I am going to build my first Linux box shortly, and install KnoppMyth on it. I have all the other parts spec'd, but I would like some advice regarding the optical drive.

I would like to get a dvd burner. Can I get just the burner, and use it as my only optical drive? Are the dvd burners well supported under linux, or will I have driver issues? Does anyone have a recommendation for a particular one? A particular brand? As I am new to Linux, I would prefer to have as much work out of the box as possible.

If I have a DVD burner on a seperate machine that is networked, will there be any issue that would prevent me from getting a dvd reader in the knoppmyth box, and then moving the files over to the other machine to burn? Is this worth the money I would save?

Thanks for your input.

-swc

most all ide dvd burning drives will work linux just uses the atapi standard, so it works with most all of them. I have a dvd+ drive and have no problems.

That being said you should probably at this point just get a read only drive and move the files to the other machine for burning, because burning in linux at this point is not simple. Not to say it can't be done, but to burn movie disks now you have to use command line scripts. If you have a drive in a windows box with the nice easy movie burning software that came with it that would probably be much easier for you.