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The author mentions they don’t “trust” VenToy yet (they don’t state which kind of trust) my question is why? I’ve used VenToy just fine for a while now. Am I m

The author mentions they don’t “trust” VenToy yet (they don’t state which kind of trust) my question is why? I’ve used VenToy just fine for a while now. Am I missing something?

theblazehen 4y ago
In my experience, it doesn't handle "unusual" boot disks well. For example, images not using GRUB / ISOLINUX, or the usual modern windows bootloader. I've had issues with Haiku OS and Redox OS for some examples. I still keep a VenToy disk for most uses, and another one for when VenToy doesn't work
- satysin 4y ago
  Yes I would sort of expect it to struggle/fail with more unique disc images. I only ever use it with official ISOs for this reason. If I don't see the OS listed on the compatibility list I tend to not waste my time seeing if it works or not.
dspillett 4y ago
I read that as VenToy being relatively new to them, compared to years of using a stick per OS, and they'not found enough time to play to prove it would work in all circumstances they might need/want it to.
- satysin 4y ago
  Fair point. I would highly recommend to the author they take an hour and try it out. The amount of time VenToy as saved me over the past few years has to be in the 100+ hour range by now. Fantastic little tool.
Retr0id 4y ago
I'm not OP, but I've had all sorts of bad experiences getting "non-official" bootable USB media to work properly, in various edge-cases and weird hardware. And by "official", I mean an .iso or .img directly dd'ed onto a drive - this is the setup that I've found to be most reliable. I haven't tried Ventoy, and I suspect things are slightly nicer these days now that EFI has matured, but I'm personally not prepared to spend any longer than necessary debugging why my bootable USB isn't working properly.
- satysin 4y ago
  This makes sense, I guess when I read they didn't "trust" VenToy my brain went to "I worry it might modify my install ISO with malware" or similar rather than the reliability/compatibility aspect. I've not used VenToy with anything but official ISOs so cannot comment to more unique uses but I've never had an issue with the official images of Fedora, Debian, Windows, Ubuntu, etc. For me VenToy has been great at making life a little easier and saves me time. I have a 128GB USB drive with two dozen ISOs on it. Much easier to work with the one drive vs half a dozen I have to keep rewriting ISOs onto.
- GTP 4y ago
  For what is worth, I use Ventoy and it works very well for me. Only problem is it fails to boot if you have secure boot enabled, but I didn't even try to look for a solution since I don't use it anyway. So maybe there's an easy way to have it signed so it works with secure boot too.
duffyjp 4y ago
Depends on what he's using it for. Ventoy won't boot on lots of intel Macs and certain questionable EFI systems. If they're refurbishing machines and time is more important having separate USB sticks for each OS is worth not having to fiddle with it.

The author mentions they don’t “trust” VenToy yet (they don’t state which kind of trust) my question is why? I’ve used VenToy just fine for a while now. Am I missing something?

theblazehen 4y ago

In my experience, it doesn't handle "unusual" boot disks well. For example, images not using GRUB / ISOLINUX, or the usual modern windows bootloader. I've had issues with Haiku OS and Redox OS for some examples. I still keep a VenToy disk for most uses, and another one for when VenToy doesn't work

satysin 4y ago
Yes I would sort of expect it to struggle/fail with more unique disc images. I only ever use it with official ISOs for this reason. If I don't see the OS listed on the compatibility list I tend to not waste my time seeing if it works or not.

dspillett 4y ago

I read that as VenToy being relatively new to them, compared to years of using a stick per OS, and they'not found enough time to play to prove it would work in all circumstances they might need/want it to.

satysin 4y ago
Fair point. I would highly recommend to the author they take an hour and try it out. The amount of time VenToy as saved me over the past few years has to be in the 100+ hour range by now. Fantastic little tool.

Retr0id 4y ago

I'm not OP, but I've had all sorts of bad experiences getting "non-official" bootable USB media to work properly, in various edge-cases and weird hardware. And by "official", I mean an .iso or .img directly dd'ed onto a drive - this is the setup that I've found to be most reliable. I haven't tried Ventoy, and I suspect things are slightly nicer these days now that EFI has matured, but I'm personally not prepared to spend any longer than necessary debugging why my bootable USB isn't working properly.

satysin 4y ago
This makes sense, I guess when I read they didn't "trust" VenToy my brain went to "I worry it might modify my install ISO with malware" or similar rather than the reliability/compatibility aspect. I've not used VenToy with anything but official ISOs so cannot comment to more unique uses but I've never had an issue with the official images of Fedora, Debian, Windows, Ubuntu, etc. For me VenToy has been great at making life a little easier and saves me time. I have a 128GB USB drive with two dozen ISOs on it. Much easier to work with the one drive vs half a dozen I have to keep rewriting ISOs onto.
GTP 4y ago
For what is worth, I use Ventoy and it works very well for me. Only problem is it fails to boot if you have secure boot enabled, but I didn't even try to look for a solution since I don't use it anyway. So maybe there's an easy way to have it signed so it works with secure boot too.

duffyjp 4y ago

Depends on what he's using it for. Ventoy won't boot on lots of intel Macs and certain questionable EFI systems. If they're refurbishing machines and time is more important having separate USB sticks for each OS is worth not having to fiddle with it.