So, using RhythmBox to rip CDs seems to work (mostly), although it's excruciatingly slow. There's an additional annoyance, too, in that it gets confused after you've processed a few CDs (people have reported the problem after ripping between 2 and 6 CDs) and you have to restart it to get it working again. It turns out, as well, that just closing the application window doesn't really kill the darned thing. You have to go into System Monitor and shoot the background process in its sleep.
I checked the Ubuntu community docs and found a fair amount of information about CD ripping.
Though there's a warning about a bug in LAME that causes problems for Sound Juicer, I gave Sound Juicer a try because there seem to be a lot of positive comments about it online. After installing the gstreamer libs needed for mp3 support, Sound Juicer consistently and silently died the instant I clicked the button to start the rip. Since this behavior does not result in any mp3 files, it doesn't quite meet my needs. I found a posting on a 2008 discussion list in which someone described exactly the same problem. No one had replied with a solution.
Next up was RipperX, which managed to generate a few corrupted files before collapsing to the floor in a useless heap of bits.
RubyRipper sounded promising, so I tried it. Despite notes to the contrary online, I was unable to find any way to tell RubyRipper that I wanted mp3 output instead of ogg output. It did a good job producing ogg files, though. For all I know, it can do mp3 too, in some mysterious way.
Next I tried Asunder, another program listed on the Ubuntu site. This was simple to install, and didn't require any additional dependencies from off-the-beaten-path repositories or other tweaks:
sudo apt-get install asunderIt has a simple UI that offers a short list of popular audio formats, including mp3. It can also go out to CDDB and look up album information. I found it easy to use, much faster than RhythmBox, and it generated playable mp3 files. A winner.
Asunder has characteristics I appreciate in software: (1) It does just one job and does it well; (2) installation and use are intuitive enough that no user manual is needed; (3) it's packaged and distributed in a way that takes the technical burden off the end user.
Next: Installing Android SDK and Eclipse ADT on Ubuntu 10.04
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