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This usbimager tool looks great. Yes, Balena Etcher is popular, and it works well on different operating systems, but it's EXE installer is over 140 MB. That's

This usbimager tool looks great. Yes, Balena Etcher is popular, and it works well on different operating systems, but it's EXE installer is over 140 MB. That's far, far more than is needed for this functionality. Compare Balena Etcher on Windows to Win32DiskImager, which needs only 12 MB. UNetbootin accomplishes this with just 5 MB. Rufus gets it done with just over 1 MB. That's all you really need on Windows to accomplish this task. On macOS, no 3rd party software is even required at all. It has a graphical Disk Utility program that makes this easy to do. Major Linux distros also have built-in GUI programs for this. For cross platform GUI, this Usbimager tool appears to fulfill the need too. The bloat and potential attack surface of Balena Etcher makes me unreasonably sad. I would like to see less of it.

Uehreka 5y ago
Balena Etcher has been popular for a while and works really well, I’ve never seen it screw up. I’d honestly prize that reliability over download size, I have terabytes of space. If usbimager takes off and becomes the default, cool, but I’ll take boring reliable Etcher over some trendy new thing any day.
Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
Did anyone have a good experience with Balena Etcher? I don’t have a good runs with it, the boot process always failed to detect the files in the USB drive that was formatted by Etcher. BIOS couldn’t detect the partition or anything in that USB. I tried with various Linux distro and Windows ISOs, it just failed to load or not detectable in the booting. Even it couldn’t load a simple Gparted partition. The only one I found consistent working is Rufus, it always works for me. Gparted, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, various distro and it works great with Windows ISO (even there is a Windows Media Creator). Rufus is only one so far in my experience that handles everything perfectly. Rufus is basically VLC of USB bootable utility, whereas Balena Etcher is Windows Media Player without all of the codecs (the original window version, not the MPC-HC/BE).
- cordite 5y ago
  I've had a bad experience! After writing a usb boot disk, it automatically switched to my external drive media instead of selecting nothing at all. I had to do another and after plugging the same drive back in, I wrote to the external drive media instead. I lost several personal things that day and paid for some recovery software. The safe thing to do here was to not to automatically select some high-volume media.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  I haven't used Balena etcher in forever, but back when it came out it was a godsend. This was also during a time when I already had enough skills with the command line that writing images to drives on either Linux or Windows should have been easy. But I always ran into roadblocks. When I discovered Balena, everything just worked. I hope it didn't devolve into something that doesn't just work.
- treesknees 5y ago
  Yes, I've used Balena Etcher dozens of times from my Windows machine and I've never had a problem with it. Windows and Linux ISOs work just fine.
  - pletnes 5y ago
    Same here - I have had issues with the other mentioned softwares but rarely with etcher. (I have had cards be seemingly broken and fail to image - I don’t think etcher was to blame. )
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      Seems to be hardware- and OS-dependent. Eons ago, don't know the version anymore I used it under Linux out of curiosity I guess, and because some project nagged about using it for verification of written images, or else. Anyways, that thing always complained about a bad checksum at the end, no matter which media, system, port, writer I used. And I always thought: Oh, really? And booted the failed checksum images flawlessly. To me this thing seemed like a stupid prank, adding no value over any other method. Even less so, considering the Electron crap. Btw. the writing checksummed perfectly fine with dd on all the media, hardware, system and ports I used. And don't bug me with did you file a bug? Why? They can bug off for all I care :)
tentacleuno 5y ago
I'm guessing the gigantic size is due to it bundling Chromium as it's an Electron app. I've been wondering why we still haven't fixed that problem with some form of compression (although I wonder how feasible that would be with binaries). Signal takes up 400MB, Element takes up 300MB. It just feels like way too much. Especially for an app like Etcher, which I'm guessing most people set-and-forget until they need it. Most people aren't constantly burning ISO's onto USB's.
- VRay 5y ago
  Yeah, the way we solved that is by including all the UI framework code in shared libraries bundled with the OS or separately installable. But for some reason people like to spaghetti-code in JavaScript inside a bloated web browser now
ravenstine 5y ago
Honestly, is 140 MB really a problem anymore? Like yeah, I don't like the idea that everything using Electron includes and runs an entire browser API every time they execute. But these days 140 MB is chump change. Unless you're on Hughesnet, I get the impression most users have the disk space and bandwidth to deal with a one-time download of 140 MB. Yes, it'd certainly be nice if it could be 5 MB instead. It's pretty stupid that applications of old could probably do the same stuff with even less than that, but today we just use applications as dumping grounds for imported modules. At the same time, I think we are kind of living in the past when it comes to being concerned about megabytes. Countless people stream gigabytes of video daily. The reason I am more concerned with browser APIs than bandwidth is because more code running in memory means more things to either potentially go wrong or be exploited. Even then, that's not really high on my list of concerns.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  When every application is an Electron application, you suddenly can only run one quarter of the number of applications concurrently. If your workflow depends on multiple applications running at the same time to remain efficient, that's not great. And no, I can't just "buy more RAM", because it might be soldered onto the mainboard, or out of the available budget range for such upgrades. That's without even getting into people that still have limited bandwidth in 2021.
  - ravenstine 5y ago
    Not every application is an Electron app and you have plenty of choices if you don't want to use Electron apps. It really depends on individual use. For instance, I am currently running at least 6 browser engine instances as I type this, probably more than that, and I just am not experiencing a meaningful performance hit that would cause me to get pissed at Electron. If that happens to you, then sure, I can't argue against that. But yours may not be everyone's experience. I am personally skeptical as to whether 140 MB (I'm pretty sure we were talking about binary size, not memory usage) is as big a problem as HN makes it out to be.
    - 5y ago
burnte 5y ago
Rufus is the best, IMO. Tiny amazing tool tha does exactly what it needs to do.
- charsi 5y ago
  Rufus is windows only. This is cross platform. Probably should have put it in the title.
afavour 5y ago
I see this from the reverse: while I strongly dislike that my day to day apps like Slack use Electron I couldn’t care less that Balana Etcher does. I use it every few months at most. It has features that the macOS Disk Utility does not so I still need it in my tool belt but if Electron allows Balana to make the thing more quickly and effectively then so be it. 140MB is not really notable to me in any way beyond irritating my OCD tendencies that know it could be smaller. That said, I imagine I’d have a different opinion if I used Balana Etcher like I do Slack: a lot, every day. I imagine some sysadmins out there somewhere do. So I’m glad they have a non-Electron alternative.
bityard 5y ago
$ ls -lh /usr/bin/dd -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 79K Dec 5 2020 /usr/bin/dd*
- JasonFruit 5y ago
  There is no reason not to use dd. Yes, its option syntax is weird; yes, it has its dangers. But all the GUI tool does is show you the danger with a confirmation dialog.
  - jrm4 5y ago
    You literally just mentioned two great reasons why not to use dd.
    - JasonFruit 5y ago
      The action you are performing — blasting away the contents of a disk — is inherently risky. Putting a nice GUI on it doesn't change that.

Uehreka 5y ago

Balena Etcher has been popular for a while and works really well, I’ve never seen it screw up. I’d honestly prize that reliability over download size, I have terabytes of space. If usbimager takes off and becomes the default, cool, but I’ll take boring reliable Etcher over some trendy new thing any day.

Isthatablackgsd 5y ago

Did anyone have a good experience with Balena Etcher? I don’t have a good runs with it, the boot process always failed to detect the files in the USB drive that was formatted by Etcher. BIOS couldn’t detect the partition or anything in that USB. I tried with various Linux distro and Windows ISOs, it just failed to load or not detectable in the booting. Even it couldn’t load a simple Gparted partition. The only one I found consistent working is Rufus, it always works for me. Gparted, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, various distro and it works great with Windows ISO (even there is a Windows Media Creator). Rufus is only one so far in my experience that handles everything perfectly. Rufus is basically VLC of USB bootable utility, whereas Balena Etcher is Windows Media Player without all of the codecs (the original window version, not the MPC-HC/BE).

cordite 5y ago
I've had a bad experience! After writing a usb boot disk, it automatically switched to my external drive media instead of selecting nothing at all. I had to do another and after plugging the same drive back in, I wrote to the external drive media instead. I lost several personal things that day and paid for some recovery software. The safe thing to do here was to not to automatically select some high-volume media.
ravenstine 5y ago
I haven't used Balena etcher in forever, but back when it came out it was a godsend. This was also during a time when I already had enough skills with the command line that writing images to drives on either Linux or Windows should have been easy. But I always ran into roadblocks. When I discovered Balena, everything just worked. I hope it didn't devolve into something that doesn't just work.
treesknees 5y ago
Yes, I've used Balena Etcher dozens of times from my Windows machine and I've never had a problem with it. Windows and Linux ISOs work just fine.
- pletnes 5y ago
  Same here - I have had issues with the other mentioned softwares but rarely with etcher. (I have had cards be seemingly broken and fail to image - I don’t think etcher was to blame. )
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Seems to be hardware- and OS-dependent. Eons ago, don't know the version anymore I used it under Linux out of curiosity I guess, and because some project nagged about using it for verification of written images, or else. Anyways, that thing always complained about a bad checksum at the end, no matter which media, system, port, writer I used. And I always thought: Oh, really? And booted the failed checksum images flawlessly. To me this thing seemed like a stupid prank, adding no value over any other method. Even less so, considering the Electron crap. Btw. the writing checksummed perfectly fine with dd on all the media, hardware, system and ports I used. And don't bug me with did you file a bug? Why? They can bug off for all I care :)

tentacleuno 5y ago

I'm guessing the gigantic size is due to it bundling Chromium as it's an Electron app. I've been wondering why we still haven't fixed that problem with some form of compression (although I wonder how feasible that would be with binaries). Signal takes up 400MB, Element takes up 300MB. It just feels like way too much. Especially for an app like Etcher, which I'm guessing most people set-and-forget until they need it. Most people aren't constantly burning ISO's onto USB's.

VRay 5y ago
Yeah, the way we solved that is by including all the UI framework code in shared libraries bundled with the OS or separately installable. But for some reason people like to spaghetti-code in JavaScript inside a bloated web browser now

ravenstine 5y ago

Honestly, is 140 MB really a problem anymore? Like yeah, I don't like the idea that everything using Electron includes and runs an entire browser API every time they execute. But these days 140 MB is chump change. Unless you're on Hughesnet, I get the impression most users have the disk space and bandwidth to deal with a one-time download of 140 MB. Yes, it'd certainly be nice if it could be 5 MB instead. It's pretty stupid that applications of old could probably do the same stuff with even less than that, but today we just use applications as dumping grounds for imported modules. At the same time, I think we are kind of living in the past when it comes to being concerned about megabytes. Countless people stream gigabytes of video daily. The reason I am more concerned with browser APIs than bandwidth is because more code running in memory means more things to either potentially go wrong or be exploited. Even then, that's not really high on my list of concerns.

selfhoster11 5y ago
When every application is an Electron application, you suddenly can only run one quarter of the number of applications concurrently. If your workflow depends on multiple applications running at the same time to remain efficient, that's not great. And no, I can't just "buy more RAM", because it might be soldered onto the mainboard, or out of the available budget range for such upgrades. That's without even getting into people that still have limited bandwidth in 2021.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  Not every application is an Electron app and you have plenty of choices if you don't want to use Electron apps. It really depends on individual use. For instance, I am currently running at least 6 browser engine instances as I type this, probably more than that, and I just am not experiencing a meaningful performance hit that would cause me to get pissed at Electron. If that happens to you, then sure, I can't argue against that. But yours may not be everyone's experience. I am personally skeptical as to whether 140 MB (I'm pretty sure we were talking about binary size, not memory usage) is as big a problem as HN makes it out to be.
  - 5y ago

burnte 5y ago

Rufus is the best, IMO. Tiny amazing tool tha does exactly what it needs to do.

charsi 5y ago
Rufus is windows only. This is cross platform. Probably should have put it in the title.

afavour 5y ago

I see this from the reverse: while I strongly dislike that my day to day apps like Slack use Electron I couldn’t care less that Balana Etcher does. I use it every few months at most. It has features that the macOS Disk Utility does not so I still need it in my tool belt but if Electron allows Balana to make the thing more quickly and effectively then so be it. 140MB is not really notable to me in any way beyond irritating my OCD tendencies that know it could be smaller. That said, I imagine I’d have a different opinion if I used Balana Etcher like I do Slack: a lot, every day. I imagine some sysadmins out there somewhere do. So I’m glad they have a non-Electron alternative.

bityard 5y ago

$ ls -lh /usr/bin/dd -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 79K Dec 5 2020 /usr/bin/dd*

JasonFruit 5y ago
There is no reason not to use dd. Yes, its option syntax is weird; yes, it has its dangers. But all the GUI tool does is show you the danger with a confirmation dialog.
- jrm4 5y ago
  You literally just mentioned two great reasons why not to use dd.
  - JasonFruit 5y ago
    The action you are performing — blasting away the contents of a disk — is inherently risky. Putting a nice GUI on it doesn't change that.