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I have always used Etcher[0] and I love it. [0] https://www.balena.io/etcher/ https://www.balena.io/etcher/

by odyslam 5y ago

BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Nice, how does the reliability compare to unetbootin ?
spacemanmatt 5y ago
I get great mileage out of Etcher but I need Rufus to make a USB boot to Windows install.
Lammy 5y ago
I tried this once but was annoyed at it being an Electron app, and sure enough it has analytics that spy on your usage by default including "information about the type of SD cards and USB drives": https://www.balena.io/docs/learn/more/collected-data/#balenaetcher https://www.balena.io/docs/learn/more/collected-data/#balena...
- ______- 5y ago
  Then flash it on an OS that's not connected to the Internet? That's what I do anyway. For some that's a pain, but over time I learned to have an OS that's airgapped for privacy reasons.
  - Lammy 5y ago
    Obviously it’s not the end of the world for technical people who are in the habit of looking inside all new applications’ settings and reading their privacy policies, but it means I could never recommend this app to anyone in good conscience knowing they will probably skip all of that and get spied on.
cosmotic 5y ago
Etcher is easy to use but why on earth did they decide to make it an electron app?
- vxNsr 5y ago
  Portability, RUFUS is windows only, most other tools require a lot more work to port. this one appears to be installable/usable on Win/Mac/Linux Personally I'm a fan of ventoy[0] though it doesn't appear to be installable on mac, but if you set it up on linux/windows you can just drop any iso you want onto it from any system and it'll work like a charm. [0] https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
  - cosmotic 5y ago
    I can't imagine electron is more compete than a wine wrapper around a native windows app. Qt or similar gui shouldn't be too much work for what appears to be a single window app.
muppetman 5y ago
I love that something that basically clones what "dd" can do is ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR MEGABYTES. And people just accept that as normal. dd is 76k Imagine if the binary is 128MB how big the source code repo must be.
- zymhan 5y ago
  I'll take a GUI that helps me triple-check I'm not dd-ing my root volume
larrybud 5y ago
Unfortunately, etcher has a long history of privacy violations which I find completely unacceptable (especially for an open source project!) https://forums.balena.io/t/serious-privacy-concerns-with-etcher-1-4-4/4103 https://forums.balena.io/t/serious-privacy-concerns-with-etc... As in, even when I turned off 'report usage statistics', it kept making outbound network connections. That was it for me... trust lost; uninstalled immediately.
______- 5y ago
I prefer Etcher over Rufus because there's very little to configure. It's easy to get the settings wrong in Rufus and it can make an ISO unbootable or unusable if you don't know what you're doing.

I have always used Etcher[0] and I love it. [0] https://www.balena.io/etcher/ https://www.balena.io/etcher/

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

Nice, how does the reliability compare to unetbootin ?

spacemanmatt 5y ago

I get great mileage out of Etcher but I need Rufus to make a USB boot to Windows install.

Lammy 5y ago

I tried this once but was annoyed at it being an Electron app, and sure enough it has analytics that spy on your usage by default including "information about the type of SD cards and USB drives": https://www.balena.io/docs/learn/more/collected-data/#balenaetcher https://www.balena.io/docs/learn/more/collected-data/#balena...

______- 5y ago
Then flash it on an OS that's not connected to the Internet? That's what I do anyway. For some that's a pain, but over time I learned to have an OS that's airgapped for privacy reasons.
- Lammy 5y ago
  Obviously it’s not the end of the world for technical people who are in the habit of looking inside all new applications’ settings and reading their privacy policies, but it means I could never recommend this app to anyone in good conscience knowing they will probably skip all of that and get spied on.

cosmotic 5y ago

Etcher is easy to use but why on earth did they decide to make it an electron app?

vxNsr 5y ago
Portability, RUFUS is windows only, most other tools require a lot more work to port. this one appears to be installable/usable on Win/Mac/Linux Personally I'm a fan of ventoy[0] though it doesn't appear to be installable on mac, but if you set it up on linux/windows you can just drop any iso you want onto it from any system and it'll work like a charm. [0] https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
- cosmotic 5y ago
  I can't imagine electron is more compete than a wine wrapper around a native windows app. Qt or similar gui shouldn't be too much work for what appears to be a single window app.

muppetman 5y ago

I love that something that basically clones what "dd" can do is ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR MEGABYTES. And people just accept that as normal. dd is 76k Imagine if the binary is 128MB how big the source code repo must be.

zymhan 5y ago
I'll take a GUI that helps me triple-check I'm not dd-ing my root volume

larrybud 5y ago

Unfortunately, etcher has a long history of privacy violations which I find completely unacceptable (especially for an open source project!) https://forums.balena.io/t/serious-privacy-concerns-with-etcher-1-4-4/4103 https://forums.balena.io/t/serious-privacy-concerns-with-etc... As in, even when I turned off 'report usage statistics', it kept making outbound network connections. That was it for me... trust lost; uninstalled immediately.

______- 5y ago

I prefer Etcher over Rufus because there's very little to configure. It's easy to get the settings wrong in Rufus and it can make an ISO unbootable or unusable if you don't know what you're doing.