i have a cd burner samsung sw-252b. i have ubuntu linux installed. on another machine of mine there's a LG writer which is also running under ubuntu and i can set the speed of writing. but with this samsung one there's only the option Maximum Speed, which is not acceptable as some cd's require to be burned on slower speed.
does anyone have an idea how can i fix this problem and what's the cause of it?
thank you very much in advance!

Have you tried to burn one of the slower speed disks? I've found the atapi drives these days are smarter then the lib driver so they'll scale all on their own for the media, especially with anything newer then a 2001-ish model. My 48x24x48 I regularly forget to throttle when writing to one of the stack of old 4x RW's I got back in the day and I've yet to have it actually try to write at 24x, it just self throttles. Putting Burn-Free in hardware was one of the smartest things the industry ever did. Try it out, I doubt you'll make a coaster.

Cheers,

Finegan