I am shocked by this - the quote in below is very concerning:
“However, in 2024, the situation changed: balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties.”
Can’t see myself using this software anymore…
ddwhat is a good one to use, is there something like rufus on linux
I just use Gnome Disks for convenience over dd.
https://circle.gnome.org/? Never tried their ISO software, I just use dd.
Can always use dd but I always go stupid when I need to set boot flags and all that crap, which is so much easier with etcher. I think I’ve done dd with gparted in the past.
i’ve never needed to set a single flag with dd. i just do
if=the_iso of=the_disk. what flags?Don’t you need to mark usb disks as bootable if you want to boot from them to install Linux or whatever
i think it depends on the image you get - for archlinux you can simply cat (or dd) the file onto a usb stick and it works perfectly fine, bootable. but i think i have seen an image at some point where it didn’t work, but i don’t recall what it was.
that’s not something i’ve ever had to do, i’ve only done that for hard drives.
does gparted set the correct flags too, can it also do windows
i just want a dumb ui i can dumbly drag the iso file to and it takes care of everything for me.
I tried belenaEtcher once on my Mac… And it seemed to me more like a spyware than an actual software, I was a bit confused and never used it again.
Ahh too bad because balenaEtcher just werks for me.
If you actually read the post, you would have known, it does work, but there are some privacy concerns with it:
“However, in 2024, the situation changed: balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties.”
i still don’t understand why anyone would use etcher. it’s an electron wrapper over
dd. it’s 80MB where rufus is 1.5. when it appeared there were already other programs that did its job better.I like clicking buttons that have a text on them saying what they do instead of trying to memorize a gajillion terminal commands and flags where I have to enter more commands and flags to see what they do.
plus it’s some some sanity checks like not showing you your system drives. Or warning you when the drive you are about to nuke is suspiciously large and maybe not the usb drive you actually want to use.
This is basically the main feature. Stopping you from fatfingering the wrong drive
use rufus.
On Windows, Rufus is just as easy to use tho. And on Linux, there is Gnome Disks.
I’ve typically used Etcher when I have to write an ISO on Windows
use rufus.
I used it because that’s what the instructions on the Linux Mint website for creating a bootable USB stick from Windows say to do.
I have no clue what “electron wrapper”, “dd”, or “rufus” are. I’m trying to learn more, but can’t learn it all in one day.
weird that the installation guide is hosted on a separate website that hasn’t been updated in eight years. that’s irresponsible of them. anyway rufus is a better version of etcher that you can download for windows.
Rufus seems to be just for Windows and dd does not have a gui
that’s correct. on windows, rufus is a better tool, and on linux or mac it’s just a built-in command with a manual packed in.
also, ubuntu ships with startup image creator, and gnome disks ships as a flatpak, if those are more your speed.
Thanks for the info, I’m on linux mint and after checking these out it isn’t immediately apparent from their websites whether or how I could install them. Still think etcher occupies a niche that alternatives don’t fill, its website directs you straight to installing it, it’s cross platform, and using it is very easy, so it’s something that could reasonably be linked to in various install tutorials.
…and that’s how I met your
motherforkVentoy is life!
did they ever clear up that random unexplained binaries issue?
From what I could gather, they’re taken from Fedora and OpenSUSE. They’re signed blobs for secure boot support.
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’ve used Sardu on Windows for making multi-iso bootable USB sticks a long time ago in the past, but I’d admittedly never looked at their ToS or Privacy Policy. My use case was slapping some live boot antivirus scanners, data recovery tools, and one or two lightweight liveboot-Linux ISOs on one USB as a portable toolkit.
When I’m making anything else from Windows, I’ve always stuck with Rufus. Had never heard of BalenaEtcher before now.
I"m horrible with names of programs and mess with a lot of junk comps switching out OS’s and just tinkering around so I’m always using crazy utility programs. BalenaEtcher is used in a lot of tutorials or guides for installations, I think recently both Elementary OS and even Ubuntu had instructions pointing towards BalenaEtcher.
I never thought it was a great program, it was finicky to use and errors out quickly multiple times. Looking back I saw the signs, weird new program being promoted above other “well established” burn programs, ads, and now scrolling down their webpage it’s just a bunch of promotional subscription bullshit. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit looking at the “balenacloud” and “balenasense”, like if they’re collecting your data through etcher then all of that shit is probably compromised. Another fucking google wannabe corp.
Sudo dd if=tails.iso of=/dev/sdb
for Windows?
Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize you were on Windows. That’s a Linux command. I haven’t used Windows very much since about 2018, so I don’t even consider Windows anymore unless it’s brought up.
