cdrtools is my package of choice for burning CDs, DVDs, etc. There is a detailed Gentoo tutorial to get you started, but usage will look something like

$ mkdir /tmp/image
(populate /tmp/image)
$ mkisofs -o /tmp/image.iso /tmp/image
$ sudo cdrecord -eject dev=/dev/cdrom /tmp/image.iso

ISO-9660 has fairly strict filename restrictions, see -iso-level in mkisofs(8) or Wikipedia for details.

To rip an ISO from a CD, you can use

$ sudo readcd dev=/dev/cdrom f=/tmp/image.iso

You can mount an ISO using the loop option

$ sudo mount -o loop image.iso /mnt/image

To burn an audio CD (for old-school players that don't understand filesystems), try something like:

$ cdrecord -v speed=1 dev=/dev/cdrom -eject -dao -audio -pad *.wav

To rip audio CDs, I usually use abcde.

$ abcde -o flac

If you don't like cdrtools, there is also the fork cdrkit which dates back to a 2006 license dispute between cdrtools author Jörg Schilling and the folks at Debian.