Ubuntu Tip:Linking Music Across Operating Systems
Symbolic links really shine when it comes to a dual boot system. This is especially so in the case of linking your /home/Music folder in Ubuntu, to your Windows iTunes folder. Doing this means only one folder needs to be maintained and any music program you installed on Ubuntu will load your Windows music library.
To do this you will need to have your Windows partition mounted. Next open up terminal and do the following.
> cd /home
> rm -r Music
> ln -s /media/WINDOWSDRIVENAME/Users/USERNAME/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Music/ Music
Now when you install Songbird or open Rhythmbox, you will have instant access to your main music library.
Thats very useful.
Users should use \ to seperate folder name having two or more words.
e.g. “This Music” becomes “This/ Music” in linux.
How well does this really work?
I’ve been very afraid of doing this because of the way iTunes manages music. Although you can manage your music manually in iTunes, Apple highly discourages it. Unlike MusicMatch Jukebox, if you move / rename a folder, iTunes won’t: 1)tell you it can’t find it until you try to play a song; 2) prompt you for the new location. It’s just easier to let iTunes manage the library. In that case, changing an artist’s name or album title moves the file.
Can Rhythmbox (Amarok, Songbird, etc.) keep up with iTunes’ library changes AND do it without screwing up iTunes?
I haven’t had any trouble with it except that iTunes doesn’t play .flac files, so its frustrating when you expect you have something in your library but can’t find it. As far as keeping track, I use songbird / rhythmbox / iTunes … songbird and rhythmbox update the library every time its opened, so I have yet to have troubles and have been using this trick for about a year. iTunes tends to require a manual rescan, but no big issues.
While nice that seems unnecessarily complicated. I have a usb external drive (well several) and on one I created a music directory and I store any and all audio files in there. When in Windows any player I use, including iTunes is set to read from and write to that directory and the same in Ubuntu – the al use the same source directory
I don’t see how deleting the Music file fits into this, rm -r Music?
In doing this, do I create two separate music files? Or is the /home/music folder just reading the iTunes folder?
It will create a symbolic link, (like a pointer). It will not duplicate anything. Also, if you delete or add something, you are really deleting or adding it to that original location