> I'm having a terrible time trying to do anything at all with my DVD+/-RW 
> drive... Mandrake 9.2 here...
> 
> I found dvdrecord but it gives me all sorts of error messages...   
> dvd+rw-format crashes and leaves me with $5 discs that the drive 
> firmware crashes when you insert them...
> 
> Is anyone here having *any* success writing to any kind of DVD media?  
> It seems the free software world is about seven years behind Windows in 
> this arena...

I didn't have any success until I used the growisofs command from the
dvd+rw-tools package (http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/).  I
use it even for non-rewritable discs.  There is a pretty good howto on
that page.  dvdrecord just created a bunch of coasters for me.  I've
made 2 different dvd videos now (one with menus), and multiple copies of
one so I'd say I've progressed to the intermediate stage if you have any
more questions.

--Karl