[TriLUG] Best Linux-supported CDRW?

[Jeff Jackowski]

On 14 Oct 2002, Lisa C. Boyd wrote:

>I currently have an outdated CD-RW that's giving me problems. I'm
>looking at buying a new one and want to make sure what I get is
>compatible with Linux. I would love to be able to write DVDs eventually,
>but right now just writing CDs once would be great :)

I've got a Pioneer DVR-A03 drive, so I figured I'd fill in some details. 
The newer A04/104 drive can be had for $300 and good DVD-R's, the kind 
that DVD players can use, are availble for $4 or less, and cheap DVD-R's, 
good for DVD-ROM drives, are under $1 per disk. The lowest prices I've 
seen are at http://www.meritline.com/.

The Pioneer drives work with Linux, but I have only used Linux to write 
and erase CDs. A derivative of CDrecord is said to write DVDs. With DVD's, 
there really isn't much difference between a data, video, and audio disk, 
unlike CDs. Still, if it isn't just data, it needs to be written in the 
proper format. I've heard that making a disk with video for playback in 
DVD players can be done with Linux, but without menus, chapters, or 
support for anything other than play and pause. If you want to do anything 
else, you'll need a Mac or a Windows system for the moment.

The only real problem I've had with the DVR-A03 from Linux, and would have
with any CD-RW drive as well, is that I can't write a CD with both data
and audio tracks such that the data track isn't played by a CD player. I
can't find Linux software that supports this, but I can do it easily from
Windows using the software that came with the drive. Bother.

-- 
Jeff Jackowski
        http://ro.com/~jeffj/