Tools available with Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for converting CDs to lossless FLAC archives include Sound Juicer, Rhythmbox, and the command line tool abcde. The first two are graphical applications in GNOME that use MusicBrainz for metadata; the latter provides numerous options for converting to FLAC, Vorbis, and MP3 (among other formats), using CDDB for metadata. I wanted something simpler, resulting in a minimal set of metadata (consistent with ID3), and following a stricter Unix model of each tool focused on one job, doing that job well.
The result, flaccda, is a POSIX compliant script for converting CDs to FLAC, a script for converting CDs to MP3, and a supporting script for removing MusicBrainz metadata from FLAC archives created by tools such as Sound Juicer.
The source may be downloaded from my website at http://oberon07.com/flaccda.
