Use to burn DVD's for an OS I installed. The problem was even with LTS they are obsolete in 3 years when a new release comes out. A USB will last just as long, and I can reuse it again when the next release comes out.
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Can't remember when I last burned a CD or DVD, but just guessing, it may have been sometimes before 2010.
I since then use USB-Sticks or SSDs (at that time even with external adapters) and for about 5 years now, NVMes (including with external adapters).
Even if I have a lot of private PCs / notebooks, I usually use the installation software for an OS just once (I do not install / re-install that often). If I need to re-install, I usually download a new ISO image an transfer it to the USB-Stick using Balena Etcher (on Linux) or Rufus (on Windows).
Never had a problem and, by the way, copying an image to an USB-Stick is faster than burning an image on an optical drive.
By the way, none of my notebooks bought during the last 15 years has an optical drive! And my current daily driver PC is the first one without an optical drive. AND, really, I do not miss anything.
Aaah... I have thrown away all the CDs and DVDs with data, software, private videos, private photos - after damaging / breaking them to make them unreadable some 6 years ago.
Music / movie CDs and DVDs => I have given them away.
Never had a BD (Blue Ray) because I considered the technology obsolete before it was released to the public (some 20+ years ago!).
This is my opinion when it comes to "optical drives"... was a nice technology, but it is "the past" (like cassettes, video cassettes, etc.).
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I'm old school.I still buy all my music on disc and I use a fairly old laptop with a DVD drive that I use for nothing more than than converting .ogg files to mp3.These files then end up on my phone and another disc.
Outside of that I can honestly say I haven't used a CD/DVD in years.
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Exactly. What amazes me is that I now travel with over a terabyte of storage on a USB drive no larger than a pack of gum. I take photos with a digital camera on a card that holds 32-64Gb (about 900 photos, depending on format) and when I return from a shoot, simply copy them to my portable thumb drive. I can sit in a hotel room and edit my photos, and save the results to another folder on the drive.
Ain't technology wonderful? Sometimes?
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Well, just sometimes... 
Ah, however vulnerable the paper is, it can survive centuries under certain conditions. Compared to the paper, e-media are, well, volatile.
I'm afraid that a minority of e-media users are aware of archivists' practice and even lesser body of users follow and/or can afford to follow that practice. I'm far for considering myself an expert. Nevetheless, I'd like mention some of archivists' principles just for example.
- As @Philippe has told us already, one must store at least two copies of data. It is too easy to loose the only copy.
- These copies must be stored in different locations. It is unaffordable to loose both copies in the only location as the result of a local disaster.
- The media for copies must be selected from different manufacturers or at least from different production lots/kits. That's how predictable failure has less chances to hit different copies simultaneously.
- The copies have to be periodically verified for consistency and readability. Failed exemplar has to be duplicated from another copy.
- The copies have to be renewed near the end of guaranteed media life time.
- Archivist must preserve hardware, OS and applications capable of reading and duplication all data formats on all media types.
- Archivist may choose to losslessly convert data to newer formats and/or to transfer data to newer media types.
Do you see? 
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Well, perfectly right.
What I do for backing up my data:
- 2 x NAS (Synology) on my local network, different models, different SSDs - 2TB for the data disks (Crucial), different USB connected external drives (8TB each)
- 1 PC - daily driver - Ubuntu MATE 24.04.2 LTS - 2TB NVMe (Crucial) + 2 TB SSD (Samsung) for TimeShift
- 1 Notebook (Win 11 - yes, "kill me", I use it only for watching DVB-T2 TV in Germany + Backup) - 4 TB NVMe, external (Crucial)
Using this setup with slightly different hardware since 2014 and never lost data.
YES, I encountered hardware failures:
- e.g. Seagate RED HDD - 4 TB and 8 TB - WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT! - none of the Seagate RED HDDs last more that 3-4 years => therefor, NEVER EVER a HDD!!!
By the way, NO issue with the CRUCIAL / Samsung SSDs and / or NVMes during the last 5 years!
No issue with the USB Sticks I use (not even those I bought 15 years ago!), no issue with the SSDs /NVMes I connect via external adapters to my PCs / notebooks.
By the way, when I backup data I ALWAYS do a full overwrite. I takes definitely a long time, but I find it worth doing it this way.
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I use DVD-RW when I used to put UM on them.
Are you saying that you can only install an iso one time on a thumb drive?
I have done so several times.
The usb drives are so much faster starting up that a DVD.
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Exactement! That is my issue.
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Thank you, radax05. My issue is more functionality, not speed. USB/SSD never worked, for me, the way I wanted them to. 
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Every time I burnt an ISO on a USB stick, that stick was irrevocably frozen and failed all attempts, by me, to reformat to regular ext3/4 or be overwitten with another ISO. And that had nothing to do with the "lock latch" which is sometimes found on those SSDs.
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I would recommend using a different brand.
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In keeping with the general part of this thread, it's timely for me because my subscription to iDrive is coming up for renewal. I bought this subscription before I paid for a Dropbox account, and since they work differently, I've kept both.
Now that I've retired, I find that I really don't need to keep backups of all my stuff. iDrive does a daily cloud backup of folders I specify on computers I have registered. I get a daily report of how much changed data has been copied. Dropbox is a more manual process, although I have certain folders linked to it, so if I download an item to a linked folder, it's automatically added Dropbox. I have 5Tb of iDrive storage and 2Tb on Dropbox.
I don't think I need to backup all that I do. At my stage of life, important documents are either physical (passport, will, medical directive, etc.) or financial (taxes, insurance, mortgage, etc.) I could probably do without one or the other. Dropbox costs more, but I use it to copy files between computers easily. I have a month to decide if I am going to drop one (iDrive, likely).
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Thank you all for all your suggestions.
I have found a solution to the problem and it involves downloading the ISOs and burning them using Windows. Nothing wrong with any of my DVD drives at all. Brasero is the problem. Must look for another Linux solution to burn DVDs though I now have at least five bootable DVDs with Ubuntu-Mate ISOs .
Regards
Fubbery.
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K3b burns the ISO without issues on my install of Mate 24.04.2.
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I use Brasero to burn music cd's because it has some features for that K3b lacks when burning music, but I agree with Norm24, I always use K3b to burn an ISO.
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For music Strawberry is my go-to app.
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I had no idea you could burn CD's with Strawberry. For listening I have used Clementine for more than a decade, even the open source version for Windows before I switched to Linux. So I will stick with Clementine as long as we both exist.
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On my side, I use K3B since many years.
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