Nero CD/DVD Burning Software On Linux Is Dead

[Hamish Wilson]

Yea, writing to optical media is something I don't do often (I don't even recall what was the last time I did it). USB drives are a much better investment, because if you no longer need something that you wrote to a disc, you can only throw it away (unless it's a CD/DVD-RW, in which case you need to do it after 3 times or so). And even without that, they keep failing constantly. So the only time I write anything to a disc is for semi-long term storage of something that takes a lot of space but is not very important. Old archives, for instance.

Have to disagree with that - I have been using and reusing the same CD-RWs for five years with no faults. Not for anything important mind you, but I have.

[DeeKay]

1) How can *anyone* be happy that some software is *not* available for Linux anymore? Even if there were viable OSS alternatives available (which there aren't - but we'll get to that in a second!) - how can LESS choice be anything good?

2) K3B, Brasero etc suck, they only serve the most basic burning needs of today's user - on ancient media. They all rely on udftools/mkudffs, which hasn't been updated FOR YEARS and which STILL does not support UDF2.5 - a standard required for Bluray or AVCHD that was specified in 2003 (that's 10 (ten!) years ago next year!). I filed bug reports, i wrote to several developers - nobody cares! Well, the 70 people that meanwhile voted for my bug report do, but that does not mean this bug is even close to being adressed!

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=257602

Yes - Linux does not support creating filesystems in an open standard that's 10 years old! And it can NOT make use of hardware (e.g. BD burners) the way it's supposed to! This is a serious shortcoming and has pissed me off for years...

3) IMGburn via WINE? Seriously? People are happy that Nero isn't available anymore and AT THE SAME TIME recommend running Windows-Software via WINE as a viable alternative? Why? Just because it's free and Nero isn't? Come on! You prefer running free Windows software in WINE over paying for true native Linux software? How cheap is that?

4) "That's being worked on" - Oh really? Where? I cannot see anything but lies, lies and more lies ("K3B supports Bluray-Burning" - No, you support burning arbitrary files onto a BD-R, you can NOT burn Blurays!)

5) xorriso as a solution to overcome the Bluray/AVCHD problem of OSS software? A tool that does not support UDF *at all*? wtf? "it supports anything out there" - yeah, anthing ISO, definately NOT UDF!

6) Nero 4 Linux could do UDF2.5, it was the *only* viable Linux-solution to burn BDs and AVCHDs... And now it's gone, well done, lads!... And it was a mighty fine burning program, too, always worked no matter what distro I tried it with - Like someone said: This is the good usable Nero people remember fondly from Windows, before it all went downhill...

[XorEaxEax]

And now it's gone, well done, lads!...

Are you retarded? The reason it's gone is because not enough people thought it was worth buying, should we buy this just because you think it's great? Fucking moron.

[1c3d0g]

...while I sympathize with you being unable to burn Blu-ray drives on Linux, the truth is optical media as a whole is a dying platform. It has been since a while now, if you haven't noticed, DeeKay. Even Ultrabooks don't come with any CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives anymore, as most people have moved on to digital downloads. It is only going to get worse for optical media from here. Open source developers are leaving CD/DVD/Blu-ray burning apps as well to hack on projects with more interesting/exciting road maps. I'm sorry and I know that this doesn't help you with your problem, but maybe you should concentrate your efforts on other areas of Linux which have shortcomings, because frankly most people just don't care about optical media anymore.

[RealNC]

And now it's gone, well done, lads!

What do you want? Buying something we don't need? It doesn't work that way.

If you want to blame someone, blame Nero. They stopped offering it.

[Kano]

@DeeKay

ImgBurn has much more interesting features than Nero Linux. Most likely the most advanced tool for that purpose.

[DeeKay]

XorEaxEax:

I'm not quite so sure "retarded" is the adjective you're looking for, neither is "moron" an apt description for me. Only if your task was to offend rather than actually reason and discuss, in that case: Well done, sir! ;-)

I will not let myself be dragged to this level though and continue to reason:

1) BD burners and Media have only come down in price quite recently for a broader audience to be attractive. And now that it is, Nero is not available anymore - so there's no Bluray-burning possible anymore in Linux. Ever heard the sentence "you don't know what you've got till it's gone"?

2) The reason why many people did not buy it is most likely that many people (such as many here and even Michael himself!) tell people that they don't need it because OSS burning tools do everything just as well - which is simply not true, so many people will be quite surprised and feel lied to when their next computer has a BD burner and they cannot burn Blurays!


As for "optical media being a dying platform" - Well, I've heard the talk many times before. Just like "Magnetic HDs will be dead within X years". Yawn. Apparently it's not dying quite as fast as people would like, with burners around 60 Euros now and one BD-R for 1,4 Euro (that's a Euro/GByte ratio that's unmatched by anything else!), and while it's still alive i damn well expect Linux to support it (again: this is a standard from 2003!). Also, Linux is *not* the OS where people say "we only serve you if your needs match 90% of all users"... Linux is the OS with the broadest hardware support for a good reason!
I'll continue to focus on this particular area like i have for 2.5 years now - simply because it's the most glaring and most unbelievable shortcoming of Linux I have ever seen! So we have all the latest and greatest USB3, GLSL shaders, 3D stuff etc - but we still cannot burn UDF 2.5! wtf?

