DVD-RAM Support

Nathan Laredo (the A/V guru from the expo who had 4 MPEG decoders in his machine running simultaneously) wrote in to say that he's "hacked out" full read/write/rewrite functionality for the Panasonic LF-D100 series of Panasonic DVD-RAM drives under Linux, and the diff is available at OPN. He says he's used the driver to copy three unencrypted DVDs, and that you probably don't want to use ext2 on the drive (though it can be done "painfully").

Comments

Thanking Panasonic - a good idea!

[timothy]

The poster who asked who to thank at Panasonic has a good point!

This (hopefully) is a good way to both foster goodwill by saying "Thanks, guys, we appreciate the gift!" and to let them know how many people would like to use a DVD (/RAM) drive with a Free OS.

I bet they don't get a lot of "thank you"s when they release a new driver for the Windows family of OSes, in part because most users view it as a default, just an integral part of their machine. Sort of like those who are not into automobiles (I'm not) don't care so much about some new engine part.

But those who appreciate the fact that a lot of uncredited hours go into every free / Free program can be more appreciative. It would be great to let Panasonic know they've pleased a lot of people by contributing one of their drives and more important the documentation for it.

So if anyone from Panasonic is reading this, WOOHOO! Thanks!

And again, if we know where to direct better thank yous, I'm sure people will send some.

timothy

Re:Consumer DVD-ROM Support for Linux?

[Robotech_Master]

The closest thing seems to be the linuxdvd mailing list, which has been in existance for a couple of months. They're pretty much only in the early planning/discussion stages, with list traffic seeming to be split about equally between technical jargon and licensing discussion. Any actual hardware or software will probably be at least several months off, and that's contingent on whether they can get licensing worked out.