The drive works "out of the box" for reading CDROMs.
A very simple tool for writing CDR/RW media is provided with Fedora Core 1: as soon as a blank CD is inserted in the drive, a Nautilus window labeled "burn:///" opens up. You can drag and drop files for burning into this window. It is quite slow, because it does not allow writing "on the fly".
For more advanced CD writing facilities, my personal preference remains "X-CD-Roast".
The version packaged with Fedora Core 1 (0.98alpha14) is reasonably stable but requires that you run it as root.
This is not a good idea. It is preferable to download the latest version, non-root enabled, from
http://xcdroast.sourceforge.net/RPMS/a15/fedora-1/
and install (as root) by
rpm -Uvh xcdroast-0.98alpha15-1.i386.rpm.
Then, still as root, start X-CD-Roast by typing
xcdroast <Enter> in your console.
After that, you will need to activate non-root mode, then enter the general setup options. The setup requires you to
specify an image directory for temporary storage of ISO images, so open another console window, type
mkdir /home/(username)/image
and specify this directory in the X-CD-Roast setup, then save and exit. You should
then be able to start X-CD-Roast as a non-root user...
The DVD function requires a symbolic link before any application will recognise it. As root, create a link as follows:
$ ln -s /dev/cdrom /dev/dvd
There are various applications for playing DVDs but most seem to support only unencrypted formats. A version of Xine with associated libraries and CSS decryption module has been packaged for Fedora Core 1 by Matthias Saou:
You will need a very long list of libraries and applications to build a working Xine configuration. The list seems to get longer with every new release of Red Hat Linux, so here goes:
Download the rpm files for all of the above, from the "freshrpms" site, into a temporary directory. In a console, as root, cd to that directory and type rpm -ivh * . This will install all the files in the correct order.
Open a new console window (non-root) and type xine-check. This will check your xine configuration and will also set up the application to point to a valid plug-in directory. If there are any error messages, correct the problems flagged before going any further. Finally, type xine to start the DVD player. If it crashes when first trying to read the tracks from the DVD, restart your computer and try starting xine again.
To enable DMA access for the DVD drive (prevents video frame loss and gaps in the sound), add the following line to /etc/modules.conf:
options ide-cd dma=1