A DVD ripper software allows you to copying the content of a DVD to a hard disk drive. You transfer video on DVDs to different formats, or make a backup of DVD content, and to convert DVD video for playback on media players, streaming, and mobile phone. A few DVD rippers software can copy protected disks so that you can make discs unrestricted and region-free.
Please note that most of the following programs can rip encrypted DVDs, as long as you have libdvdcss2 installed as described here. Please check the copyright laws for your country regarding the backup of any copyright-protected DVDs and other media.
AcidRip is an automated front end for MPlayer/Mencoder (ripping and encoding DVD tool using mplayer and mencoder) written in Perl, using Gtk2::Perl for a graphical interface. Makes encoding a DVD just one button click! You can install it as follows under Debian / Ubuntu Linux:
$ sudo apt-get install acidrip
Fig.01: Linux Ripping And Encoding DVD's With AcidRip SoftwareOn the Preview tab you can choose to watch a bit of a preview of the resulting movie:
Fig.02: Preview your DVD ripAnd when you are ready, click the Start button to rip DVDs.
=> Download acidrip
dvd::rip is a full featured DVD copy program written in Perl i.e. fron end for transcode and ffmpeg. It provides an easy to use but feature-rich Gtk+ GUI to control almost all aspects of the ripping and transcoding process. It uses the widely known video processing swissknife transcode and many other Open Source tools. dvd::rip itself is licensed under GPL / Perl Artistic License. You can install dvd::rip as follows under Debian / Ubuntu Linux:
$ sudo apt-get install dvdrip
Fig.03: dvd::rip in actionYou need to configure dvd::rip before you actually start a project. See the documentation for more information.
=> Download dvd::rip
HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. It can rip from any DVD or Bluray-like source such as VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image, real DVD or bluray (unencrypted -- removal of copy protection is not supported), and some .VOB, .TS and M2TS files. You can install HandBrake under Debian or Ubuntu Linux as follows:
$ sudo apt-get install handbrake-gtk
Fig.04: HandBrake in action=> Download HandBrake
K9copy is a KDE DVD Backup tool. It allows the copy of a DVD9 to a DVD5. It is also known as a Linux DVD shrink. It supports the following features:
The video stream is compressed to make the video fiton a 4.7GB recordable DVDDVD BurningCreation of ISO imagesChoosing which audio and subtitle tracks are copied.Title preview (video only)The ability to preserve the original menus.To install k9copy, enter:
$ sudo apt-get install k9copy
Fig.05: k9copy - Linux dvd shrink in action=> Download k9copy
thoggen is a DVD backup utility ('DVD ripper') for Linux, based on GStreamer and Gtk+ toolkit. Thoggen is designed to be easy and straight-forward to use. It attempts to hide the complexity many other transcoding tools expose and tries to offer sensible defaults that work okay for most people most of the time. It support the following features:
Easy to use, with a nice graphical user interface (GUI).Supports title preview, picture cropping, and picture resizing.Language Selection for audio track (no subtitle support yet though).Encodes into Ogg/Theora video.Can encode from local directory with video DVD files.Based on the GStreamer multimedia framework, which makes it fairly easy to add additional encoding formats/codecs in future.You can install thoggen as follows:
$ sudo apt-get install thoggen
Fig.06: Thoggen in action=> Download thoggen
=> You need to install various libraries to use the above mentioned tools such as (yum or apt-get commands will install them automatically for you):
libdvdcss2 - Simple foundation for reading DVDs - runtime libraries.libdvdnav4 - DVD navigation library.libdvdread4 - library for reading DVDs.=> mencoder - Personally, I use mencoder to rip my DVDs into .avi files as follows:
mencoder dvd://2 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vbitrate="1200" -vf scale -zoom -xy 640 -oac mp3lame -lameopts br=128 -o /nas/videos/my-movies/example/track2.aviPlease note that AcidRip, is a graphical frontend for mencoder.
=> VLC - Yes, VLC can rip DVDs too.
=> Transcode is a suite of command line utilities for transcoding video and audio codecs, and for converting between different container formats. Transcode can decode and encode many audio and video formats. Both K9Copy and dvd::rip are a graphical frontend for transcode.
=> Wine - It is an open source software for running Windows applications on other operating systems. You can use popular MS-Windows application such as DVDFab to rip encrypted DVD's and DVD Shrink to shrink them to smaller size. I do not *recommend* and encourage this option as it goes against the FOSS philosophy. The following screenshot based on trial version of DVDFab:
Fig.07: Running DVDFab under Wine v1.2.2Have a favorite Linux DVD ripper software or ripping tip? Let's hear about it in the comments below.
Fig.01: RHEL - Kickstart Configurator 
Fig.02: Cobbler WebUI (image credit: Fedora project)
Fig.03: Spacewalk Server Provisioning System 
Fig.04: OpenQRM Dashboard (image credit: OpenQRM project) 
I have already featured here some of the best web eCommerce software available for Linux. However, I've noticed that I left out several other high-quality web e-commerce solutions. So, I decided to give you another round of some of the best open-source web eCommerce software that you may find useful:
Zen Cart is an easy-to-use free and open-source online store management system based on PHP. Its default installation provides everything you need for maintaining a shopping cart web site. Using the administration area, you can manage products, pricing, shipping, newsletters, sales, and other important tasks. The shopping cart is set up to accept payments from any major credit card via the merchant's choice of several available payment gateway services. Some of the main features of Zen Cart:
Broadleaf Commerce is an open-source eCommerce solution that utilizes Java/Spring platform. It is designed to be highly-configurable and extendable, and it offers painless integration with your present database and back end fulfilment system. With Broadleaf Commerce, you can easily manage product catalogue through its user-friendly merchandising tool. Also, with it you can showcase and change promotions, designate featured products, cross-sell and up-sell featured products, customize product search, retrieve analytics and reporting, and integrate with social networking sites such like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, etc.
Apache OFBiz (Apache Open For Business) is an open-source enterprise resource planning system that provides a suite of enterprise applications that incorporate and automate plenty of the business processes of an enterprise including eCommerce. It offers a common data model and a loaded set of business process. Aside from eCommerce, Apache OFBiz offers a wide range of functionality that includes:
Satchmo is an open-source online store management system utilizing the Django web application framework, providing a number of useful, robust, and tested features. It is highly-flexible having the ability to use any database system that Django supports including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite, and it takes advantage of Django's power internationalization framework. Satchmo supports several different product types such as downloadable products, custom products, gift certificates, and subscription products. 
Bots is an open-source EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) translator and business-to-business electronic commerce software that uses Django as a web framework. As a complete EDI translator for business, it is designed to be very flexible. Some of the features of Bots: