For the Linux fans out there, today is a great day! Up until now, blu-ray playback support in Linux has been very complicated and quite an aggravating experience. First you would have to hope you had the right BD-ROM drive and that there was a hacked firmware for you to flash it with. Then you had to hope the correct AACS keys were out on the interwebs for the blu-ray disc you wanted to watch. Once you had the right drive and the right keys, you had to dump the entire blu-ray disc to your hard drive and play it from there.

Well the guys over at the MakeMKV project just made this process a whole lot simpler! It is now actually feasible to play blu-ray movies in Linux. This is still a far shot from proper native support for blu-ray playback, but it is a nice workaround that is easy enough for any home user to get working. The way it works, basically, is that the newly released MakeMKV 1.4.10 now offers the ability to stream files or discs across your home theater network and any media player capable of playing a network stream can pick this up. So without going to much further, let’s get started on this how to guide.

Read full story.

And then how much longer is it until the MPAA/Sony try to introduce even tougher measures? Honestly DRM has run rampant. It seems that only 'legit' playback of BluRay is only exclusive to Windows or OSX. Anything else is considered somehow as piracy.

I don't own any BluRay yet, but I am looking at it from a storage perspective, once the drives and media come down in price, as well as there is RELIABLE write support for the format (under Linux). Especially for multi layered writing. Anyways, some say that disc media will go away, but I am kinda hoping it doesn't. I don't trust downloaded content. At least with a physical copy, I can watch the movie whenever I want, unlike a download bought from amazon or whatever, plus the content won't even work on a non-Windows platform. So the lesser of the evil for me is Bluray. I applaud the dev. for this breakthrough, and the MPAA can stick their DRM mantra up their assess!