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Bootloader equivalent to Rufus

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?

scratchandgame ,

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!

Rakarake ,

Ah, “the linux community” 😌 🧘

BaumGeist ,

I haven’t found a good GUI (Balena’s Etcher is cross platform, but the flatpak never worked for me)

dd has never failed me

sudo dd if=<path to ISO file> of=<path to USB> 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)

therealjcdenton ,

github.com/pop-os/popsicle

psion1369 ,

My honest recommendation is dd It works, it does it’s job, and doesn’t need to many bells and whistles. My only complaint is that there isn’t an easy way to show progress. But as a background command, it works.

foremanguy92_ ,

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!

Nibodhika ,

Personally I have a USB drive with Ventou and have been using that for a long time.

But before that I just did a dd. Although I seem to remember someone doing a benchmark and realizing that piping the file was faster. Here’s what I mean by that:

In bash you have the echo command which prints text:


<span style="color:#62a35c;">echo </span><span style="color:#183691;">"Hello"
</span>

Will print Hello.

In bash you can send the output of a command to a file, so:


<span style="color:#62a35c;">echo </span><span style="color:#183691;">"Hello" </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">></span><span style="color:#323232;"> hello.txt
</span>

Will write Hello in the hello.txt file.

In bash you can use the cat command to read files:


<span style="color:#323232;">cat hello.txt
</span>

Will print the Hello we wrote in that file earlier.

In Linux drives are files, so if your USB drive is in /dev/sdb (DON’T JUST BLINDLY COPY THIS) you can create an image of it like so:


<span style="color:#323232;">cat /dev/sdb </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">></span><span style="color:#323232;"> usb.iso
</span>

But also the devices are writable, so you can flash an image to a disk by doing it the other way around:


<span style="color:#323232;">cat image.iso </span><span style="font-weight:bold;color:#a71d5d;">></span><span style="color:#323232;"> /dev/sdb 
</span>
Barzaria ,

If you want a GUI, I would use Balena Etcher. You might be able to use raspberri pi imager too.

pineapplelover ,

Ventoy ftw

Corgana ,
@Corgana@startrek.website avatar

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.

boredsquirrel ,

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.

rotopenguin ,
@rotopenguin@infosec.pub avatar

Raspberry pi imager is supposed to be pretty good

ShortN0te ,

Or just cat file.img > /dev/…

boredsquirrel ,

I think you should use dd for that?

ShortN0te ,

Why? I am free to use whatever I want. This is not Microsoft Windows.

boredsquirrel ,

What

qpsLCV5 ,

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.

boredsquirrel ,

cat is for writing files, dd for writing disks.

Can you explain how this can work?

ShortN0te ,

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.

boredsquirrel ,

Cool, need to try that

tuna ,

/dev/sdX is a file, and both dd, cat can read files in full. You can even try something like zstd to compress it too.

One of the nice things about dd though is you can see the progress with –status=progress

eruchitanda ,
@eruchitanda@lemmy.world avatar

TIL you can do that with udisksctl. How can you do that?

I usually just use dd or Ventoy.

boredsquirrel ,

I thought that was what Impression uses but it doesnt tell that anymore. So I dont know

tombruzzo OP ,

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

HubertManne ,

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.

kurcatovium ,

Something like Ventoy?

HubertManne ,

ooh. imma go google that. thanks.

HubertManne ,

oms! this is exactly what I have been looking for.

bloodfart ,

dd

Sometimes stuff won’t chain boot from within ventoy.

vvv ,

dd if=image.img of=/dev/disk/flashdrive is usually all you need

turbowafflz ,

The cursed but arguably better way is cp image.img /dev/whatever

vvv ,

is that more or less cursed than cat image.img > /dev/whatever?

rotopenguin ,
@rotopenguin@infosec.pub avatar

Betterest is pv image.img > /dev/sdx

Barzaria ,

if 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.

owenfromcanada ,
@owenfromcanada@lemmy.world avatar

They obviously don’t have the features that Rufus has, but I’ve ended up using the default USB image writers that come pre-installed (found them on both Mint and Manjaro, probably available on others). If you’re just looking to write an ISO, check to see if you already have one.

tombruzzo OP ,

That’s what I ended up going with on Fedora

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