This is the fastest way to create an ipod-playable m4b file. The “drawback” is that the codec is proprietary but this is how you’d put it, it is free and the most efficient in quality and encoding.
Ripping a Single Audio Stream from a File or DVD
Valid for Fedora 10.
Convert Single APE File to m4a Ipod-Playable Files on Linux
Download the latest Nero Aac MPEG4 Encoder/Decoder binary from here. Unpack, copy neroAacDec, neroAacEnc and neroAacTag to ~/bin. The below is confirmed for Fedora 9, Fedora 10 (x86_64).