I have done some research and it sounds like there isn't a formal standard for BOOTABLE DVDs, but that it usually works for most systems.Can someone please explain what it would take to create a ...

It should be fairly striaght foward to make one. First, make a ghost bootable floppy with cdrom support. Then open Nero, and select DVD-ROM (Boot), and select IMG file.

Create a bootable USB stick from Linux I was keeping the best for last. If you are running Linux, you can use the dd command (as in the instructions for macOS above) to create the bootable drive.

Creating a bootable USB drive let's you get hands-on experience with Linux without necessarily overwriting your system.