Linux boot media need not be tricky! In today's episode, I'll talk about four ways to flash an ISO from Windows (and other systems too). I know a lot of you are switching to Linux because of Micros...
  • @[email protected]
    1•11 months ago

    I curious because I don’t have the skill to test it myself but can you just manually copy everything to USB it’s just work?

    • @[email protected]
      2•11 months ago

      In the general case, no, but there are some rare specific cases where that does work.

      If you’re trying to produce Linux media that will boot on a single-board computer that has an onboard bootloader, like a Pi 4, you can indeed just partition the target medium and copy the files manually (been there, done that, working with a custom Gentoo install with no ISO).

      If the bootloader has to be on the target medium (as it would for a desktop or laptop), then that won’t work unless you also do a manual bootloader install after copying everything. Not impossible, but at that point you’re hitting the level of complexity where it’s easier to figure out the correct dd command.

      (As for Windows? Don’t even bother. It hates being worked on with anything but its own tools.)

    • Ghoelian
      4•11 months ago

      No, the drive needs a boot partition for the bios to know there is something to be booted on the drive.

      Most Linux ISO’s do properly include the partitions in the ISO, so you can clone the iso to a drive and that should work, using dd for example. But just copying the files won’t work.

      iirc windows iso’s did use to support just creating a fat32 partition and moving all the files over, not sure how they managed that. But now the international ISO for win 11 has a file that’s more than the max 4Gb allowed by fat32, so you can’t do that anymore either.

      • @[email protected]
        1•11 months ago

        No idea if this exists for Linux, but there’s a program for Windows called GuiFormat that allows formatting of larger thumb drives to be fat32.

        • GhoelianEnglish
          2•11 months ago

          That’s not the only issue, fat32 also has a hard limit on single file size. The largest a single file can be is 4GiB, and afaik you just can’t get around that with fat.

          iirc, the way windows deals with this in its media creation tool is that it strips out locales and other things you don’t need, based on the options you selected previously, so the file ends up being small enough to fit.

          • @[email protected]
            1•11 months ago

            Dunno how GuiFormat gets around those limitations (something to do with block sizes, I think), but I’ve never had any trouble with it.

            There’s better options than fat32, anyway, just pointing out that the 4GB limit has a workaround, and YMMV.

  • @[email protected]
    8•11 months ago

    Nice thing about GNOME DE is it comes with Gnome Disks. Select device, click the restore image button and point to the ISO

    • The Ramen Dutchman
      2•11 months ago

      I like how simple Mint’s USB image writer makes it for newbies, both to look it up in the menu as well as the simple UI

      • @[email protected]
        2•11 months ago

        Yes, mint is good like that. GNOME has a separate Image Writer app/icon, but it has been turned off by default. So it is less discoverable for new people, but more simplified as is the GNOME way

    • Ziglin (it/they)
      2•11 months ago

      Or you could just install it on any other system with Wayland or x11.

      Gparted works fine for me, so that’s what I use.

      • @[email protected]
        1•11 months ago

        Gparted is awesome. But probably overwhelming for newbies just looking to burn an iso to USB. Raspberry PI Image Writer works very simply also.

  • @[email protected]English
    4•11 months ago

    I don’t burn ISOs often enough to need a dedicated ventoy drive, or to remember how to use the DD command, so Impression is generally what I use. I generally prefer Libadwaita/GTK4 apps that look at home on my system.

    • @[email protected]English
      2•11 months ago

      Does impression support Windows ISOs? Or only ISOHybrid (what Linux ISOs use so you can add them)

      • @[email protected]English
        1•11 months ago

        I have no idea, I’ve not had to install windows in a while. From a quick search I see conflicting info…

        A user reported it didn’t work, then the dev said he tested it and it works fine

  • ThricklesEnglish
    19•11 months ago

    Great suggestions. The Ventoy bros are weird. Just use what works for you.

  • ѕєχυαℓ ρσℓутσρє
    4•11 months ago

    I do use Ventoy, but a more “traditional” alternative that I like is Popsicle. Super lightweight, and works very well. Some cases do require a dedicated USB, where Ventoy won’t work, at least not without trickery (e.g. anything with persistent storage).

