music is on a external harddrive it will be /media/western digitaldrive/} You now type in the REPLACE field the path of your new music. Then click REPLACE ALL. Then click save as and call it the date of the library in case the xml you typed is wrong you wont have to go and get another copy of your itunes library xml.

6) Now you saved your library, open iTunes and click File > Add file to library and add your itunes library xml by clicking Open.

7) Now go for a walk outside and have a cup of coffee while you wait, this can take some time. For all my 8,802 songs it took 15minutes to import.