So there’s this thing that has become very popular in the Linux community lately called FUSE. It’s basically a filesystem in user space. The concept is actually pretty radical and the implementation seems to be pretty flexible. You basically mount a directory using one of the plugins (mount types) from a userspace program. There are fuse modules that do everything from a crypto-loop to a mysql database filesystem interface.

I have been ripping all of my music collection to FLAC format. My unwillingness to compromise quality has finally met it’s perfect match. The mp3fs module allows you to mount a directory of FLAC or Ogg files and read them as mp3s converted to the bitrate of your desire.

So when I want to make a new DVD to take to work (we’re not allowed mp3 players), I simply mount the directory with the mp3fs fuse module. The only problem I’ve seen is direct burning to nautilus-cd-burner seems to hang and complain (endlessly) about nothing in particular (just fails to create the CD during initialization). Until that is fixed, I have an intermediate step of copying the CDs to the network before burning them directly.

If you get a chance, make sure to give this module and the many others a whirl, the simplicity and power of fuse is not to be taken lightly.