Using the official Flickr uploadr on Ubuntu

I normally use jUploader for uploading photos to Flickr from my Ubuntu Jaunty box. However, since I got the amazing Panasonic DMC-LX3 compact camera, I have been uploading HD videos too to Flickr. Now none of the FOSS tools that I know of support video right now. Since I insist on uploading photos in the order that I have taken them, it makes my photo upload workflow really messy - upload a few photos from jUploader, go to flickr.com and upload the video in the sequence, go back to jUploader for the next few photos, back to flickr.com for the videos, and so on. Disgusting, but I don’t know anything better, and if you do, please tell me.

So I decided to do the next best thing - I have started using the latest official Flickr Uploadr for Windows in Ubuntu using Wine. No, it doesn’t work out of the box. It just takes an additional step.

1. Install wine. (apt-get install wine)

2. Download winetricks from http://wiki.winehq.org/winetricks. This is a small script which automates installation of common wine program dependencies.

3. Install MS Visual C++ 2005 libraries. (sh winetricks vcrun2005). Some messages which look like errors come on screen. Ignore these.

4. Download Flickr Uploadr Windows executable from http://www.flickr.com/tools/uploadr/.

5. Install it! (wine FlickrUploadr-3.2.1-2009.06.02.01-en.exe)

That is it! Find Flickr Uploadr installed in your menu at Applications->Wine->Programs.