Technical Information
The GD-ROM in the Dreamcast works in constant angular velocity (CAV) mode, like the majority of modern optical drives. Very old CD-ROM drives read with a constant linear velocity (CLV) design, however (usually 12x or slower). Sega achieved the higher density by decreasing the speed of the disc to half and by letting the standard CD-ROM components read at the normal rate thus nearly doubling the disc's data density. This method allowed Sega to use cheaper off-the-shelf components when building the Dreamcast.
The NetBSD project has developed a GDRom driver for NetBSD. A port of that driver for Linux exists, though due to licensing issues and the poor compatibility of that driver with Linux kernel interfaces, a new Linux driver is under development.
Linux kernel 2.6.25 comes with support for the GD-ROM drive on the Dreamcast.
Read more about this topic: GD-ROM
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