Writable CD not recognized (Ubuntu 7.10)

[Joshua Werling]

I am pretty new to Linux, had ventured into it a few times before (but
only short trips), and decided about one and a half months ago to turn
my private computing over to Linux (from WinXP).  For several reasons I
chose Ubuntu and was impressed with where the project stands when it
comes to usability.  Unfortunately, somehow my system does not recognize
writable CDs as such, it only sees them as CD-ROM.  I am using a DELL
Dimension 8100, not sure what brand my CD burner is, it shows up in
programs such as Sound Juicer as "CD-RW CED-8120B."

To make a long story short: I tried to find solutions to this problem
(as I had done with graphics issues and some other issues), but I feel
this problem is going "too deep" into Linux for me to be able to really
understand it, let alone apply the fix(es?) I have stumbled upon.  I
read it might be connected to HAL not supporting some type of
information check on the CD drive or the CD itself by default anymore
and that this seems to apply to older drives.  One guy offered some sort
of HAL patch he had written to get CD burning to work on his system, but
I could not really follow him on how to apply it and what exactly those
changes would mean (would not want to break my system, you know) ... so
I am still w/o CD burning. :-(

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Kind regards

Joshua