This is part 1 of a 4-part series on uploading photos to Flickr from your Linux box. I'm assuming you already know what Flickr is and you have a Flickr account, and now you want to bulk upload photos to Flickr from your Linux box. In my case, I'm using Kubuntu, but the software I cover should work for you regardless of distro. Our first app up to the plate is jUploadr.

jUploadr works on Windows, Mac OS X, & Linux, no surprise since it's written in Java, & it's covered under the GPL. Head over to the download page at SourceForge, download the .tar.gz file, and untar it. I'd recommend putting it in your /opt directory, but you can do it where you'd like (remember that I'm running Kubuntu, so I'm using sudo).

sudo mv jUploadr-1.0-linuxGTK-i386.tar.gz /opt
sudo tar zxvf jUploadr-1.0-linuxGTK-i386.tar.gz
sudo mv jUploadr-1.0-linuxGTK-i386 juploadr

At this point, running the app is simple:

/opt/juploadr/jUploadr

You can type that on the command line, or create a link to it, or add it to your KDE or GNOME menu, or whatever. When the program runs, it's pretty bare bones.

Follow the instructions: just drag 'n drop pix onto the window, & they're added for upload. In just a few moments, you'll have your pix ready to go, as you can see here:

(Yup, that's one cute lil' dog. Her name is Libby.)

If you want to set Flickr metadata, right-click on an image and choose Edit (which makes it sound like it's going to open in the GIMP, but it doesn't), which opens the Attributes window for that photo.

You can make the photo private, add tags (no automation here, unfortunately ... you have to type every single one in by hand), change the title, and add a Description. There's no way to batch-edit a bunch of photos at one time, which means more work. Press OK to close the Attributes window. When you're finished with all your photos, press Upload! and soon enough, your pictures are on Flickr.

Here are the Preferences, btw. 1st, you need to authorize jUploadr with Flickr so you can upload using this tool. Just press the button & follow the instructions.

2nd, set default privacy & tags:

3rd, change what happens to uploaded images, & images that are uploaded:

4th, set up your proxy, if you gotta.

jUploadr is a good program, in that it works, but it's pretty simple. If you don't really use tags all that much, & you're looking for a program that you can use on multiple machines, then it's good. If you're looking for more features - especially batch editing - then you'll have to wait for further reviews in this series.