• Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 months ago

    Any “How To” that doesn’t just use Rufus isn’t worth the page its text is rendered on. Rufus can do Linux boot disks, but is indispensable for Windows boot disk utilities. It’s one of the only ways I know of to make a Windows ToGo installation (equivalent of a Linux Live USB), which I used to install Windows on a friends SD card for their Steam Deck so they can dual-boot.

    https://rufus.ie/en/

    If you’re looking to make a Linux boot USB from Linux itself, BalenaEtcher is probably a better bet since Rufus is Windows-only.

    https://github.com/balena-io/etcher

    I’ve noticed there’s tons of how-to’s for making a bootable disk on Windows, hardly any for Linux. Perhaps we ought to remedy that?

    • Successful_Try543@feddit.de
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      7 months ago

      For Linux you don’t need a GUI tool, most how tos just dd the ISO onto the USB medium, e.g.

      sudo dd if=<file> of=<device> bs=16M status=progress oflag=sync
      

      like described in the Debian FAQs

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        7 months ago

        Man, Google really does suck now. It feels nearly impossible to get something like a how-to deep in the Debian FAQs to come up, as it mostly surfaces this auto-generated SEO crap for How To’s.

        Very cool, I’d assumed there was a simple command line set of commands, just was failing to find it. Thanks.

        • s38b35M5@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Man, Google really does suck now. It feels nearly impossible to get something like a how-to deep in the Debian FAQs to come up, as it mostly surfaces this auto-generated SEO crap

          By design. The longer you’re Googling, the more ads they can sell.

          …Ben Gomes – a long-tenured googler who helped define the company during its best years – lost a fight with Prabhakar Raghavan, a computer scientist turned manager whose tactic for increasing the number of search queries (and thus the number of ads the company could show to searchers) was to decrease the quality of search. That way, searchers would have to spend more time on Google before they found what they were looking for.

      • orsetto@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        I don’t remember where, but i read that this method only works because linux distributors “abuse” the ISO format to allow this. If I remember right, it’s not possible to use this ISOs on regular disks

        Of course the command you provided is right and it’s what I use, it’s just a fun fact

        • Successful_Try543@feddit.de
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          7 months ago

          Yes and no, it’s the other way round. The ISOs often are hybrid images which you can burn onto a CD/DVD or dd onto a USB pen drive. Until approximately 10-15 years ago, if I remember correctly, the distributed Linux ISOs where standard not hybrid images, thus you always needed some other program to create bootable USB media.

      • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        If you want to create fully custom boot images the command debootstick is pretty cool too!

        It’s essentially a wrapper for debootstrap that creates bootable images. It can create both live and installer images.

        qemu-debootstrap is also super useful if you want to customize and image for a different architecture (for example building custom RPi images).

        • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          7 months ago

          qrmu-debootstrap is also super useful if you want to customize and image for a different architecture (for example building custom RPi images).

          Super useful information, thanks!

          EDIT: Is this anything like the isorespinner.sh? I’ve previously used that to get Linux on an RCA Cambio W101 because it needed a fancy ISO since it has a 32-bit bootloader and a 64-bit CPU.

          • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
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            7 months ago

            I believe the script you are talking about repackages an existing iso. Debootstick builds one from scratch by pulling all the necessary packages from the repository.

            For the underlying process of creating this image it uses debootstrap which is the standard Debian way of creating a full system installation (minus the whole bootloader and iso shenanigans). Debootstick allows most options from debootstrap (aka selecting a distro, release, mirror, extra packages, etc).

    • Pattyice
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      7 months ago

      some distros have it built into it like Mint I was able to create a bookable drive of also mint

      • metaStatic@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        I think I destroyed a USB stick back in the day doing this shit. be careful they don’t lock the stick and if they do make sure you use the program to wipe the stick ASAP before you forget what program you used to make it.

        I have a ventoy stick for this exact reason, just copy iso to stick, no need to burn a new one every time.

      • t0mri
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        7 months ago

        cp *.iso /dev/disk

        or

        pv *.iso > /dev/disk

    • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nzM
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      7 months ago

      It’s one of the only ways I know of to make a Windows ToGo installation (equivalent of a Linux Live USB),

      You can also use WinToUSB for that btw. Yet another option is to install Windows to a VHD file (using a virtual machine, or using Disk2VHD to convert an existing install), then copy it to your USB, and make it bootable using Ventoy. The latter option is more useful, since with Ventoy you could have multiple other Linux ISOs (or other OS/rescue images) all on a single, portable drive.

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        7 months ago

        Yet another option is to install Windows to a VHD file (using a virtual machine, or using Disk2VHD to convert an existing install), then copy it to your USB, and make it bootable using Ventoy

        Neat, I saw Ventoy in here, but wasn’t entirely sure about it until you mentioned this. Initially, I assumed it was what it said on the tin but just for Linux ISOs. Very cool you can finagle a Windows live install on there as well.

    • flyos@jlai.lu
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      7 months ago

      I tried Windows ToGo on a few USB keys (including two high-speed ones), never managed to get something I could actually use that was not laggy AF, to the point it’s not usable (dozens of minutes to boot, lags of entire minutes and so on). Did I do something wrong?

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      Gnome Disks Util. select mounted drive, go to top right and choose restore image

    • umbrella
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      7 months ago

      the only piece of software i really miss on linux is rufus, by far.

    • Squizzy@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Just curious does anyone know why it is an Irish address? I dont see many in the space but I know there is a really active linux contributor in Ireland and I am wondering if rufus is his.

      • Khanzarate@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Rufus is Pete Batard, found it through his links on Rufus’s page.

        Dunno who you’re referring to specifically but you can cross reference now.