hii ..
my kernel version is 2.6.9-1.667 and FC3 .. i m planning to buy a DVD / cd writer tht is combo ... i m planning to buy a samsung device ... will it need special driver's or i will have to do some bios upgrade ? will FC3 detect it ? i mean by kudzu or something....
plzz help

check out the HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) on this site. Make sure you know exactly what model it is you want and go to Samsungs site and see if they offer linux drivers. If no luck there google to see if there is an open source driver that supports that model. The more research you do before buying hardware with linux the less headaches you'll have in teh long run. Whatever you do good luck.

You should not need any special drivers for any type of cd/dvd drive.

If it is an ide drive and you already have other ide devices in your system then it should be recognized straight away.
If it is a scsi drive then as long as you have scsi cdrom support and your scsi adaptor is working then it will work. If you don't have that support then you will need to add that to your kernel. However if you are using a standard pre-compiled kernel then you most likely do have that support.
Again if it is a usb or firewire device it should work straight away as long as support for these systems is included in the kernel.

Support of all of these can be either as modules or part of the kernel.

The only exception to these is if it is a lightscribe drive. But as this is an addition and does not have anything to do with reading and writing to discs then all of the above will apply.

hii ..
can u suggest some model ? ASUS or SAMSUNG ... which doesnt require any special driver ... coz literally i was fedup when i tried to get my LAN card work ... it was not detected by kudzu ...
so plzz ... if anyone has DVD writer then please suggest some model
i have standard kernel ... i did customised a kernel .. but i dun boot it into it .. coz i tried makin it smaller but ended up making 200 kb bigger than standard kernel ...
hey can anyone of u gimme a good link to choose configuration during linux kernel compilation .. i wish to make a small and fast kernel
but for the time being i need urgent help with DVD writer
thnks in advance

Stick to anything that plugs into the ide bus and you will not go wrong. And just to keep things simple don't bother with anything that has lightscribe on it.

I have a sony DWU-22a which does DVD-r/rw +r/rw and CD-r/rw, and I also have a no brand CD-r/rw. Both of which are just plug and forget.

For your kernel read both of these to get you started http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/K...ild-HOWTO.html and http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/...d_Symbol_HOWTO.
Get your kernel source from http://www.kernel.org/ or one of there mirrors (which I belive is the only place you should get them from). These come with a default config that if you compiled will run on 99% of i386 and above machines, but will not recognise much additional hardware. To do that you have to know what hardware you have in your machine.