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…

  • davel@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    ♬ Hello dd my old friend
    I’ve come sudo with you again ♬

  • pH3ra@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    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.

    • phar@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      I used to use the fedora media writer but the RPi imager software is so easy I switched

        • madame_gaymes@programming.dev
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          5 months ago

          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.

      • dev_null@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        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.

        • madame_gaymes@programming.dev
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          5 months ago

          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.

            • madame_gaymes@programming.dev
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              5 months ago

              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 Besides, CLI is outdated and slower than GUIs, this is just insane behavior /s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.

          • dev_null@lemmy.ml
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            5 months ago

            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.

            • madame_gaymes@programming.dev
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              5 months ago

              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.

  • PullPantsUnsworn@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    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.

      • Rowan Thorpe@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        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.

          • Rowan Thorpe@lemmy.ml
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            5 months ago

            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)

  • renzev@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    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.

  • lime!@feddit.nu
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    5 months ago

    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.

  • Atlas_@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    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.

  • N0x0n@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    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.

  • SpatchyIsOnline@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    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.

  • BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Wow, I was not aware of that. I really liked balena. Thankfully, I haven’t been using it since installing Mint.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      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.

      • lime!@feddit.nu
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        5 months ago

        i’ve never needed to set a single flag with dd. i just do if=the_iso of=the_disk. what flags?

        • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          Don’t you need to mark usb disks as bootable if you want to boot from them to install Linux or whatever

          • lime!@feddit.nu
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            5 months ago

            that’s not something i’ve ever had to do, i’ve only done that for hard drives.

          • qpsLCV5@lemmy.ml
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            5 months ago

            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.

            • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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              5 months ago

              It won’t depend. I think it’s because back in the day we never had an easy way to force boot a device, if a device wasn’t flagged as bootable it wouldn’t boot