ISOs Explained + four programs to make Linux boot media
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...
I like Ventoy because I'm an ISO hoarder but if the task needs a dedicated USB, then I'll open Etcher.
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.
Sadly the "reddit mentality" has already established in this community -- theres no "why" in these downvotes other than as a self-relief/validation thing.
I really don’t get why I should use anything else than dd
Fear?
Not everyone likes to use commands for something as trivial as this, its nice to press a couple buttons and wait for it to be done vs learning how dd works and what arguments to use etc.
"What, you guys don't spend money in several external ssds?"
-- this guy
What? You can use dd to read/write any block storage device (or file)
Great suggestions. The Ventoy bros are weird. Just use what works for you.
dd, or cat with a shell redirect are all you need to write that iso.
My trouble with dd is all the flags I need to remember to make it fast and more convenient. dd if=file of=/dev/device oflag=direct status=progress bs=1M is there anything I'm missing?
bs=1M
This part varies based on your hardware (my hardware is much faster with a value of 4096) , but other than that it's everything.
Here is a handy script that can help determine which bs size is best for your hardware.
dd can be soooo much faster too. But like you, I always forget the tags. I should make an alias sometime...
The video description says it's aimed at Windows users, dd and cat have no power there
dd
Also a super useful tool for measuring real world bandwidth, both on physical media and over the network ( dd status=progress ... | nc ...).
Nice thing about GNOME DE is it comes with Gnome Disks. Select device, click the restore image button and point to the ISO
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
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
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.
Gparted is awesome. But probably overwhelming for newbies just looking to burn an iso to USB. Raspberry PI Image Writer works very simply also.
Fedora Media Writer is the best, I hardly use BalenaEtcher but its good too incase the former doesnt work
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.
Does impression support Windows ISOs? Or only ISOHybrid (what Linux ISOs use so you can add them)
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
It's also an old and jumbled-up format paralleling .gif in a surprising amount of ways, including being never intended for its primary usage, still being popular, and newer formats proving much better.
Wait why was iso not intended to be used like this? As far as I can see, it was always meant as a digital image of a CD, which is how it was used, and pretty much still is right?
Oops, yeah, you're right. I was thinking about the live ISO functionality.
I generally use the Raspberry Pi Imager, It works just as well with USB's as TF cards.
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.
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.
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).
Little known fact, Disk Manager comes with almost every distro, and works just fine.
I've used ventoy to set up a bootable USB with Mint & MX options. It allowed me to set the Mint with persistence. The MX has issues with persistence.
How to set up reusable boot with dd I don't know.
MX has its own built in tool to make a bootable USB with persistence
Will have to check it out.
Thanks
Mark Shuttleworth's Startup Disk Creator
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?
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.
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.)
Another program that works on Windows, which I prefer to Balena Etcher, but less so than Rufus: unetbootin
