K3b is kicked to the curb?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| helios Jun 04, 2005 4:17 AM EDT |
“Our goal is to provide products like the TS-H552U WriteMaster and NeroLINUX to the growing LINUX community,” said Jos Hageman, marketing manager at Samsung's European optical division. “Nero has helped us to achieve that goal providing a LINUX-based recording software application, and in doing that has opened up a new market to us in which we can now provide complete optical recording solutions.” OK...that's the first thing I thought when I read this. K3b has been the native KDE burning software for Linux for as long as I can remember. Why was a bundled package not put together with K3b? That is a seemingly rhetorical question folks. $$$. Straighten me out if I'm off base on this assumption. I do see on the K3b website k3b.org, that Lacie LTD is working with K3b to bundle it with their firmware. I have used the nero for Linux and have to say it isn't near as smooth or as fast as K3b. I suppose this is good news overall, but I am still mystified as to why this choice was made. Email was sent to the marketing department and Samsung has been very good to me in returning my emails. In the meantime, I wanted to know what you thought. Need to know what you think and why this choice was made. helios |
| r_a_trip Jun 04, 2005 10:14 AM EDT |
I can understand the choice of Samsung. While many FOSS cd-burning projects have created very smooth, feature packed front-ends, they are practically all dependent on cd-record. Cd-record is quite a powerful burning back-end, but for me it has been a bumpy ride with it. I suspect it has been for many more. It doesn't help that the original author, Joerg Schilling, is openly GNU/Linux hostile and pushing his Solaris preference. (Let's not start on the "amended" GPL shenanigans). Cd-record is under-supported on GNU/Linux. The various distributions have to patch the beast to have it work together with the current kernels. Although the distributors are doing an admirable job, it does vary in quality from release to release. It is not a solution that runs smoothly everywhere after install. Enter NeroLinux. It is proprietary, it is clunky, but it runs very well, using Ahead's own burning infrastructure. I've had the pleasure of using it and it does its job without complaining. Apart from its undesirable licensing, it is a problem free and capable burning suite. If the FOSS burning suites want to get into serious business, they (IMO) should fork cd-record and build it into the problem free burning back-end. As long as they rely on the half-assed GNU/Linux unfriendly versions made by Joerg Schilling, they will have the kick ass front-end that never works for everyone everywhere. As an aside. Libburn seems promising, but it moves at a glacial pace. It is not a serious avenue for the various FOSS burning suites. It could be, but then it should get more serious development. (Sorry, I am not a code monkey. I can only produce VBA kludges in Excel for my boss... So don't ask me to be useless with a project like libburn). |
| helios Jun 04, 2005 11:48 AM EDT |
A concise, complete and understandable explanation. THAT r_a_trip is why I read you. Fortunately for me and the other pclinuxos users, K3b is flawless in both cd and dvd work. I have always been puzzled by complaints from others when I have had zero issues with it. Kudo's to Texstar for insulating his people from these perils. I now understand the issues on both levels. |
| richo123 Jun 05, 2005 4:09 AM EDT |
I totally agree about cdrecord r_a_trip! Since kernel 2.6.8 and a switch to Ubuntu I have had no end of problems including: 1) Constant kernel scsi error messages 2) Scsi burner often goes "off-line" and requires a reboot 3) No automatic detection of the correct scsi interfaces so that cdrecord doesn't find the burner 4) k3b screwed because of these problems and its rather complex use of cdrecord. Schilling seems a very aggressive individual from what I have seen in fora and has some kind of wierd commercial undertaking for dvds going on. Linus has apparently completely dumped on the cdrecord code (mainly from the scsi emulation angle) and Schilling appears to have gone off in a huff. Not good! Sounds like someone needs to rewrite the code from ground up. I had a brief look and I can see why no-one has - it looks a lot like organic chemistry i.e. remembering a whole bunch of exceptions... |
| mjjohansen Jun 05, 2005 11:44 PM EDT |
I liked K3B back when I used KDE, but now I try to keep my Slackware install with Xfce as lean as possible. And that means, no KDE or Gnome programs or libs. Though K3B has been as pleasant to use as Nero (which I only know from the Windows version), the dependencies prevents the program from being all-Linux like XCDRoast is. If I bought a burner bundled with K3B and was using Ubuntu, for instance, I would just toss it. |
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