I am never surprised when brilliant, technical people make IT solutions complex.  In the years I spent running a business the main challenge was to translate the IT peoples clever initiatives into practical business solutions.

The area I am thinking of now relates to linux live cds.

The Linux live cd is a very innovative and useful development.  The ability to boot a pc from a cdrom allows recovery from disc crashes/viruses,  the ability to test new operating systems without destroying your current implementation and enables you to surf the web without fear of hackers attacking your pc.  Reboot and you start again with a clean install, switch off the pc and your original operating system is there when you next switch on.

So why make simplicity complex?

A live cd and talk of mastering?.  Sorry, I think of a live rewritable dvd (no worry about space constraints) and burn what you need onto the dvd rather than trying to work out how to master an iso image.

Do not close the burning of the disk image and you can add, amend the Linux image as you wish.

Doesn’t this sound more simple.  The final advantage for you windows addicts is also that you can burn the dvd in windows and add packages.

Keep computing simple.