I’m curious what the difference is between Balenca etcher and Ventoy for writing isos to a live USB for distro hopping purposes. I see both recommended in fourms. Is there any advantage to using one over the other? Are they both equally safe/secure?
I’m also curious about trying out new distros. I’ve been using LMDE for about a year now and it’s been fine, but I want to expand my knowledge and see whether LMDE is my favorite distro or not. I’m not the most well versed in Linux and don’t have any prior programming experience so a beginner/mid level distro is what I’m looking for. I want something I can test out without connecting to WiFi (so not arch).
Balena Etcher is a writer that does one ISO at a time. Other similar options are Fedora Writer, Rufus, etc.
Ventoy is one that can do multiple ISOs and is generally easy to manage.
However, be aware that Ventoy has a lot of unknown code involved. There’s binary blobs that the maintainer refuses to open source, so there’s a big question over whether it’s hiding some malware or is using unpatched packages. Nobody knows except the maintainer, and it’s just his word saying it’s safe. You could use it to test out ISOs, but I wouldn’t personally use it to actually install a system.
Also, the Ventoy fanbois are pretty insufferable, and they tend to brigade anyone that speaks ill of Ventoy or its dev.
If you want something similar that’s open source, Glim works and could be a good option; YUMI has been around for a while, but I dunno if it’s still a good project or not.
Edit: typo
Can you point to some discussion of the ventoy blobs? I had never heard about that and can’t find anything that says it’s not GPL3.
This thread made me look at this issue. Realistically it’s not a big issue, the VAST majority of the binary blobs are accounted for and have a script or a readme file that shows where they’re downloaded from.
That being said I will take a serious look at alternatives.
The vast majority of xz’s blobs are accounted for, too.
Yeah, that’s pretty much where I landed after reading through it.
Maybe they are thinking of iVentoy which is not open source but is by the same dev
Maybe start here, but there’s lots of discussion on the post.
Ugh, those GitHub comments are horrible. If I was the author, I would just walk away from the project. People have no shame in making demands for free work.
You ain’t wrong. The level of arrogance stinks. Especially when the author put effort into documenting the sources etc.
There do appear to be a lot of these know-it-all-but-contribute-little types around.
Maybe a few are missing, but simply asking, and I’m sure they’ll provide. If someone wants a better build system, they could volunteer to do it themselves.
Should I be worried? I was distro hopping for a bit and put together a Ventoy drive to make that easier, and I used it to boot the install iso for the distro I ultimately decided on for my gaming laptop. It seemed highly recommended and I didn’t know about the Ventoy bros at that point.
Probably not. I’ve used it as well (before I knew about Glim) to preview distros, but I am not using it to do installs, since I can’t be certain what’s in it.
Cool! I might give that a try instead of the Ventoy i use regularly. Thanks for the info !
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I have quite literally never seen that. The majority of the time, somebody brings up Ventoy, somebody mentions the opaque blobs or some other legitimate criticism, and a bunch of fanbois pile onto that person for having their own opinions or concerns.
Ventoy works well, but the lack of transparency concerns me and people like me.
I have a different experience. There was one thread which linked to a github issue. The issue said some blobs don’t have source code. Ironically when I went on to check, the blobs mentioned in the issue had source code, but there were other blobs which seemed to miss the source or build instructions.
I would love to have an independent audit to put this issue at rest. All that happens is more and more noise and no resolution. I am not a programmer so can’t really help here.
I would also love that! The truth of this matter would be much preferred over a bunch of cast aspersions.
Ah, yes, Ventoy, my favorite “open source” program. https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/2795
The files it uses are mostly just the tools and shims which can be copied over from a working distribution.
The maintainer is just lazy and he doesn’t let people improve it either because he wants it to be coded in a certain way: https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/2795#issuecomment-2326831525
It is not a malicious project, yet the xz-utils backdoor should make us be concerned, and we should only use a fork that pulls in the binaries from trusted sources.
Love ventoy. That one usb becomes a Swiss army chainsaw.
But as said elsewhere it hides proprietary blobs among other things.
I liked etcher before balena bought it. The cli was small and easy to use. After the buyout it got super bloated.
USBImager does the same thing.
You’re comparing apples to oranges here, but of course Ventoy is a more versatile tool, after one time preparation you’re just copying ISOs like files, you can use multiple ISOs at once etc, also do you really need a clunky electron app to burn images on Linux
ventoy is nice in that I can just dump ISOs to a single USB and take it around, but balena is one of many boot media tools that’s useful if you need a single ISO for a system - fast.
What is faster about always flashing the required ISO instead of selecting it more quickly in the boot loader?
Eh nothing really, but if you don’t have a Ventoy set up and you just need an image burned it’s more convenient to just use balena or something else.
Ah ok. Haven’t used anything other than ventoy for ages. I may have used drivedroid on the side because you can boot from Android (requires root) and you always have the smartphone with you anyway. But I haven’t used it for ages either.
@IceFoxX @merthyr1831 I just keep a handful of color coded thumb drives. I know the red one for example is Ubuntu-Mate 24.04, the black one Win10, the yellow, Gparted Live disk, the Green Boot-Repair, etc.
You can also write an iso to a USB stick with:
cp path/to/awesome.iso /dev/disk/by-id/usb-My_flash_driveDoes this work for multiple isos?
You can also use pv to see a nice progress bar:
pv path/to/awesome.iso > /dev/disk/usb-drive
I use Ventoy regularly but im too lazy to setup Grub2 on a USB and load up isos.
Not sure who these Ventoy fanbois or bros are.
Yup Ventoy does hide binary blobs and has some dodgy devs and code. Use at own risk.
Also I dont have any sensitive stuff. So mostly Ventoy is used to install playground server isos and stuff. Not much use for it otherwise.
Endeavour IS is arch with KDE and a few basic apps. Pretty sure you dont need WiFi to test it. For any issues you can just use the arch wiki. I really enjoyed it as first distro as the wiki is so helpful. I moved to Mint tho (not DE) and have loved not having to use the terminal for anything.
Belena is simpler, it’s just writing an image to a drive.
Ventoy is complicated and changes the booted image to make it work. That sometimes breaks things.
