Another step before turning to Linux. My DVD/CD burner is not supported by Linux. Can someone suggest a cheap burner that works well in Linux. My travails thru Newegg and other locales has borne no fruit. Thanks.

Normally I would suggest any popular brand should work fine. I must ask first though, where or what gives you the idea that your current unit is not supported by Linux? Can you point us to a link which explains this, and also, tell us what exact make & model of unit you have currently?

While just about anything is possible, I can't recall ever someone saying a CD or DVD drive was "not compatible". Have you tried yours with Linux? If so, what happened, or in what way did it not work?

For what it's worth, we have Samsungs, Sonys and Pioneer units on the go at my home, and they all work perfect with Linux. I've read of many folks having LG units, and that they seem to work OK as well.

EDIT - and, check out the HCL for working suggestions: http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/

k3b is works well in LINUX environment. Have a try with k3b. This can be installed as,


LINUX : yum install k3b

DEBIAN : apt-get install k3b

I have a Sony AW-G170A. Th reason I said it won't run under Linux is because everywhere I looked for driver I couldn't find one for this burner. I have not tried it with Linux because I'm trying to get as much taken care of before switching as I can think of. David

1. Oh! You're talking about the actual hardware. You gave us the impression you were looking for software. Please correct your title to somelike like "Looking for a driver for my Sony AW-G170A CDrw".
2. Google is your friend. 2 seconds of googling linux Sony AW-G170A turned up this just for you.
A little effort goes a long way and makes you that much more independent.
jdk

Optical drives don't need drivers. Operating systems and burning software (including burning software for Linux) just assumes that the drive supports the atapi interface, which they all do.

So just install some burning software like k3b, and start using it.

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HL-DT-ST From LG has worked with every distro I have used it on.

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I'm not sure if it's the same one or not, but I have 2 Sony drives and both work PERFECTLY with every distro I've tried them on.

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[mod-edit]unnecessarily snide remarks removed[/mod-edit]
To those who are being helpful- Thank you. davidjr