summary

To almost quote Wikipedia, ripping is the process of copying input audio or video content (typically from an optical disc such as a CD or DVD) and outputting to a "normal" storage filesystem. Ripping is typically more difficult than simple file copying (as when copying files from a flash drive or external hard drive) in that

the source content (i.e., the audio or video (or both) on the optical disc) typically is not formatted like data in a "normal" filesystem.
the source content is often encrypted (e.g., with CSS)
writing output audio and video files may require particular codecs.
the user may want to include metadata (aka tags, e.g., artist name, work title, release date) in the output. This metadata will typically require some format, e.g., ID3.

Hence ripping audio or video involves at least 3 separate problems:

reading the optical disc
writing to the desired output format
gathering (or authoring) metadata

Debian users have access to several software packages to assist with these problems.

ripping audio CDs

Popular CD rippers available in Debian include:

abcde, a command-line ripper and metadata retriever
asunder, a non-GNOME, GTK+ CD ripper/retriever GUI
cdparanoia, an audio extraction command-line tool for sampling CDs. Cdparanoia goes to great lengths to try to extract the audio information without any artifacts such as jitter
goobox, a CD player and ripper with GNOME 3 integration
pacpl (the Perl Audio Converter), a command-line ripper and metadata converter
ripperx, a GTK-based graphical interface for ripping CD audio tracks (using cdparanoia) and then encoding them into the Ogg, FLAC, or MP2/3 formats
Sound Juicer, a GNOME CD ripper/retriever GUI
VLC, a multi-platform GUI media player, streamer, and ripper/retriever
xcfa, a GUI tool to extract the contents of Audio-CDs and convert it to various audio file formats such as FLAC, WAV, OGG, M4A, MPC, MP3, WavPack and many other

CD rippers not available in Debian include:

Grip: a GNOME CD ripper/retriever GUI

TODO:

document examples of use of at least one GUI.
document ripping to a non-MP3 format
add subsection for Audio tag editors

ripping audio CDs with pacpl

pacpl will rip tracks from the current disc to any of several supported formats with command-lines like:

pacpl --rip all --to flac
pacpl --rip 1,3,9,15 --to mp3

Install the pacpl package and read info pacpl (especially section=RIPPING OPTIONS).

ripping audio CDs to MP3s with Sound Juicer

If you want to rip audio CD's to MP3's with Sound Juicer, install the gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly package.

ripping audio CDs to MP3s with abcde

abcde (A Better CD Encoder) is a performant and reliable command-line tool for ripping audio CDs which can be installed from packages. For much more information about abcde, see:

the abcde manual page
the default config file (cat /etc/abcde.conf)
the `abcde` wiki (which is also currently the abcde project page)
its mailing list

Modern versions of abcde come with logical defaults. An easy way to change the defaults is to copy /etc/abcde.conf to ~/.abcde.conf and edit the latter. Everything in the configuration file is commented out, so uncomment and change the values you want.

install abcde

Install abcde with your favorite package manager. abcde recommends and suggests many packages, consider looking at each package and installing the ones that you need.

running abcde

Put a CD in the CD reader of the system. Start abcde with abcde to execute with all the defaults and any configuration changes you have made. It will ask a few questions but then proceed to rip and save.

ripping video DVDs

vobcopy: copy DVD files (.vob) to hard disk. For example, vobcopy -m mirrors the whole DVD to the hard disk inside a created directory (named after the DVD). Then, open the directory with VLC to play the DVD rip.
dvdbackup: like vobcopy. dvdbackup -M should produce the same thing as vobcopy -m.

Ripping