    • data1701d (He/Him)English
      1•11 months ago

      Also a Raspi Imager fan when I have Pis around since I usually have it installed anyway.

      I would use dd, but I always worry I’ll bungle something and only use it when necessary. I’m trying to write a utility called Rubber Duck Disk Dump that takes all the same options but parses your command beforehand to try to guess what you’re doing and warn you if it is really, really stupid, and if you type yes, it then passes all args straight to dd.

    • 🐍🩶🐢English
      2•11 months ago

      Me too! I have used it for a couple other non-rpi devices in the past as well. It is super simple and works on my Mac. I haven’t even looked at other utilities in years.

  • funbreaker
    33•11 months ago

    I like Ventoy because I’m an ISO hoarder but if the task needs a dedicated USB, then I’ll open Etcher.

    • @[email protected]
      9•11 months ago

      I don’t… understand… the downvotes. I do the same thing though I never really get to the Balena Etcher part. Also, Ventoy is the only way to get a Windows ISO up and running from Linux, as far as I know.

      • @[email protected]English
        4•11 months ago

        Sadly the “reddit mentality” has already established in this community – theres no “why” in these downvotes other than as a self-relief/validation thing.

      • The Ramen Dutchman
        8•11 months ago

        The down votes are from the Etcher part, it has a cult of lovers and a cult of haters.

        I’m l fine with people using Etcher, Rufus, or whatever works for them, but I’m aware that both software I just named has passionate haters.

  • TheFool
    27•11 months ago

    I really don’t get why I should use anything else than dd

      • @[email protected]
        14•11 months ago

        My favorite way to create a boot media is simply to use cat. No arguments, no shenanigans just a cat into the device :

        cat debian.iso > /dev/sda

        • @[email protected]
          2•11 months ago

          One caveat is that you will need write access to the drive, which probably means you need to run as root — can’t run that with sudo as-is, unlike dd.

          • @[email protected]
            2•11 months ago

            Yep that’s right, but I use fdisk to check my drives before writing on them and it also requires sudo…

            • @[email protected]
              1•11 months ago

              Right, I just meant that you can’t sudo cat file > /dev/sda but you can sudo dd ..., because IO redirection isn’t elevated to root with sudo. I’m not saying anything too profound :)

        • Ghoelian
          4•11 months ago

          iirc there was a reason you should use dd instead of directly copying the data, I think something to do with device block alignment or something?

          • @[email protected]
            1•11 months ago

            That could be possible but for the moment I didn’t encouter any problem with cat. I think I’m going to stick with it for the time being.

      • The Ramen Dutchman
        5•11 months ago

        Not everyone likes to install compicated graphical software which does a thousand and one things it shouldn’t do just to copy files to an external drive

    • OtterEnglish
      8•11 months ago

      What are some recommendations for putting Ventoy on your main USB (with other contents instead of just ISOs)? I need to find the guide I saw, it mentioned some configurations to prevent it from searching every directory for ISOs

      Also the linked website can be subscribed to from here :)

      [email protected]

        • mle
          4•11 months ago

          Alternatively when creating the ventoy installation you can chose to leave X amount of space behind the ventoy partition and then create your own data partition there afterwards. You lose the advantage of “dynamically” sharing the available space between ventoy and your data, but with the seperqte partition you can use whatever filesystem you like for your data, and there is a clear seperation between ventoy and your other data.

    • @[email protected]
      2•11 months ago

      I have Ventoy on a USB stick, tried to use it recently for DBAN and it didn’t work, is there any way to get around that these days? Haven’t looked into it recently.

      • @[email protected]English
        4•11 months ago

        It works for Ultimate Boot CD, which includes DBAN and a lot of other fun stuff.

        I play with retro hardware and Ventoy has also worked for me with some weird old isos that even Rufus didn’t work with (XP/Server 2003 multidisc from eXPerience that uses a Linux bootloader?)