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...
  • Thrickles@lemm.eeEnglish
    182·
    1 year ago

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

  • BCsven@lemmy.ca
    6·
    1 year ago

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

      • BCsven@lemmy.ca
        1·
        1 year 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.

      • BCsven@lemmy.ca
        2·
        1 year 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

  • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year 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.

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year 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

  • EarthShipTechIntern@lemm.ee
    2·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • ColdWater@lemmy.ca
    1·
    1 year 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?

    • Ghoelian@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      4·
      1 year 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.

    • nyan@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      1 year 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.)