CD creation with Nautilus

Gnome's integrated Nautilus makes CD burning simple. I recently stumbled on this powerful feature, for years now I have been using the command line tool cdrecord. It is a great program, but not trivial to use. In fact, I think Nautilus uses cdrecord to do the burning, it just provides a simple GUI. With Nautilus, it is as simple as drag and drop. Here is how!

First, insert a blank CD in the writer. A window like this will popup:

Drag the files you want to burn into the empty window like this:

When you have selected all the files you want on the CD, click the "Write to CD" button on the nautilus menu. You will then get a simple dialog like this one:

Update the CD name to something meaningful, if you like and hit "Write files to CD". When the CD is complete, it will eject.

Here is another little tip, to create an autorun script. Create a plain text file named autorun, something like this:

#!/bin/sh
dir=$(echo $0 |sed 's/autorun//')
cd $dir
fullpath=$(pwd)
exec /usr/bin/nautilus $fullpath

Make it executable like this:

[ken@twix]$ chmod 755 autorun

or using nautilus, right click on the autorun script and set it executable.

Drag it into the burn window with the rest of your files. Now, when the CD is inserted a new nautilus window will open and browse the CD.

How about creating a CD from an ISO file? Simple, using Nautilus, browse to the desired ISO file and right click on it.

You will notice an option called "Write to CD..." at the bottom or the menu. Select that and burn away.

That's it, now you are an expert at CD creation with Nautilus.