OverDrive Media Console

What works

Download ODMediaConsoleSetup.msi from app.overdrive.com

Run these commands IN ORDER from the terminal.

sudo apt-get install winetricks

WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/wine32/ winecfg

("wine32" is the folder name I made up. You can use whatever folder name you like, as long as it doesn't exist yet. WINEARCH wants to create the folder itself through this command. This command lets you make a place for 32-bit stuff to run from, since you're probably already running 64-bit stuff with Wine from the .wine folder. Note that you don't have to delete your .wine folder or even touch it, even though that's what many people try to tell you. 32-bit programs and 64-bit programs can exist peacefully together and be run by Wine.)

   (In the GUI window that pops up, select Windows 7 from the dropdown)

WINEPREFIX=~/wine32 winetricks wmp9

(Let Windows Media Player 9 assign itself to all media types in the checkboxes, otherwise install will freeze. You're not going to consume any audiovisual media within the fake Windows environment anyway, are you?)

From the place where Windows Media Player got installed, run

WINEPREFIX=~/wine32 wine start wmplayer.exe

  (This just verifies that Windows Media Player has been installed correctly. You can close once you see window pop up.)

WINEPREFIX=~/wine32 wine start /unix ~/Downloads/ODMediaConsoleSetup.msi

  (This assumes your ODMediaConsoleSetup.msi is in the Downloads folder of your home directory.)

From the place where Overdrive Media Console got installed (probably ~/wine32/drive_c/Program Files/Windows Media Player/) run

WINEPREFIX=~/wine32 wine start MediaConsole.exe

  (This launches OMDC. To verify all has gone well, go to Help>About. If the version numbers are like this:

    Version: 3.4.2.0
    Windows Media Player Version: 9.0.0
    Windows Media Player DRM Version: 2.4.3.0

...then all is well. If it says Version , etc, then your install of Windows Media Player 9 didn't take entirely.)

What does not

The Windows Media Player 9 install is finicky. I had to attempt it four times using the exact same command for it to install properly.

Overdrive Media Console requires Windows Media Player to be installed in order to download any audiobooks, so you have to keep trying. Note that you don't ever actually have to USE Windows Media Player, it just has to be present on the system.

Note: When you close Windows Media Player 9 or Overdrive Media Console, the terminal will display messages and will not go back to the prompt; you have to Control-C. This does not appear to affect the ability of Overdrive to successfully download audiobooks.

Workarounds

What was not tested

Ability of Overdrive to talk directly to your phone. You don't need this ability anyway, since the MP3s that Overdrive downloaded from the .ODM you gave it are always in

 ~/wine32/drive_c/users/you/My Documents/My Media/MP3 Audiobooks

and they're DRM-free. Just drop them where you want them to be on your phone.

Did not test for .WMA files, only .MP3.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments