NeroLinux vs. K3b

An anonymous reader writes "Flexbeta.net compares NeroLinux to K3b under Fedora Core 3. The review notices how NeroLinux does nothing with the eye candy while K3b's GUI is no comparison to NeroLinux. The article also mentions how cumbersome it is to navigate through NeroLinux, also taking note of how long each application takes to accomplish burning tasks."

Comments

Re:NeroLinux ?

[Ender_Stonebender]

No, it isn't what you think. It's just a Linux version of the Nero software, made by the same people who made Nero for Windows. You probably missed it because there weren't very many dupes of it.

--Ender

Long story short....

[carlmenezes]

NeroLinux - less options, poor GUI, faster sometimes.
K3B - more options, better GUI, either same speed or slower by a few secs.

Winner - K3B

Conclusion :
Author has no idea why Nero wants users to buy the Windows version so they can use NeroLinux - bad decision because K3B is much better and learning NeroLinux is not worth the time and the money.

Re:Long story short....

[swillden]

But the fact is that nero, unlike the open source burning tools on linux, works no matter what.

Is that a fact? Have any evidence? Because what you say makes no sense. Unless Nero bypasses the operating system somehow, it has to use the same Linux APIs that k3b et al have to use, and the problems people have with burners are related to the OS-level configuration -- device nodes, permissiones, etc. (well, I suppose some may have problems because they installed k3b but omitted cdrecord, but that's the distro's fault; decent distros do automatic dependency management).

And it takes advantage of features your burner may have if say, its a fancy plextor.

Like what? I may be out of touch here, but the last significant innovation I know of in burner APIs is Burnproof, and k3b etc. support that just fine.

Like mastering and burning video DVDs, in linux there is no easy tool.

And with NeroLinux there is still no easy tool, because NeroLinux doesn't do DVD mastering. k3b burns DVDs just as well as NeroLinux does (k3b also doesn't do mastering).

Neros advantage is that it works, period. If you think that k3b works period with a full featureset on all hardware then feel free to peruse any distro mailing lists and forums for people who can't get burning to work. Especially of DVDs.

Well, if you RTFA, you'll see that the author had trouble getting Nero to work on his hardware, whereas k3b worked, period.

In summary: None of your arguments hold water. Got any others?

Before the site gets burned...too late

[Anonymous Coward]

NeroLinux vs K3b
Posted by Gsurface on 15 Mar 2005 - 18:53 Introduction

This week Ahead Nero introduced a Linux version of their popular CD burning application dubbed NeroLinux. NeroLinux promises to bring the great features found in the Windows version to the Linux domain. Though the Windows version of Nero is loved by many, how well does NeroLinux stack up against already existing CD Burning applications such as K3b? K3b's user interface is neat and full of eye candy, while Nero leans towards a more standard look; leaving aside looks for functionality. Though NeroLinux is "free" of cost, users still need to purchase version of Nero 6 for Windows to download NeroLinux. NeroLinux is provided as RPM or Debian package where as K3b is completely free and provides multiple Linux installation packages.

The test machine used for this review consists of the following:
Fedora Core 3
Abit Guru AV8 Chipset
AMD Athlon64 3500
1GB DDR 3200 RAM
Sony CD-RW Drive
Pioneer DVD-RW


Look and Feel

Look and Feel
No doubt about it, K3b offers a more pleasing look by using more eye candy than NeroLinux. Navigating into the preferences of each application, we can see how K3b's user interface is much cleaner and easier to navigate. The options in K3b are aligned as icons on the left hand side of the window, making each task recognizable. NeroLinux preferences window shows each section as tabs on the upper side. Though NeroLinux's GUI is simple, the preferences are still easy to navigate.

K3b Preferences and NeroLinux Preferences

K3b's main window presents the user with multiple CD burning scenarios to choose from including Audio CD Project, Data CD Project, DVD Data Project and CD Copying; getting straight to the point by presenting to the user its abilities. NeroLinux however, does not present the user with any type of wizard or options as far as what the user wishes to do. The user is simply presented with the main window to drag and drop files. The Windows version of Nero presents the user with a window of options as to what the user wishes to do: burn a data CD, music CD and so on. Why NeroLinux was not giving this same capability as the Windows version may have been because this is just the first release of NeroLinux. The fact that K3b presents the user with the options noted earlier makes it much easier to navigate than NeroLinux.

