Installing Semplice

Semplice has been extensively tested on the following 'main stream' Linux distros (the links take you to distro-specific installation notes and observations):

• Arch
• Debian
• Ubuntu
• Fedora
• openSUSE Leap
• openSUSE Tumbleweed
• RaspberryPi OS

If your chosen distro is based on one of these 'parent' distros, then Semplice will likely work on it, too. Thus, in the Arch family, Semplice has been tested to work on Manjaro, EndeavourOS, Garuda Linux and Bluestar Linux. In the Debian family, Devuan, Linux Mint Debian Edition, Peppermint OS, MX Linux and Antix Linux have all been confirmed to work. Practically everything based on Ubuntu is known to work: Linux Mint, Pop!OS, Zorin OS, Tuxedo OS and several others have been given the intensive testing treatment. Not many distros are based on Fedora, but Nobara and Ultramarine are all known to be fine. And so on.

If you are running Windows 10 or 11 on a 64-bit CPU, you can install the Windows Subsystem for Linux, Version 2 (WSL2) and, within that environment, install a Linux distro of your choice: at that point, though your main OS is Windows, you'll be able to install and run Semplice in the context of WSL2 as successfully as if you were running the equivalent Linux distro as your main OS. You will first need to install WSL2, for which this article may be helpful. After that, you can follow the standard Semplice installation process (see Section 2 below) to get Semplice running. You might also want to consult the Windows-specific installation notes for some tweaks and workarounds that will be needed to get Semplice working well on this Linux-on-Windows platform.

I should add that Semplice is technically unsupported on Windows 11, in the sense that whilst it runs perfectly fine on my various Windows 11 installations, I don't actually own any hardware that is officially supported for running Windows 11 itself. I can't really say I support running Semplice on an operating system that I cannot myself get official support for! Nevertheless, I have installed it on Windows 11 on officially-unsupported hardware and it ran perfectly well, except for its CD ripping capabilities (which require direct access to the CD drive, which is unavailable in the Linux environment). Whether that will always be the case, I cannot say: you're basically on your own with Windows 11!

Semplice does not support running on anything to do with Apple. Neither will it work on the Solus Linux distro.

The basic installation procedure for any supported operating system is, in a new terminal session:

wget software.bbritten.com/seminst

The installer is small (around 20KB) , so it will take hardly any time to download it. Once the installer has been downloaded, you launch it in the same folder you saved it to, with the command:

bash seminst

You will first see a screen warning you that the installer will make quite a few changes to your system, if you let it:

You need to type 'y' (and then press [Enter]) to proceed. If you type anything else, the installer will terminate without having touched your system at all.

To start with, the Semplice installer will check for the presence of various packages on your system and will seek to install any that it finds to be missing. You can usually just let it do it's thing at this point, but if you are interested, here are the packages/programs that Semplice deems essential to install:

• ImageMagick (an image processing program)
• fd or fd-find, depending on distro (a file searching program)
• ncurses (enables display of forms in a terminal)
• coreutils
• build-essential or distro-equivalent (enables the compilation of software sources)
• cuetools
• bc (program allowing Bash to perform non-integer arithmetic)
• flac (the library that allows FLAC audio files to be read and understood)
• ffmpeg (an audio player)
• xclip (a little utility allowing command line management of the clipboard)
• curl (a command line tool for fetching files across the Internet)
• xterm (a terminal emulator or console window)
• dialog (a program allowing the creation and display of user input forms for the terminal)
• cmake (a program allowing source code to be compiled)
• python and python-devel (libraries necessary for audiotools program to be compiled from source)
• git (a tool allowing sacd and audiotools software sources to be downloaded)
• sacd

Audiotools is needed to allow Semplice's CD ripping utility to compare your rips with those previously done of the same CD by others, using the AccurateRip database. If your rip agrees with theirs, chances are it's 'good'. If it doesn't, maybe you're using a different pressing or mastering, or maybe your CD contains errors. The sacd package is installed to give Semplice the ability to convert the ISOs ripped from SACDs to more usable audio formats (such as FLAC). Both audiotools and sacd have to be compiled from their source code, which is why the Semplice installer also installs the build-essential packages (or their distro equivalents), which includes tools such as glibc, make and other packages needed to compile software.

If having any of this software installed on your system gives you cause for concern, type 'n' when the installer prompts you and give up on the idea of installing Semplice altogether: the program cannot run without all of them being present, I'm afraid.

Once Semplice is installed, you can launch it by (a) clicking on the launcher provided on the Desktop (some distros require you to 'trust' or 'mark as executable' the launcher before it will work); or (b) clicking the option provided somewhere in the main menu, which is usually to be found under 'Multimedia' or (depending on distro) 'Sounds & Video'. The main program display should then appear:

Operation of the program beyond this point is hopefully self-explanatory, with the 'top menu' giving access to each of the four main functional components of Semplice in turn: Tagging contains all the functionality that allows you to mark up your FLACs with metadata tags and cover art; Audio Processing lets you convert FLACs to MP3s, or OGGs to WAVs, amongst other things. It also allows you to increase the volume of ripped recordings, if they can be volume-boosted without introducing distortion; the SuperFLAC menu lets you merge individual FLACs into single-file, whole-composition FLACs… and to reverse that process should you want to do so; and the Ripping menu contains options that allow you to accurately rip music from standard audio CDs or SACDs.

The Miscellaneous menu contains options for general 'housekeeping': configuration parameters that controls the way Semplice behaves when performing any of its four major pieces of functionality. It's also the menu that contains an option to check for, and to apply, any program updates that I might release in the future… so, it's something you should be using fairly regularly!

In all cases, top-bar menu options can be accessed by right- or left-arrow keys (the menu wraps, so a right-arrow from Quit takes you back to Tagging, for example), or by tapping the first letter of the menu name (so tapping 'T' gets you directly to Tagging, 'R' to Ripping and so on). Once a top-bar menu option has been selected, the numbered menu items within that option will be displayed and can be invoked simply by tapping the number associated with the item. Thus tapping 'T', then '4', will invoke the FLAC renumbering menu item; 'R' then '2' will let you choose which CD device you want to use when ripping an audio CD, and so on.

A handful of options are accessible regardless of which top-bar menu is selected: they are accessible at any time by tapping the letter associated with them (these options are listed on the right-hand side of the main program display area). Thus tapping 'F' will open your operating system's default file manager; tapping 'W' will bring up a folder selection dialog so that you can select a particular folder to set as the program's current 'working folder', and so on. Important options to learn and remember are 'K' to invoke the metadata tag cleaning routine and 'X' to quit the program without further modifying any FLAC files on the way out.

Beyond that quick-start approach, however, you should read the relevant pages elsewhere in the user manual for an exploration (and explanation!) of the rest of the program's functionality,

Summarising things as compactly as I can, then:

1. Read your distro's specific installation notes, to see if there are any pre- or post-installation steps you'll need to take
2. Fully update your distro, so that it's using the latest packages and patches
3. wget doco.absolutelybaching.com/seminst
4. bash seminst
5. Consider deleting the original Semplice folder and executable once you are happy to use Semplice Version 2

I hope all your Semplice Version 2 installations work successfully and that you get up-and-running with the new program quickly and painlessly!

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