And no, I won't blame Nero for stopping to offer it. Clearly, they stopped offering it because not enough people bought it. And for that see 1) & 2) further up above!

P.S: 20 more votes for my bug since yesterday! ;-) Thanks!

[XorEaxEax]

I'm not quite so sure "retarded" is the adjective you're looking for, neither is "moron" an apt description for me.

Ok, that was a stupid thing to say, but your comment was _really_ stupid.

BD burners and Media have only come down in price quite recently for a broader audience to be attractive. And now that it is, Nero is not available anymore - so there's no Bluray-burning possible anymore in Linux.

Again, obviously there was no demand for Nero on Linux, if this has to do with there not being any demand for Bluray burning or not I can't say (and maybe the price drop you described in Bluray burners and media reflect that lack of demand in overall terms), but it's obvious not enough Linux users wanted Nero for it to be deemed worthwhile for them to support the platform. This prompted you to whine about people not buying it because YOU wanted that support, I mean WTF? I don't have a Bluray burner, my DVD burning needs are fully met with existing Linux FOSS tools, why would I (or anyone else who has no need for it's features) pay for Nero?

Ever heard the sentence "you don't know what you've got till it's gone"?

Never knew it even existed for Linux, that's how much I will miss it. And no, I'm not going to buy a Blu-ray burner, so no future tears either.

so many people will be quite surprised and feel lied to when their next computer has a BD burner and they cannot burn Blurays!

Don't know 'how many' people will be surprised as you are the only one I've ever seen complaining about this. And from what I've read cdrtools supports blu-ray burning (atleast for backup purposes). But let's say it misses some features you deem absolutely necessary, urge the developers to add/fix them, perhaps even throwing them a carrot or two by donating some money towards them. If not, just continue using the Nero version you have, did it just stop working the day they decided to stop selling it for Linux?

So we have all the latest and greatest USB3, GLSL shaders, 3D stuff etc - but we still cannot burn UDF 2.5! wtf?

Conclusion, there is very little interest in burning a disc using UDF 2.5, as a result of there being very little interest in authoring blu-ray media discs on Linux/BSD.

[devius]

XorEaxEax:
I'm not quite so sure "retarded" is the adjective you're looking for, neither is "moron" an apt description for me. Only if your task was to offend rather than actually reason and discuss, in that case: Well done, sir! ;-)

I think you got the point. You musn't take insults in these forum too seriously though. Usually they can be translated to "My opinion is different from yours and I would explain it thoroughly, but since I'm not in the mood I'll just leave you with this random insult to see if you forget about the issue at hand".

1) BD burners and Media have only come down in price quite recently for a broader audience to be attractive.

If the audience was so attracted it would have bought them, instead of not buying them.

Ever heard the sentence "you don't know what you've got till it's gone"?

Yes, and you're right. I should have bought that cheap brand new copy of Super Metroid I saw at the supermarket when the SNES was already way past its time (I think it was around 1996). Who knew it would become so valuable these days... sigh...

2) The reason why many people did not buy it is most likely that many people tell people that they don't need it because OSS burning tools do everything just as well

If anyone felt the need to buy Nero or to find another solution they would have (like you did). If most people didn't it wasn't because they didn't know it existed. It's not like someone would buy an expensive piece of hardware because they thought it would be well supported and then upon finding out it isn't just let it collect dust.

so many people will be quite surprised and feel lied to when their next computer has a BD burner

Their next computer won't have a BD burner.

and while it's still alive i damn well expect Linux to support it (again: this is a standard from 2003!). Also, Linux is *not* the OS where people say "we only serve you if your needs match 90% of all users"... Linux is the OS with the broadest hardware support for a good reason!

It's also the OS of open source and collaboration. If you feel so strongly about this issue you should take it in your own hands and fix it. If you do that you can be sure everybody here will applaud you.

And no, I won't blame Nero for stopping to offer it. Clearly, they stopped offering it because not enough people bought it.

That doesn't make much sense. Clearly they have clients that bought the linux version so if they stop supporting it they will be abandoning a part of their client base. Not very friendly and it's something that was decided by the people that make Nero, so it's their responsability, not their clients' like you seem to imply.
That's a big problem whith proprietary software. You never know when support will end and you'll be left on your own. Besides, I'm sure dropping support for the linux version is just a measure to prevent more losses since the market for optical media is clearly diminishing.

[Kano]

@DeeKay

Why do you think missing udf 2.5 support is a k3b error? k3b is like any other FRONTEND only passing options to command line tools. If there is a tool that supports udf 2.5 then you could certainly use it. In theory you could even run imgburn via cli but i dont think that anybody needs another gui on top of it