I’ve been trying to find a linux programming similar to Rufus to flash images of OSes on a thumb drive.
Nothing from the listicles on the internet or the programs in flatpak have worked for me as well as Rufus on Windows.
What have you used that’s worked well? Or, could I run Rufus on my linux machine with WINE?
Ventoy ftw
What?
Rufus just flashes ISOs to disks. On Linux you can doo that with
- udisksctl or dd
- Impression
- Fedora Media Writer
- KDE Iso Image writer
- Balena Etcher
But you are talking about something completely different and Ventoy does that.
Or just cat file.img > /dev/…
I think you should use dd for that?
Why? I am free to use whatever I want. This is not Microsoft Windows.
What
using dd for that is outdated info that everyone keeps blindly parroting with zero understanding why. cat is simpler and works fine.
note: both cat and dd only work for this when the image is made in a compatible way, my linux isos always work fine but a windows iso didnt and needs a more specific tool.
It is not outdated at all.
To be able to pipe to a disk, you have to open a root shell. That’s more dangerous than just running a single dd command with toot, as you can forget about it and run other commands that way too.
cat is for writing files, dd for writing disks.
Can you explain how this can work?
No, cat is not for writing files. Cat is for reading files and directing the data to standard output.
With “>” you are directing standard output to a file, in this case a blockdevice.
Cool, need to try that
/dev/sdXis a file, and bothdd,catcan read files in full. You can even try something likezstdto compress it too.One of the nice things about
ddthough is you can see the progress with--status=progress
Raspberry pi imager is supposed to be pretty good
dd if=image.img of=/dev/disk/flashdriveis usually all you needif is short for input file if is short for output file
This dd command from the command line is what I use because it is built in and perfectly bare bones for my needs. I like to use the command flag --status=progress to show a status bar while duplicating the data. A word of caution: the dd, or ‘data duplicator’ program is sometimes known as the ‘destroy disk’ program because if you flash the iso file to the wrong disk/drive you can mess up the drive. Use the appropriate level of caution because there is no undo button. You can use the lsblk command to list the block devices on your machine and use the correct device. Quick instructions: use lsblk to list your block devices and locate your flash drive. If the flash drive is mounted (the /sdb/ will have something like /media/files if it is) you can unmount with $umount /path/to/sdb. Once the drive is unmounted you can use the dd program to duplicate the data (iso file) to your drive.
If you want a GUI, I would use Balena Etcher. You might be able to use raspberri pi imager too.
Well, on MX I’m using “MX Live USB Maker” which can flash any ISO on thumb drive, it’s a built-in tool.
Now I’m using Ventoy, you just put multiple ISO on the thumb drive and choose it when you boot the USB drive, it’s wonderful, no more “1 OS per drive”, you just take a 32GB USB drive and you can put 10 distro on it.
Ventoy is great as others have said, and probably would do what you want since it has its own installer and is its own bootloader, and can boot isos loaded on the USB drive.
If you want something that works, in my experience, as well as Rufus, maybe take a look at Balena Etcher, too.
ventoy is what has worked best for me
Balena Etcher is what you want, though AFAIK if you’re making a Windows installer no Linux programs have the convenient options to disable TPM and online account etc that make Rufus so nice.
I haven’t found a good GUI (Balena’s Etcher is cross platform, but the flatpak never worked for me)
ddhas never failed mesudo dd if= of= bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync(double, triple and quadruple check that the output file,
of=, is the correct device with multiple different commands before running this)Thanks everyone. I tried ventoy but it didn’t work straight away. I do like the idea of having a list of isos to pick from, but it might take more tweaking to get right.
I went with the boot loading tool in Fedora since I just wanted to flash mint to do a reinstall on my kids’ laptop
The principal alternative to Rufus is Balena etchter, but for me it works 1/5 times. But now I’m using Ventoy and… Just use it, it damn fucking good!
darn I thought this was about my dream thing which would be a flashed boot loader on a drive where you had a folder you could add iso’s and it would automatically give you a list of isos to boot from.
Something like Ventoy?
oms! this is exactly what I have been looking for.
ooh. imma go google that. thanks.
What have you used that’s worked well? Or, could I run Rufus on my linux machine with WINE?
A BLOODY STUPID IDEA!
Using Wine is just stupid enough.
dd is safe. I have used Balena’s Etcher 2 years ago but it seems the drive isn’t bootable in UEFI mode!
dd
Sometimes stuff won’t chain boot from within ventoy.
