Nero Burning for Linux

ceasol writes "The German company Nero, developers of the award-winning Nero Burning ROM suite for Windows, now release a free version for Linux called NeroLINUX a CD/DVD Burning Software, and include many features from the Windows version. This software is proprietary but free if you registered." The OEM versions of Nero that come with many CD burners aren't sufficient, though; NeroLINUX is free-as-in-beer only if you've registered "a full version of Nero software version 6 or higher," or a "retail version or downloaded version."

Good thing

[teslatug]

Before discovering K3B, a CD/DVD burning software was the main thing I was missing under Linux. K3B is nice, but Nero (at least under Windows) had a lot more options.

Re:Advantages of Nero?

[Rashkae]

Except, if you read the fine frint in the FA, it says, Neor offers *No* support for the Linux Version.... so... no.

Re:No ISO support ...

[FLEB]

It's a bit hidden away.

(My experience is relevant to Nero v5. YMMV.)

I, and I imagine most people, would find the "Image Writer", a virtual CD-R that you can use to make only Nero images (.nra). You can do all the things you can do with any other CD-R drive with that, burn a "disc", copy a disc, etc. It only supports .nra, though.

There is, however, a menu-item, "Save Track", that will let you save ISO images, utilizing one of the most confusing and hackneyed file chooser ever.

Nero does support burning from ISOs in the same fashion as .NRA archives.

Re:uhh who cares?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Not for DVD's, you usually need growisofs for burning those.

Re:Nero would have better spent their time and $$$

[Anonymous Coward]

NeroLINUX uses NeroAPI for low-level operations (burn process) (FTA)

Re:What?

[KiloByte]

Nope, OEM versions are explicitely excluded.

Re:What?

[arose]

You might as well forget them:

Please note: This offer is not for OEM or Trial version users. OEM users can Upgrade Now for a special discount offer.

Re:Warning: Proprietary DRM

[taylortbb]

Software Products: Object of this agreement is the Nero software suite, comprising a selection of components, that varies with different suite types, from the following list: Nero Burning ROM, NeroMIX, WMA-Plug-in, InCD, Nero StartSmart, Nero Toolkit, Nero Cover Designer, Nero Wave Editor, Nero SoundTrax, Nero BackItUp, Nero ImageDrive, Nero Media Player, Nero ShowTime, InCD Reader, Nero PhotoShow Express, Nero Recode, Nero Fast CD-Burning Plug-In, NeroVision Express and/or Nero Express ("Software")"

If you look at the very first paragraph you will notice a list of software products that it covers, NeroLinux is *NOT* one of pieces of software covered by that license, making your whole point irrelevant to the discussion on NeroLinux (this does not mean I support the DRM in the windows version).

NeroLinux - Good for weaning windows Nero users

[proctor]

Given that our household owns a WinNero license, I figured why not give it a whirl. Not bad...very easy to install and it does a good job of translating the look and feel from the windows side.

Definitely a good tool for those who have vid burning windows addicts in their household. I may finally have a shot at converting my wife over to the 'dark side' of burning vids on her windows station...time to switch the myth server inittab to default:5.

Ah...but this is slashdot...nitpicking(TM) is mandatory. Well, it'd be nice if the Nero folks provided at least a basic level of support for the linux side. I'd bet there's people in their support arm who'd be happy to work with an OS they can really troubleshoot for a change.

Re:The company

[RautenkranzMT]

Incorrect. They changed their name to nero some short time ago. Almost certain an article was on /. about it.

Re:Motif Garbage

[frankjr]

It is actually using a GTK1 interface. There doesn't seem to be anything that would be incentive enough to buy it. If only it were GTK2 however... but anyways, I use K3B.

Re:Good thing

[teslatug]

Well, no, since K3B doesn't have them. For example, I wouldn't mind a VCD option out of the box (getting vcdimager, compiling source, finding out missing libcdio, getting the dependency resolved,... is not fun).

Re:I know this is Slashdot ...

[natrius]

But could we please call Ahead Software by their name instead of calling the company Nero?

Look at the bottom of http://www.nero.com/ [nero.com]. "Nero AG / Nero Inc." I'm guessing they incorporated under the Nero name as well when they realized that not many people actually know the company name.

Fair enough

[einhverfr]

But what about something like SimpleCDRTools (or something like that) which I set up for my parents. Handles saved playlists for audio files, mastered cd images, etc.

Great little program. UI needs just a little streamlining, but still is pretty good. And it wraps all the wonderfully powerful command line tools :-)

Re:I know this is Slashdot ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful?

