Why did no one mention this to me?

Linux@lemmy.ml – 167 points – 12 months ago

I recently discovered ventoy and it's so useful. Don't have to flash isos anymore and can have a whole iso library. So useful.

Next time you feel the need to tell everyone how useful something is it might be good to include what it actually does so others do not have to google it themselves.

https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html

Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files. With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk over and over, you just need to copy the ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files to the USB drive and boot them directly. You can copy many files at a time and ventoy will give you a boot menu to select them (screenshot). You can also browse ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files in local disks and boot them. x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI and MIPS64EL UEFI are supported in the same way. Most types of OS supported (Windows/WinPE/Linux/ChromeOS/Unix/VMware/Xen...)

From the description sounds similar to ultimate boot cd or Hiren's boot cd

If you now find out about iventoy 🙊

Never need a USB Stick anymore 😁

Worth pointing out that while ventoy is open source, iventoy is not. Might be important to some people.

Code is on Github You can download the source there

"The open source part of iVentoy" is on GitHub. Perhaps it's not completely open?

Honestly I don´t know, I only found it in Github. If this is the complete source or only a part of it 🤷

They're using GPL in that repo. Is that only partially?

Honestly I don´t know, I only found it in Github. If this is the complete source or only a part of it 🤷

Wild. That's very useful.

Any ideaa why I can't reach their website?

No idea, it works for me

iventoy.com

Weird.

It should look like this

iventoy

Tried a different browser?

Yes I installed Firefox and that lets me to go that webpage. How weird, everything else works normally on Brave expect that iventoy-page. I'm confused.

Weird 🤔

Wow that looks very cool! Thanks for sharing!

That site gives me sketchy vibes. Lol maybe because one of the nav items is just named "Document"

It's probably an issue of English not being the first language, or of translation. It's obviously a link to Documentation, which is a pretty safe assumption when you see a nav item named Document. You could have confirmed this yourself by simply following the link.

You're right, I'm being judgemental about the English stuff... I think Im just especially suspicious of software that is written by people who clearly have the skills to pwn my machine when the software has access to ring0 and is used to boot and install entire oses. It's a malware gold mine. Even if the project is completely on the level, it's a high value target for adding malware because of the level of control you get over a machine (just like grub or syslinux of course, I'm mainly thinking about iventoy for that point). Plus as an American I'm definitely automatically more suspicious of software from China :/ not great but it's true.

Well, now you know. That's the reason I joined so many communities related to FOSS and Linux to get to know what cooking :)

Sometimes it breaks.

Source: used Ventoy.

Also check your hidden directories, you delete ISOs and they stay there. Could just be Nautilus or Dolphin though.

I've never had that issue that deleted ISOs would stay on the USB, not sure how you've managed to achieve that. Maybe you didn't actually delete the files but put them to the recycle bin?

It’s great software! I’ve only had a couple ISOs that it didn’t allow me to install on bare metal.

Yeah, I like having a few isos on Ventoy for live booting from random PCs for troubleshooting. Very convenient being able to have multiple architectures, DEs, versions of distros to boot from on one drive.

What's so useful having about an iso library? Isn't it just hoarding of outdated images very quickly? What's even the use case?

I am very curious, because I don't see it. You usually don't install so many different machines in any timeframe where it might be useful. For recovery you just pick one and you really don't need it often either.

When I did supoort I would usually have a number of cds for different tasks. Ubcd, winpe, knoppix , a specialized winpe to restore from synology backups etc.

Some of the modern tools don’t require it. Backups are easier than ever etc.

Ventoy isn’t a new concept. I have a usb drive with a bunch of isos. Just don’t have much use. Because I’ll burn an iso when I need to with Rufus.

You can thin out the obsolete ISOs and have well-used tools like DBAN, a partition editor, Clonezilla, etc. Make some of the ISOs live distributions and you have a way to repair a failed installation.

Handy if you want to try out several distros and don't want to have to go back and reflash every time because you can't find the rest of your goddamned flash drives (guess what I spent last night doing)

I ended up with several blank dvds, i had no idea what i would to use them. Then i randomly decided to burn iso images to them for when i distro hop. Any older version i just threw out and replaced with newer version.

Being able to repair your or other people's system. Also, you can store things other than isos, so your device doesn't lose much utility, it uses a vfat partition.

I spent an hour last night adding new distros to my Ventoy drive. It's so much easier than anything else I've tried :)

Any chances you will use them?

They're for me to test. I've got an SSD in a USB3.2 enclosure, so the live ISOs run fast enough that there's no noticeable difference to an installation on my main PC.

I've been using Xubuntu on my server for years, and Mint on my laptop for the last few years, and have been trying to switch to Mint on my PC, so I thought it's about time to try some other distros before I fully commit.

I've got all the main distros, so will be distro hopping for a while to see how I get on, and if any of them jump out at me. I've always used Debian based distros, so I can see me sticking with one, but I've added the others to see if they've changed much in the last 20 years, and if I like the way they do things :)

It's very useful, but occasionally I'm not able to install some distro using ventoy and have to give it its own dedicated USB stick. Most works fine though.

Like which? Just curious just in case I come across those.