When I first started using Ubuntu, about a year and a half ago, I was really impressed with the preloaded Brasero CD/DVD burning software. However, after some updates, it got kind of difficult and less user friendly, so I started searching for an alternative. What I found is a nice little software called K3b.
For those of you who are familiar with Linux, and more specifically, the different Ubuntu distributions, you'll know that standard Ubuntu comes with the Gnome interface. You'll also quickly recognize that most software applications for Ubuntu that start with a 'K' are made for Kubuntu, the KDE version. K3b is a CD/DVD burning software originally developed for the KDE Linux environment, however, it will easily install and run in a Gnome environment as well. This app can be installed three different ways;
- the easiest way is to go through Add/Remove... under the Applications menu
- use the Synaptic Package Manager under System - Administration
- open terminal, type in sudo apt-get update, when that finishes, type sudo apt-get install k3b
- or, finally, download the source code from here, compile, and install it.
One of the nice things about most Linux distros, after installing new software, you are very rarely required to restart your computer, this should be no different. So, literally seconds after installing this app, you can fire it up and start burning disks. I'm not going to go into details on how to use it, for instructions, you can go to link I provided above. This is the first Linux CD/DVD app that was able to burn disks at my drives full capacity (52x CD, 20x DVD) without any errors using crappy, 1.2RMB each (that's ≈ $0.18 US), disks. Here's a quick look at the interface while it's in the burning process:
click to see the original, full size screen shot
