Hi All,

This isn't truly Slackware specific but I thought who would know better than the Slackware community. My issue is I am tired of being tech-support for my in-laws trying to keep their XP and Vista desktops functioning and would like to convert there setups to Linux. Their needs in terms of applications etc are very basic, primarily internet surfing and photos. The one application they use very frequently is a DVD backup software that runs on XP called DVD X Copy, and basically it is a one click rip and burn process for them to make backups of their DVD collection. I personally do not own and have not used such applications before so I am not familiar with some alternatives. I know of lots of programs that Rip or Burn DVD's very well but what I am looking for is a dead-simple way on Linux for them to maintain that functionality. Anything involving more than a couple steps would be challenging to them as they are very inexperienced PC users and slightly technophobic. I looked on Wine to see if the program would run under Wine but did not see it listed in the database. Anyway I would love to hear if anyone has any suggestions. Thanks in advance for your help.

K9copy will do this and is a breeze to use.It rips the movie and you end up with an iso with the option to burn using K3b.Therefore a KDE environment (or the necessary libraries) and libdvdcss will be required.If you dont want the KDE stuff there are other options.Ripping can be performed with Acidrip then conversion to iso can be performed with devede.The resulting iso can be burned with whatever burning is installed.I use xfburn for this.The second method may be more fiddly but it isn't hard to learn.

So what exactly do you want to do ?

- Rip DVD VOB to Divx/Xvid ?
or
- Rip DVD to ISO and burn ISO ?
or
- Clone a DVD ?

Thing is, if you don't give them root in Slackware, they hardly need a backup.

You could make a separate partition on the hard drive and run a script via cron
every night that backs up both / and ~/ for them; therefore keeping a backup that
doesn't even require them to insert a DVD, click an icon, or anything.

If that sounds reasonable to you, and you need help setting that up, just ask.

EDIT:

Sorry, I didn't read properly. +1 for jet lag

Another vote for k9copy here.

It's an excellent piece of software. The only problem is that it has a fairly long list of dependancies, some of which have several dependancies of their own. Eg: ffmpeg.

Thankfully, there's a little program called "sbopkg" which makes compiling and installing everything a breeze. You just queue everything up and let 'er rip. It uses the scripts from Slackbuilds.org, and downloads, compiles, packages and installs everything in the order you tell it.

Am I missing something here, or are your outlaws simply *cloning* their dvd collection, in which case:

k3b >>right-click "medium" icon >>copy medium >>start

cheers,

rip DVD to ISO and burn ISO

my inlaws backup their DVD collections especially kid-friendly ones they have on hand for my kids/their grand-kids

thanks, I am trying out k9copy today, so far it looks like what I was looking for.

If you're happy using the command line try dvdbackup you can put a whole dvd or just a single title onto disk and then burn it, it's a bit more fiddling around than a one click solution but will allow you to back up a dual layer dvd ( if you just rip the main title for instance ), it's available on http://slackbuilds.org/