Bootloader equivalent to Rufus

tombruzzo@lemm.ee to Linux@lemmy.ml – 43 points –

I've been trying to find a linux programming similar to Rufus to flash images of OSes on a thumb drive.

Nothing from the listicles on the internet or the programs in flatpak have worked for me as well as Rufus on Windows.

What have you used that's worked well? Or, could I run Rufus on my linux machine with WINE?

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I think you should use dd for that?

using dd for that is outdated info that everyone keeps blindly parroting with zero understanding why. cat is simpler and works fine.

note: both cat and dd only work for this when the image is made in a compatible way, my linux isos always work fine but a windows iso didnt and needs a more specific tool.

cat is for writing files, dd for writing disks.

Can you explain how this can work?

No, cat is not for writing files. Cat is for reading files and directing the data to standard output.

With ">" you are directing standard output to a file, in this case a blockdevice.

/dev/sdX is a file, and both dd, cat can read files in full. You can even try something like zstd to compress it too.

One of the nice things about dd though is you can see the progress with --status=progress