I'm forever getting closer to building my own system (at least I got the case now!), and have pretty much settled it will be an intel p4 mobo, and a winXP/linux dual boot. One area that is confusing me is CD/DVD arena, with so many differenct implementations I've found. I'd like to get some suggestions what would be a good strategy on this. My first thought is to get a cd-rw, and a separate dvd-rom. Then there are the "combo" drives, and now the dvd-rw or dvd+rw (I'm so confused). The most important for me is linux must be bootable from one of these devices with the least amount of trouble and confusion in initial configuration. It looks like cd-rw might be ok in this regard, but not dvd-rom? What combination has best worked for you?

personally I like having two different drives (nice installing 2CD games in win ) Anyways... I have a Sony CD-RW and a Matsushita (spelling) DVD drive from my old old gateway computer. Both work exceptionally well. Though I've never tried to burn CD's in slack I have watched DVD's either on Xine or MPlayer.

If that's the key issue, I've got one box with a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo and, if anything, it boots better from the DVD. And configuring them's the same as far as booting - they're both IDEs on hdX. Or SCSI's if that's the case.