I have been running https://netboot.xyz/ from a docker container for years and don't look back. I even set it up to have local copies of the distros I most install, so it picks it up from a local server instead of downloading a fresh copy each time.
Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
171–180 of 208 posts
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#172what's the equivalent (especially handling bios and uefi and stuff) on linux for it? i would be really interested.
Surprisingly there isn't, though a port is often requested. (Nevertheless there're similar tools with either too many or less/none options.) But considering what it offers can be attained with dd+mkfs maybe a Rufus-like program can be hacked with aforementioned tools, some bash, and yad...
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#173Well have to say Rufus is good. But there is a far better tool: Ventoy. You will only need to format your thumb drive once and for all. After that, you will simply only need to copy the image file such as .iso, .vhd etc on to the drive and you are all set. Check details from the following sites. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
Rufus has other use cases: imaging distros for Raspberry Pi, and (especially handy) reformat HFS, APFS and Ext4 pendrives for FAT or NTFS under Windows without jumping through hoops.
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#174Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#175Well have to say Rufus is good. But there is a far better tool: Ventoy. You will only need to format your thumb drive once and for all. After that, you will simply only need to copy the image file such as .iso, .vhd etc on to the drive and you are all set. Check details from the following sites. https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
Holy whackamoly! Booting directly from .iso files on a thumb drive? What kind of black magic is that? This is the neatest thing I've seen on HN since the actually portable executable!
Not just iso files, it'll boot vhd's as well.
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tried this once but was annoyed at it being an Electron app, and sure enough it has analytics that spy on your usage by default including "information about the type of SD cards and USB drives": https://www.balena.io/docs/learn/more/collected-data/#balena...
Then flash it on an OS that's not connected to the Internet? That's what I do anyway. For some that's a pain, but over time I learned to have an OS that's airgapped for privacy reasons.
Obviously it’s not the end of the world for technical people who are in the habit of looking inside all new applications’ settings and reading their privacy policies, but it means I could never recommend this app to anyone in good conscience knowing they will probably skip all of that and get spied on.
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#177Been using Rufus about 13 times today, it gets the job done. I like it
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Holy whackamoly! Booting directly from .iso files on a thumb drive? What kind of black magic is that? This is the neatest thing I've seen on HN since the actually portable executable!
Not just iso files, it'll boot vhd's as well.
This is the real insane feature for me. Wow.
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#179why is creating a bootable USB stick so hard? By the look of the comments it's not something that tools can do reliably. How can I learn more about these types of issues? Booting an OS in general, that is.
Re: Rufus: Reliable USB Formatting Utility
#180Do not use Rufus to make Windows 10 install media. Rufus sucks for this purpose. It uses a weird partition scheme and custom bootloader that doesn't work with secure boot. You don't need any of this shit. Partition the drive as NTFS, mark the partition as active through Disk Management, and simply copy and paste the contents of the iso into the drive. For maximum compatibility, just use FAT32 instead of NTFS. The off…
For simple windows installation isn't official Microsoft Media Creation Tool enough anyways? Rufus is a great tool to install ESXi, linux variants and other custom ISOs.
for some reason I can never get the media creation tool to work, it always downloads the ISO and then fails to write it to the USB with some ridiculously vague error code.
rufus on the other hand always works without issue