Rufus.
And who cares if there’s spyware on windows, you’re already using windows so there is, it’s windows. At that point you may as well just use etcher, but I’d use Rufus anyway because let’s be real it’s just better. The only reason not to use Rufus is because it’s windows exclusive, but if you’re using windows that probably doesn’t bother you, so…
Install WSL
Install wsl lol.
bash: Sudo: command not found
Lol, nice one
Sudontplease :P
Ah, a
doasuser, I see!Or working on a case sensitive system
In my early days of Linux, I royally fucked up a USB thumb drive (back when they were expensive) using
ddand as a result do not trust myself with it.I would use Hannah Montana Linux if it was the only GUI option to burn a USB ISO.
Weird. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve used that command. But it’s probably been several thousand. And I’ve never screwed up a flash drive that way.
There has been once or twice where I’ve pulled the flash drive out too quickly after it finished writing and it actually hadn’t finished writing and had to redo it, but other than that, I’ve not actually screwed up any drives beyond repair or anything.
Yet another reason for people to run a default prompt (deny until prompt answer) firewall.
A what?
Good question. I will attempt to clarify:
OP is saying that individual should run firewalls on their machines, that block port activity by default, and only allow traffic upon an approved request by the administrator account.
An interactive firewall.
One that blocks programs from accessing the internet and prompts the first time they try until you click a button that says allow or you choose the alternative which is deny. A program like this you’d have no reason to give it internet access, it’s something whose operations should be entirely local.
have they tried also tracking for errors, cause it fucks up every second image unlike rufus
Truth. Etcher is garbage. Rufus is king.
I mean for privacy things it makes sense to avoid leaking anything. But I fail to understand where the danger is to have anonymous data that says a user installed “Ubuntu-24.04-wappity-whatever.iso” to “KINGSTON DATA TRAVELER 32GB” at some point.
It is a trap for people not knowing and government may use it as excuse to activate executive
If anything that seems like worthwhile analytics for the dev team to have access to.
Most software lets you opt out of sending anonymous analytics data though.
They could just ask. “Please allow us to know what you flash and on what device so we can improve the software” yes, no, tell me more, show me the data
Then I would have no problem using the SW, transparency is important to me
Friendship ended with Balena
Now Rufus is my new best friend
Happy user of Ventoy here
Good luck with the binary blob!
For some more context:
https://lemmy.one/post/19193506
💀💀 seems like dd commands and gnome’s MultiWriter might be the only ways to flash stuff on linux
The linked article recommends Raspberry Pi Imager for writing Tails from macOS, and that is also available on Linux and Windows.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/
Though the site only shows how to install on Ubuntu, the GitHub repo for the tool does have an AppImage that should work on any distro.
Fedora Writer is another one (also works on Windows and maybe Mac), and there’s also GLIM for multiboot, similar to Ventoy.
There’s also Popsicle which is made by the folks over at System76.
Gonna look into GLIM, thanks
I thought the binary blob thing was explained?
Basically UEFI booting requires shims and those need to be signed so the Ventoy author is re-using the ones from Fedora and OpenSUSE. This can be verified by comparing hashes, which the author of that comment shows how to do.
This whole thing seems to come down to people freaking the F out because they don’t understand how the software works and the Author of the software is currently PO’d off at the community and stopped answering questions.
The price of doing business with UEFI. There are ways around it but it works so fucking smooth. I’m down with it.
My luck with Ventoy has been very poor. The isos will work a few times and then something breaks and I need to re download all my isos and format and try again.
That’s… Interesting. I’ve been using Ventoy professionally for like… 2-3 years now and I’ve not once had an issue with daily use. Unironically like 2500-3000 uses without issue.
This has been my experience as well. Some people love it, but I’m not gonna rely on it for critical backup or recovery tools (also, there’s that whole binary blob thing, besides).
I have had no complaints about it, but with that said, I absolutely would not use it for any vital backup your recovery tools.
It was fantastic however, to use to load up with handfuls of different live distro ISOs to play around with.
Completely aside from the blob issue mentioned, the Tails team has recommended against using a multiboot utility like Ventoy to install Tails. Ventoy works fine for basically any other operating system (again, aside from the blob issue), just not Tails, which is what this post is about.
Last I heard it was also suspect: Ventoy source code contains some unknown BLOBs, still no word on the issue from the dev after months
I used it less than a week ago for a Mint install, worked fine.
If you actually read the post, you would have known, it does work, but there are some privacy concerns with it:
“However, in 2024, the situation changed: balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties.”
I seriously DGAF who knows which Mint edition I installed or the brand of flash drive I used.
