LG CD-ROM destroyed by Linux

[bhoggett]

It does seem to be limited to Mandrake and a System Rescue CD at the moment (but that could also affect other distros - no reported incidents don't mean a clean bill of health). It does seem to be a problem with the LG drives, as a firmware upgrade is said to remove the threat. I gather the affected distros are also addressing their end of the problem.

[bhoggett]

@asian1

In all fairness, this is a claim that can be made for thousands of hardware items. Mandrake distros go through fairly comprehensive test periods before being made available as stable releases, so the conclusion must be that no one testing the release candidates had one of these LG drives.

The problem is caused by LG being unbelievably lame in producing non-compliant hardware. Their excuse is that they "don't support Linux", although any system using a similar packet writing patch would cause the same problem.

For an ironic twist:

http://www.sysresccd.org/download.en.php

The conclusion is the same as always: unless you're an exclusive Windows user, stay away from hacky hardware manufacturers like Dell and LG.