For more information on CD-ROM drives check the CDROM-HOWTO at http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/.
Common CD-ROM drives
Proprietary CD-ROM drives
All CD-ROM drives should work similarly for reading data. There are various compatibility problems with audio CD playing utilities. (Especially with newer low-end NEC drives.) Some alpha drivers may not have audio support yet.
Early (single speed) NEC CD-ROM drives may have trouble with currently available SCSI controllers.
PhotoCD (XA) is supported. The hpcdtoppm program by Hadmut Danisch converts PhotoCD files to the portable pixmap format. The program can be obtained from ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/hpcdtoppm or as part of the PBM utilities.
Many CD-Writers are supported by Linux now. For a list of CD-Writers supported check the CD-Writing mini-HOWTO at http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/CD-Writing. The X-CD-Roast package for Linux is a graphical front-end for using CD writers. The package can be found at ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/utils/disk-management/xcdroast-0.95.tar.gz.
Also, reading video CD is supported in kernel series 2.1.3x and later. A patch is available for kernel 2.0.30.
Finally, most IDE CD-ROM Changers are supported.