Greetings, Capricorny.

I had about the same experience as you with Synaptic; however after a few minutes with
Aptitude, and with a single apt-get-install, when I returned to Synaptic it was open for business.
I've alerted Klaus K.

Need to know more about your mkfs.ext3 experience.
mkisofs works like a charm for me, stacking things away as I do.

First thing I tried was knoppix64; maybe you can write-up a cheat-sheet for us to use on this.

Do a testcd if that's possible with your setup.