@ Forester

I'm good at taxes, but bash scripting's not my thing.

So, if I'm not sold on squashing yet, I can go ahead with
the earlier scripts to see how a standard Knoppix 6.4.4
might be patched to allow cheatcodes to effect the
processes outlined in 'Making use of update*.tar.gz'.
Right?

What have you and the others done to convince anybody
that squash beats anything by any useful measure?
Is it 30% faster or does it take 30% less resources or
is it 30% cheaper in some way? I don't buy 30% more
complicated or 30% more interesting or 30% newer.

Your last line is a real grabber. I presumed that this
item on my wishlist was 'a bridge too far'.
Really interested to see how you made this leap.