On Monday 30 April 2001 09:43 pm, you wrote:
Well, I have finally gotten to the place where I am frustrated with Linux. Why? Because, a couple of weeks ago I purchased a CDRW drive. The MAIN reason I purchased it was to store all of the Linux stuff I download off of the internet. Well, after getting it installed and functioning, I set about to learn how to use it (burn CDs). I learned how to use mkisofs and cdrecord, and Xcdroast. (I also have Win Me installed on my machine.) Adaptec Easy CD Creator and Direct CD came with my drive, and with Direct Cd I can format a CD in UDF format and write/read/erase files to a CDRW disc with no problems. I thought, cool, this is what I want to do in Linux. When I set about to learn how to do this in Linux, I was very disappointed to learn that UDF is at best a kernel patch to get it functioning. Yes, I know read support is in the kernel options, if I want to recompile the kernel, but not write support. I want to use my CDRW like a big floppy, but I can't in Linux. I want to USE Linux, not spend all of my time hacking it or recompiling the kernel. I am an end user, not a hacker. I have real work to get done and I'd LIKE to use Linux to get that work done. Sorry, but I have to use what works without having to spend a lot of time getting it working. I have been using Linux now for about one year, and have come to love it. However, this is a very frustrating roadblock for me. Unless someone can show me how to use my CDRW store/read/write/erase individual files onto my CDRW disks easily (Like DirectCD does in Windows Me)I may have to abandom Linux for the time being. I don't know anything about UDF, or how long the tecnology has been released, but I would think the Linux community would have better support for it than it does buy this time.
Please help me stay with the Penguin,
jvb
Dear Jerry, I know exactly how you feel! I've felt the same way for a whole week now.. but let me tell you a story. About 8 days ago, I shelled out $450 for 2 things: 1 Belkin PCI FireWire Card and 1 Yamaha 16/10/40 External FireWire CDRW drive Why this card/drive? Don't ask, it's complicated. Anyways, I was determined to get it to work on my SuSE 7.1 box. I compiled the ieee1394 (FireWire) stuff into modules and started working with it. That lasted all of about 15 seconds. Nothing worked. Box locked up when I did simple things like insmod the modules. Boy was I frustrated. Sound familiar? Well, I decided that hey.. this is Linux, and Linux users don't get frustrated, they get involved! So I joined the Linux1394 FireWire Mailing list located on or around the page: http://linux1394.sourceforge.net/faq.html (this is from my bookmarks ;-) and started sending out feeler emails.. trying to see if I could get some help. Over the next 3 days, I didn't receive much of anything, just a "try this" and a "try that".. it seemed like it was going very slowly, and I became worried. Then today, I received an email asking me how I was doing with it. I replied back "not too good" and then the best thing happened.. a conversation via email ... back and forth .. try this .. didn't work... try that... didn't work, but this happened and it's not longer doing this or that.. ok, good, now try this. Within a couple of hours, I had a fully working Yamaha CDRW drive! The first one that they have seen working, might I add. Now I can go about my business as an end user and know that not only did I contribute to the process, but that the process contributed to me. On no other operating system can you get this level of support. Not for free, and most likely not for any price. UDF? It'll happen. Especially if you get involved. Have a great night. -Steven