As most do now my local library has a decent catalog of audiobooks, which I would like to be able to listen to on my iPod. These books can be downloaded only by using Overdrive Media Console (which is available only for Windows and Mac, and also requires Windows Media Player to work!) and iTunes if you want to transfer to an iPod. 
I’ve searched around for Linux friendly solutions. They fall into two categories, try Wine/virtual machine/dual boot to run the required software, or give up. But pretty much everything I have found is about four years old now. Has anything changed in the last few years, or is this still pretty much the way things are? At the moment I use my girlfriend’s Vista computer to download books, but I would like to be as Windows free as possible, and able to do it on my own computer.
Can anyone offer advice for being able to download audiobooks and put them on an iPod, with a minimum of non-Linux software? Relatedly, I would also be quite happy to replace the iPod firmware with Rockbox, but from what I can tell that would make library audiobooks even less accessible (so asking if this is an option is like asking for $10 after being refused $1 :)).
Hi
If you wish to transfer files between your computer and your ipod you should be able to do that with gtkpod, You could also do it from Amarok I believe.
As for the download service of Overdrive Media Console I don’t know. You could go somewhere else for your audiobooks perhaps? Or try running wine/‘overdrivemediaconsole’ for the download and then use gtkpod to load them on to your ipod, or just listen to them on your linux pc.
As there is an Android client you could also try this:How to Run Android Applications on Ubuntu - Softpedia
Stupid suggestion perhaps, but you could read through and maybe find a solution?
Thanks for the response. It did not occur to me that gtkpod might work. I use it already, but from what I understand about how the library has things set up, some/most of the books are drm encumbered (they’re in .wma format), and overdrive+windows media player+iTunes are needed to get unencrypted files on to an iPod, or to listen to them on the computer. Admittedly though I have not actually tried using gtkpod for this particular purpose, but I have tried playing files downloaded through overdrive and then copied on to on my linux machine and it didn’t work (playback worked but no sound). I’ll give it a try though!.
I’ve also seen the Android solution, it is not a stupid suggestion at all, but it only works for mp3 audiobooks, it doesn’t support .wma (oh microsoft…), which happens to be the more common format. (Just to be clear, I wouldn’t go near .wma under any other circumstances, but I pay taxes and occasionally donate to the library, and I refuse to let microsoft’s greed lock me out of this service). I guess my real question is not how to get audiobooks from the library but how to get drm encumbered wma audiobooks from the library without using microsoft software, but I think I already know the answer to that!
Thanks again for your help.