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…
Thats a shame, it was one of the few disk imagers that “just worked”
i still had issues using 150MB electron based bloated and heavy software instead of rufus, not that it worked for me anyway
Unrelated to balenaEtcher but I haven’t been able to flash ISO files from Windows 11, either by using Rufus, Etcher, Fedora Media Writer, or even the WSL. I need to borrow a computer running a FLOSS operating system or to install OpenBSD first, and then from OpenBSD to download and burn an ISO file.
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.
Wow, I was not aware of that. I really liked balena. Thankfully, I haven’t been using it since installing Mint.
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.
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.
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
- a graphical representation of partitions (the general layout of a drive tends to offer an easy ‘fingerprint’ in my mind; like the pattern of partitions help me confirm I’m looking at, say, a Debian install USB compared to a single-partition general purpose storage disk)
- icons for different types of devices, like an SD card, USB, or hard disk icon
- confirmation dialogues summarizing what device is targeted, and what all will be performed
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!
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.
I dunno… I just use dd.
cat works perfectly fine too 👌
Eh, I prefer being able to specify block sizes, to maximize the throughput.
Seeing progress, too
Opensuse has one too. And dd exists for the brave or the foolish
The article at the end mentions they suggest dd as alternative for MacOS (due to Unix user space). It seems the balena -> rufus decision is about the easiest-onramp Mac+Win-portable option, for those uncomfortable dropping to low-level device-writing CLI tools in their current system.
Side-note: Last time I was on a friend’s Windows I installed dd simply enough both as mingw-w64 (native compiled) and under Cygwin. So for Windows users who are comfortable using dd it only requires a minor step. When I once used WSL devices were accessible too, but that was WSL1 (containerized), whereas WSL2 (virtualized) probably makes device-mapping complex(?) enough to not be worth it there.
WSL2 has relatively easy (a few powershell commands iirc) device mounting, provided you aren’t trying to mount C: or the windows install drive (not necessarily the same).
Thanks, that’s good to know, but for raw-writing a bootable image to a device do you (or anyone reading) know if there are also straightforward powershell commands for mapping devices at the block level? (as opposed to mounting at filesystem level)
Meh i find it slow.
Or gnome disks, which also adds an “open with ‘write to drive’” option to isos and images
Linux mint factory USB creator just right click and make bootable.
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.I used to use the fedora media writer but the RPi imager software is so easy I switched
dd
Never understood why you would use anything else. It’s in coreutils!!!
There are people coming from Windows, which does not have
dd.“just” setting that up takes much longer than installing a small app to do it.
OK so keep using the small app that is reporting your usage activity
Or just dont use windows
Many won’t touch the command line.
I know, but just because someone doesn’t understand something or ignores it doesn’t mean it isn’t the best/simplest choice for 90% of cases.
It’s faster to drag and drop a downloaded ISO and choose the target from a dropdown, than do it on a command line. And get a progress bar. As much as command line is usually faster, it isn’t in this case.
Yes you can also get a progress bar on the command line but it’s more typing again, and realistically you need to look the option up every time if you use dd once every 3 months.
Lmao. Uses a computer, typing is too much. It took more typing to write your comment than to craft a tab-completed dd command, even if you had to call the help menu to refresh your available options, jus’ sayin’
I get it though, the general public are scared of the big bad 'puter magic and need GUIs.
Tab complete? Just ^R that shit!
Shhh, that’s too advanced. Besides, CLI is outdated and slower than GUIs, this is just insane behavior /s
I honestly didn’t even need to specify tab-completed. It’s still less typing than their comment unless your paths are miles long.
Let me try: Lmao. Uses a computer, still does stuff the slower way because learning new things is too difficult.
To be serious, I am looking for the best solutions for my use cases, not adequate ones. Yes dd works perfectly fine and as you noted doesn’t take long to use anyway. But just because it’s fine doesn’t mean other approaches aren’t better.
A GUI tool can offer or take a list of download URLs for common distros so downloading isn’t a separate step, it can check if the target device is a flash drive and not a hard drive by mistake, it can automatically choose the optimal block size for the device, it can verify the process by reading it back from the device, can show you the current filesystem, label, and usage of the target device to confirm, it can handle flashing to multiple devices at the same time with separate and total progress bars.
If I wanted to do all that on the command line it’d be quite a lot of commands or a sizeable script to write. Or I can use a simple dd command and lose out on all of the above. Either way it’s a worse option. I will only use dd when a GUI tool isn’t installed, or when I’m on a system without a DE.
We will have to agree to disagree.
At least you came back with reasons beyond “I don’t like typing.”
ETA: > learning new things is too difficult.
I could use this argument for folks that don’t want to learn CLI as well, doesn’t really track in either direction.
Ventoy 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.
Real
♬ Hello
ddmy old friend
I’ve comesudowith you again ♬
17·2 days agoHello cat or cp or pv… Or anything else that works with files
Huh this is news to me. Wonder why dd has been the defacto standard in guides everywhere for the past 15-20+ years
… and the sign said the bytes of the distro are written to the SD card …. if they’re un-tar’d …
Not used it since I discovered this nonsense. Shows how seriously they take security. https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/issues/3410
I knew that UI had something to hide!
Never trust an overly fancy UI…
nah, plenty of good stuff with good ui.
balena had effects and stuff but a pretty tasteless gui tbh, and ads promoting other shit…
