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
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.
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.
Also 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.
Finally, most IDE CD-ROM Changers are supported.