Linux® For Dummies®, 8th Edition

Using CDs and Other Removable Media

As discussed in Chapter 7, when it comes to removable media (floppy disks, CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, USB thumb drives, and so on), you end up having to look around for them if you’re working on the command line. The GUI makes finding the media you’ve attached a much easier process.

Typically speaking, when you insert a new removable item (say a data CD-ROM), an icon appears on the left of your Desktop with the name of the device assigned to it. You can double-click the icon to see the media’s contents. If an Eject option is available (for example, for the CD-ROM), you can right-click the icon and choose Eject from the context menu. In cases where Eject is not available, use Unmount before removing the item (such as a USB thumb drive) from the computer. This action ensures that all the data you saved actually is written, because Linux doesn’t always put the data on the drive right away.

In most cases, when you insert a music CD or DVD, a music player (see Chapter 13) opens to play the music. See Chapter 13 for how to add support for even more types of music files. When it comes to video CDs and DVDs, especially video DVDs, you often have to install extra software due to a number of issues discussed in Chapter 14.

When it comes to blank CD or DVD writeables or rewriteables, inserting these into their drives causes a Nautilus window to open to its CD/DVD Creator window (see Chapter 13 for how to burn your own CDs and DVDs).

However, the computer can’t ...