External CD/DVD writers

[chombee]

A friend has asked me to recommend one, to connect to his laptop, that
will work out of the box with Ubuntu. So probably USB. He currently has
a USB external write but it doesn't burn, possibly a Linux problem,
possibly the drive is damaged. I don't seem to find much information
about disc drives in the normal linux and ubuntu hardware compatibility
lists. Perhaps they're all expected to work?