K3b Main Window, NeroLinux Main Window and Nero 6 Main Window


Features

Features
Both K3b and NeroLinux are able to handle both CD-R media and DVD media. K3b goes beyond your regular CD Burning suite by bundling a video encoding feature. K3b lets you rip a DVD movie and convert it into an AVI file for burning on regular CD-R media. NeroLinux does not include any type of video encoding feature. Under the burning properties section of K3b, the typical options are found such as the ability to simulate a recording session, write on the fly, create an image of the compilation only, and the ability to verify the written data; which most of the times is recommended. K3b also allows for multisessions, which means you can keep adding files to the same CD at a later time. NeroLinux's burning option also features the ability to simulate a recording session as well as verifying the written data on the disc. Other options such as creating a bootable disc and the option to finalize a disc are available on NeroLinux.

K3b and NeroLinux Burning Options

Both NeroLinux and K3b allow for burning an image of a CD, however, K3b's user interface is much neater and presents the user with more useful options than NeroLinux. K3b options allow for burning multiple copies of the image, setting the speed at which to burn the image and the ability to verify the written data. Though NeroLinux allows for these settings also, they are not presented to the user within the same window such as K3b.

Mastering video DVDs under linux IS easy

[FreeUser]

Like mastering and burning video DVDs, in linux there is no easy tool.

And with NeroLinux there is still no easy tool, because NeroLinux doesn't do DVD mastering. k3b burns DVDs just as well as NeroLinux does (k3b also doesn't do mastering).

Excellent points, but I take issue with the statement "there is still no easy tool."

I use qdvdauthor, which is quite intuitive, for mastering video DVDs. I put together a DVD of my grandmother's memorial service for the family, complete with fancy menus and all the usual bells and whistles. It was quite easy, and k3b burned the resulting .iso painlessly.

Is it an all in one monolithic solution? Thankfully, no, and as far as I'm concerned, I hope people who do want to bring the windoze notion of one program doing a mediocre job at everything stay the hell away from *BSD and Linux. I like simple programs that do a focused task well. It means the programs are better, more reliable, and more easy for the developers to maintain, which means I get better software. For burning DVDs under Linux from your camcorder, for example, it's as easy as 1, 2, 3 ...

1) use kino to import video data from the camera into dv2 format

2) use qdvdauthor to master the dvd

3) use k3b to burn the DVD

each program does what it does very well, none are monolothic, and if something better comes along for any of the steps above I can substitute the new, better tool, without losing the features I'm used to or prefer in the other two steps.

Nero is dead. These people should have done a little market research before trying to sell a product that, when it matures, won't do any more than the libre software already available does just fine, k3b being just one example.

Re:Image writing

[rebel]

.nrg files are .iso files with a 300kb header. I use the following simple script to convert:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Convert Nero .nrg format to .iso format.

error()
{
echo "${@}" >&2
exit 1
}

INPUT="${1}"; OUTPUT="${2}"
[ -z "${OUTPUT}" ] && OUTPUT="${INPUT%.*}.iso"

[ ${#} -ne 1 -a ${#} -ne 2 ] &&
error "Usage: $(basename ${0}) file.nrg [file.iso]"

[ ! -e "${INPUT}" ] && error "${INPUT}: file does not exist"
[ ! -s "${INPUT}" ] && error "${INPUT}: file is null"

TYPE=$(file -b "${INPUT}"); TYPE="${TYPE%% *}"

[ "${TYPE}" = "ISO" ] && error "${INPUT}: file is already in .iso format"
[ "${TYPE}" != "data" ] && error "${INPUT}: file is not in .nrg format"

dd if="${INPUT}" of="${OUTPUT}" bs=1024 skip=300

Re:Image writing

[Anonymous Coward]

.NRG files are NOT .iso files. There is a program, nrg2iso, that will strip the NRG header and leave you with a plain .iso, but only for some (data) .NRG image types.

If you create a multisession/CD-EXTRA style .NRG file, you cannot just rename it to .iso, and nrg2iso will NOT work.

Lastly, if it's an audio CD, calling the .NRG an .iso image is plain wrong! It's not ISO-9660 or anything else. It's CD-AUDIO. .Iso is for data CDs only, and even then it doesn't have all the info in it the cd writer actually needs. NRG has more info in it than just .iso. It needs to in order to support more image types than just data cds.

Disclaimer:

I write cd burning software professionally. I have the official phillips/sony cd specs right in front of me, and have used the NeroAPI, Primo HPCDE and Goldenhawk extensively. ;)