Yes, the Linux kernel will use /dev/srX like a hard disk.
See below for DVD-RW extra needs.
But performance will be poor and probably miserable noises
will emerge when operating. The ususal hard disk writers are
not aware of the very long seek times and the quite limited
number of overwrites before a block on the medium goes bad.
Theoretically best suited would be DVD-RAM, Mount Rainier
formatted DVD+RW (MRW), and BD-RE, because they have Defect
Management, which can replace a few bad block by blocks
from the Spare Area.
In practice optical media often fail earlier with Defect
Management than without.
Capable of random read-write access are:
Formatted CD-RW, formatted DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD+RW, BD-RE,
and formatted BD-R with format type Pseudo-Overwrite.
Formatted DVD-RW need the pktcdvd frontend driver which
takes care of the peculiar 32 kB granularity of the media.
This driver is recommended for CD-RW, too.
It gets set up by e.g.
pktsetup pktcdvd0 /dev/sr0
and will then be used as pseudo hard disk device
/dev/pktcdvd/pktcdvd0
See also
http://www.g-loaded.eu/2005/11/10/packet-writing-on-cdrw-and-dvdrw-media/
Said this, please be aware that sequential writing to
optical media by a burn program is much less problematic
than random-access read-write operation.
brasero
. You should look at its documentation for more info. But I strongly believe that there's no difference whether you burn a CD-R or CD-RW, all programs should support both. The only thing that matters is your optical drive. If it's an older one, it might not be capable of all different disk types.