i still had issues using 150MB electron based bloated and heavy software instead of rufus, not that it worked for me anyway
I only tried to use it once, and same. 150MB of a Web app to copy an ISO? I think I was using a Macbook to flash it and decided to use ventoy instead, with my PC.
I understand that it needed a GUI, but 150 megs?? When :
~
❯ ll `which dd`
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 63K Sep 29 16:36 /usr/bin/dd*
~
❯
Yeah Mac has dd too, I often forget about the terminal existing there. I wish Ventoy for Mac was a thing tho.
Here's a wildcard people might not know about: Raspberry Pi Imager
I use it because it's faster than Etcher and it also has a bunch of quick links to download popular images (mainly for RPI and other arm-based SBCs) in one click which is handy if you use those regularly.
Thats a shame, it was one of the few disk imagers that "just worked"
Just use dd. It's not that hard. You pass it 2 arguments: if= the file you want to flash, and of= the destination. If you're feeling fancy, pass in some status=progress. And don't forget to prepend it with sudo. That's it.
I just tried this the other day and was unable to boot from the USB. Any chance you could shed some light on what I might have screwed up?
The command was:
dd if=fedora.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=4M status=progress
The USB stick was not mounted and the fedora image was verified. The command completed successfully but I couldn't boot from it. When I used fedora writer to burn the same image to the same USB stick it booted no problem.
Edit: spelling & capitalization
Don't use Fedora myself, but it may not be a hybrid ISO that becomes bootable when written... so I looked and you are missing a flag
dd if=/path/to/image.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=8M status=progress oflag=direct
From https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/creating-and-using-a-live-installation-image/
Ah! Thank you! I knew it was something I screwed up!
You didn't screw up, you beautifully proved why the CLI is never a simple solution.
This is why people trying to pass this as a primary option baffle me a bit. dd is not that bad in isolation, but all of these little commands add up.
If we want Linux to be mainstream, we need to accept that most users aren't going to be linux enthusiasts. They just want a PC that works normally.
It reminded me when I told a coworker he could force the Windows shutdowns with the command 'shutdown -p -f" from either a Run.exe or a cmd window.
Then he said it wasn't working, and that the cmd window would just open and close quickly but no shutdown.
Imagine my surprise when he was doing shutdown -pf .
Wow, I was not aware of that. I really liked balena. Thankfully, I haven't been using it since installing Mint.
Friendship ended with Balena
Now Rufus is my new best friend
Is no one aware of Fedora Media Writer? It's FOSS and the most trustworthy ISO burning software in existence. It's only issue is that its named as if it is written only for producing Fedora bootable media. It works for everything.
Not using Ventoy in 2025?
I guess I could install Ventoy on the raspberry Pi's SD card, but I prefer it to be bare, since the idea is to keep it simple.
Ventoy uses several blobs without any instructions of compiling them yourself?
Rufus is great! I worked with the maintainer to fix a bug in hardware they didn't have and it was a very pleasant experience.
If you need a FOSS, cross platform GUI for bootable USB sticks, Raspberry Pi Imager is a really good solution.
It is mainly used to flash SD cards for RPIs, but also you can burn any ISO on any support with it.
Balenaetcher has, for me at least, failed to write to USBs for the last 3 years or so that I've tried to use it - meanwhile random iso writers from flatpak have been more reliable for me. Very obnoxious that so many iso related sites recommend it. Rufus kicks tons of ass, if for whatever reason you're still on windows.
Also on most distros I've tried, the disk utility has some sort of right click or context menu that gets you a 'restore disk image' button that works great as well.
Edit= I used Popsicle USB writer from flatpak on steam deck with no issue today! Made by system76 (makers of popOS) and found on flatpak. It is absolutely no frills, but works well enough to write an SD card image for a raspberry pi! 🙂
Flatpack? You are using Linux and you need "iso writers"? Is your dd broken, son?
😂 I also read this as Ron's voice!
Nah as much as i love doing stuff via terminal, I am extra paranoid specifically about writing to the wrong device and losing data; I prefer as many confirmations as possible that I'm writing to the correct drive, and graphical installers tend to give me just a few more reassurances. A few examples would be stuff like
I'm also the kind of person who stares at a written email worrying about every last nuance of my phrasing, so 🤷♂️😂 definitely a me problem, I think!
This sounded like a techy Ron Swanson.
Are the scissors broken in your house, son?
At least one person got the reference!
Linux mint factory USB creator just right click and make bootable.
I knew that UI had something to hide!
Never trust an overly fancy UI...
That's interesting, apparently it was mentioned on github but nothing seems to have changed in the end
https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/issues/3784
Haven't used that software in a long time but maybe there's an opt-out somewhere during runtime? Although I don't see why a user needs to be required to opt out of nonsense like this when just writing firmware to a USB disk.
Only ever touched balenaEtcher when some project or distro recommended it. Overall prefer Rufus for this sort of thing when working on Windows.
I remember a while back, years before this surfaced, there was a thread on /g/ with a group photo of Balena's employees and a caption like "why does it take so many people to develop an electron wrapper around dd". Obviously it was low effort engagement bait (balena does much more than etcher), but the comments were full of people calling the company a glowie honeypot and the like. Moral of the story: Trust the schizos, they sense spyware form lightyears away.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)