Question guys,

I just installed PCLINUXOS and I'm very satisfied with its performance so far. I can do everything i can do in Windows, but from a more stable environment and the eyecandy of Beryl and KDE.

The only thing I'm not sure I can do right now is rip commercial DVDs like I do in Windows. I use Slysoft AnyDVD to remove protections, DVD Shrink to compress the video files to DVD-R size, and use Nero to burn the DVD.

I'm assuming K3b does the Nero part, but are there comparably good and effective open-source software for Linux to do the AnyDVD and DVD Shrink duties?

occasionally, I use DVD Decrypter to rip and Burn DVDs that AnyDVD can't seem to break (like Rocky Balboa).

dvd::rip
http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip/

This is a graphical front-end for several command line
programs like transcode and ffmpeg.

It is notoriously difficult to install from source code. Check
to see if there is a pre-built binary for your distro'

Edit: For encoding DVD compliant MPEG-2, ffmpeg
run from the command line does a great job. It does
about 67 fps on my Athlon 3700+.

xDVDShrink and K9Copy