These idiots! They do not know their own name!

http://www.nero.com/en/About_Nero.html

Ahead is dead, long live Nero!

Re:Nero would have better spent their time and $$$

[Anonymous Coward]

k3b works fine under WindowMaker for me, I use WM under VNC when I'm not running directly on my system. Not sure why you're having a problem with it.

Re:It's pointless

[dbIII]

It's only value is that it includes a comprehensive point&click interface, but even though it's stuffed with features, it can't beat the existing, free tools

That is the value. In order for clerical staff to burn a single data file bigger than 2GB on a DVD in linux where I work they have to use a script that makes a udf filesystem and burns that - which confuses them since Nero on windows can do it but GUI burning software on linux can't (or couldn't - someone please give me good news). I'm sure there's a few other features which become significant with a big user base like with Nero but haven't been done yet with K3B etc.

Just having the menus in the same place would have value with a common clerical staff attitude of not wanting to learn anything unless they are paid to go on a course. Sit them in front of a desktop with icons for mozilla/netscape, openoffice and Nero and it often won't matter to them what the OS is.

K3B is very nice, but really brings home the limitations of the usual win32 single desktop screen when you bring it up on a windows desktop via X. There are so many windows that pop up - while since Nero came from the win32 background it would probably look saner across the network to the average secretary.

stuff you can't do with Linux burning software

[dahlek]

This is a good thing. I love competition. I'm glad that there are several mpeg encoders, for example, and at least two major general transcoding packages for linux (mencoder and transcode)...

I also think it's pretty damn cool that despite all of the cool front-ends out there, basically just a handful of the same utilities are used.

I can think of a few things that the current linux combos of those utils can't accomplish, however, at least the last time I looked into each one:

• Writing clone-cd image files. Many off-site archival backups of Playstation games come in this format. There is no native linux utility of which I'm aware that can handle these. In any case, it's a bullshit format - the very good Windows utility CDMage can convert them to bin/cue format, which cdrdao-using programs can then burn. The conversion works 100% of the time, and CDMage runs in linux via WINE very well - still, this is an extra and time-consuming step...
• Writing cd+g (or is it +eg?) formats - Karoke cd's, that is. I wonder if Nero can do this?
• Writing an mp3 file on the fly in DOA mode. I haven't tested the DAO mode in cdrecord - but in my experience, most front-ends use cdrdao to burn DAO, and cdrdao can't be fed an input-stream (last I checked, anyway), because it needs a cue file as well as the bin-data. So, you must convert the mp3 files into waves first and then burn them in DAO mode. If you use cdrecord with a pipe (or a front end) to do this in real time, the result will be TAO.

So I for one welcome some new blood/competition (sorry, no 'overlords' joke), assuming Nero will write code from mostly-scratch (which I don't know because I didn't RTFA). BTW, I thought the Windows version of Nero ran under WINE, so this might be a way to handle some of the above anyway.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Nero ALREADY runs on linux

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It was reported a while ago that recent versions of Nero run on Linux using recent versions of WINE.
HERE [linuxcompatible.org]

Re:How serious are they really?

[shutdown -p now]

You can think of it as buying a single license for both Nero/Win and Nero/Linux.

And they can tell if you're going to use the Linux part of it - remember, you have to register on their website to get their Linux version, so they probably count people who do so.

Re:Nero ALREADY runs on linux

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Yeah, I'm sure it runs without a hitch too. Good one.

I expect that it is very stable.
The main nero application does three things:

1) Basic GUI user interaction
2) Read files
3) Compose ATAPI CDB's and send them to the burner

The first two are dead simple, it isn't like Nero's doing any Direct3D rendering, wine's had that level of functionality for years. The third is as close to talking to the raw hardware as you can get, it probably uses Linux's scsi pass-thru driver, thus by-passing the kernel for 99% of the work.

Re:But can it compete?

[CowboyBob500]

There is no demo available, no screenshots, and you can't even buy it directly.

Here's one out of three... NeroLinux Screenshots [nero.com]

Bob

Certifications...

[Allen Zadr]

There are very few places that look for Linux certs during the hire process. And the few that do, are doing so because they have nobody who knows Linux already, and they need it to support some big product their IT department was just told to install. In this type of shop.. you'd also be expected to have experience doing Linux (or at least UNIX) administration in a corporate environment.

Otherwise, the Aplus cert has some Linux troubleshooting now, and can (at least) be applied to more aspects of what you're doing (one of the few certs that I don't feel is a waste of time).

I am an IT director and a Linux user (currently Fedora Core 3 and RedHat Enterprise Linux 4).