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Learn to Burn Mastering your CDs Under Linux by Steve Hanson So, at age six you dreamed of being a big, burly fireman performing daring rescues from blazing buildings. Now you'd simply like to accomplish today's version of Disco Inferno, a controlled burn of those MP3s to CD-Audio in Linux. Don't despair, Sparkie! It's really not your fault that you can't get your burning sessions completed on your Linux box. You haven't read this red hot article yet! Grab your oxygen mask and those blank CDs gathering dust under your desk and get ready to rescue your reputation as a computer whiz which, until this issue of Maximum Linux, had been lying in the ashes. We'll teach you the ins and outs of burning CDs under Linux, and soon you'll be able to satisfy all those burning desires. Tell your gals and pals you can now burn them copies of Britney Spears' latest release. Don't forget to stock up on Tums and get ready to burn, baby, burn! The Linux Advantge Although installing and configuring Linux gets easier all the time, some hardware items continue to be a bother. Burning CDs is one thing that people really want to do with their computers, but getting this to work under Linux is still problematic. With Linux, it can be easy to make CDs reliably from audio, data, and MP3s. Most of the common distributions include some sort of low-level software for this purpose, however, many are difficult to configure and use. We're going to explore why CD burners can cause problems and how you can make your CD-R drive work efficiently with Linux. Linux does have some advantages over Windows when it comes to mastering and burning CDs. For starters, there is that large range of software for CD burning we mentioned, and, of course, most of it is free. Linux also tends to be considerably more stable than Windows. Our old Memorex CD-RW drive barely works with Windows, and creates a fair number of coasters. Under Linux, it is much more reliable, and we never seem to get buffer underruns. Linux can feed data more reliably to the drive because it is a higher-performance OS, and CD-burning programs can set their priorities high enough so that you can actually do a fair amount of work on the computer while simultaneously burning CDs. Keep in mind that, like anything else, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and getting your burner to work in Linux may require rolling up your sleeves, cracking your knuckles, and getting downright physical with your equipment. She's Got Issues There are a few issues in play when it comes to burning CDs--whether it's in Windows or in Linux. The biggest stumbling block is that the most inexpensive CD-R drives on PC systems use the IDE interface to connect to the computer. The original IDE standard was intended to work with normal hard drives, and was later extended with ATAPI extensions, which allowed the use of tape and CD-ROM drives on IDE interfaces. The ATAPI extensions can either be accessed through a direct IDE programming interface or through a more flexible set of interfaces that makes the drive appear to be a SCSI device. Under Linux, CD-R-burning software treats IDE-based CD-R drives as SCSI devices, so systems with IDE are more of a challenge. The workaround (in Linux and Windows) is done by fooling the operating system into thinking the IDE drive is really a SCSI drive. This is generally accomplished by emulation software. If you're doing this on a Windows machine, no sweat--the installation of Windows-based CD-burner software usually includes special drivers to perform the SCSI emulation. Under Linux, however, things aren't as rosy. Until the day comes when your new CD burner is packaged with