Tails - Replacing balenaEtcher with Rufus as installer for Windows
tails.net

I am shocked by this - the quote in below is very concerning:

“However, in 2024, the situation changed: balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties.”

Can’t see myself using this software anymore…

  • SpatchyIsOnline@lemmy.world
    4·
    7 hours ago

    Here’s a wildcard people might not know about: Raspberry Pi Imager

    I use it because it’s faster than Etcher and it also has a bunch of quick links to download popular images (mainly for RPI and other arm-based SBCs) in one click which is handy if you use those regularly.

  • BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world
    13·
    13 hours ago

    Wow, I was not aware of that. I really liked balena. Thankfully, I haven’t been using it since installing Mint.

  • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    142·
    14 hours ago

    Just use dd. It’s not that hard. You pass it 2 arguments: if= the file you want to flash, and of= the destination. If you’re feeling fancy, pass in some status=progress. And don’t forget to prepend it with sudo. That’s it.

    • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
      8·
      14 hours ago

      I just tried this the other day and was unable to boot from the USB. Any chance you could shed some light on what I might have screwed up?

      The command was:

      dd if=fedora.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=4M status=progress

      The USB stick was not mounted and the fedora image was verified. The command completed successfully but I couldn’t boot from it. When I used fedora writer to burn the same image to the same USB stick it booted no problem.

      Edit: spelling & capitalization

          • Rogue@feddit.uk
            9·
            11 hours ago

            You didn’t screw up, you beautifully proved why the CLI is never a simple solution.

            • Abnorc@lemm.ee
              2·
              1 hour ago

              This is why people trying to pass this as a primary option baffle me a bit. dd is not that bad in isolation, but all of these little commands add up.

              If we want Linux to be mainstream, we need to accept that most users aren’t going to be linux enthusiasts. They just want a PC that works normally.

      • Maiq@lemy.lol
        3·
        12 hours ago

        Did you make sure that the of is correct? lsblk to make sure.

        If your sure it wrote to the right drive i would make sure that you have a good download. Did you run your checksums?

        I think fedora works with secureboot but you might want to disable it just to see if that is the issue. I believe you can reenable it after install.

        Make sure to go into the bios and boot from external drive/usb.

        Out of 15 years of using dd i have never had a problem.

        • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
          2·
          12 hours ago

          I did verify with lsblk, with a listing before and after plugging in the stick to be absolutely sure.

          I also did verify the checksum of the ISO.

          I’ll double check SecureBoot, but as I mentioned, the same ISO written to the same stick with Fedora writer did boot in the same machine it wouldn’t boot from with the dd version.

          I know it’s something I did or didn’t do to make it work correctly, so this is not me trying to dunk on dd, just trying to understand what I did wrong.

          • Maiq@lemy.lol
            1·
            10 hours ago

            just trying to understand what I did wrong.

            You might not have done anything wrong.

            There is also the possibility of a bad USB drive or write memory failure. There is lots of things that could go wrong that’s not your fault. Might try a different USB or a different USB port on your machine.

            You might want to try zeroing out the USB, if=/dev/zero. Then you might need to make a new partition table. You can use something like gparted. Or https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-manipulate-partition-tables-with-fdisk-cfdisk-and-sfdisk-on-linux

            You can try GPT or DOS. I dont think it matters.

            Not sure if the ISO will have the partition table so you might want make the new partition table just to be sure the stick defiantly has one. If dd overwrites it from the iso no harm no foul.

            Thats all the troubleshooting steps I can think of right now.

    • utubas@lemm.ee
      4·
      14 hours ago

      Ventoy uses several blobs without any instructions of compiling them yourself?

  • xttweaponttx@sh.itjust.works
    13·
    19 hours ago

    Balenaetcher has, for me at least, failed to write to USBs for the last 3 years or so that I’ve tried to use it - meanwhile random iso writers from flatpak have been more reliable for me. Very obnoxious that so many iso related sites recommend it. Rufus, kicks tons of ass, if for whatever reason you’re still on windows.

    Also on most distros I’ve tried, the disk utility has some sort of right click or context menu that gets you a ‘restore disk image’ button that works great as well.

  • Atlas_@lemmy.world
    18·
    20 hours ago

    Rufus is great! I worked with the maintainer to fix a bug in hardware they didn’t have and it was a very pleasant experience.

  • PullPantsUnsworn@lemmy.mlEnglish
    30·
    1 day ago

    Is no one aware of Fedora Media Writer? It’s FOSS and the most trustworthy ISO burning software in existence. It’s only issue is that its named as if it is written only for producing Fedora bootable media. It works for everything.

      • Rowan Thorpe@lemmy.ml
        4·
        23 hours ago

        The article at the end mentions they suggest dd as alternative for MacOS (due to Unix user space). It seems the balena -> rufus decision is about the easiest-onramp Mac+Win-portable option, for those uncomfortable dropping to low-level device-writing CLI tools in their current system.

        Side-note: Last time I was on a friend’s Windows I installed dd simply enough both as mingw-w64 (native compiled) and under Cygwin. So for Windows users who are comfortable using dd it only requires a minor step. When I once used WSL devices were accessible too, but that was WSL1 (containerized), whereas WSL2 (virtualized) probably makes device-mapping complex(?) enough to not be worth it there.

        • desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          1·
          20 hours ago

          WSL2 has relatively easy (a few powershell commands iirc) device mounting, provided you aren’t trying to mount C: or the windows install drive (not necessarily the same).

          • Rowan Thorpe@lemmy.ml
            1·
            16 hours ago

            Thanks, that’s good to know, but for raw-writing a bootable image to a device do you (or anyone reading) know if there are also straightforward powershell commands for mapping devices at the block level? (as opposed to mounting at filesystem level)

  • pH3ra@lemmy.ml
    411·
    1 day ago

    If you need a FOSS, cross platform GUI for bootable USB sticks, Raspberry Pi Imager is a really good solution.
    It is mainly used to flash SD cards for RPIs, but also you can burn any ISO on any support with it.

    • phar@lemmy.ml
      6·
      20 hours ago

      I used to use the fedora media writer but the RPi imager software is so easy I switched

    • Firnin@feddit.org
      6·
      1 day ago

      It is indeed the best way, but somehow I am still anxious using this command, even after flashing countless USB drives 😅

      • memphis@sopuli.xyz
        3·
        22 hours ago

        I’ve made it a habit to type out the command without sudo at first, then when it yells at me about permissions I am reminded to go back and double-check.

        • madame_gaymes@programming.devEnglish
          2·
          20 hours ago

          I know, but just because someone doesn’t understand something or ignores it doesn’t mean it isn’t the best/simplest choice for 90% of cases.

      • dev_null@lemmy.ml
        22·
        20 hours ago

        It’s faster to drag and drop a downloaded ISO and choose the target from a dropdown, than do it on a command line. And get a progress bar. As much as command line is usually faster, it isn’t in this case.

        Yes you can also get a progress bar on the command line but it’s more typing again, and realistically you need to look the option up every time if you use dd once every 3 months.

        • madame_gaymes@programming.devEnglish
          3·
          20 hours ago

          Lmao. Uses a computer, typing is too much. It took more typing to write your comment than to craft a tab-completed dd command, even if you had to call the help menu to refresh your available options, jus’ sayin’

          I get it though, the general public are scared of the big bad 'puter magic and need GUIs.

            • madame_gaymes@programming.devEnglish
              2·
              16 hours ago

              Shhh, that’s too advanced. Besides, CLI is outdated and slower than GUIs, this is just insane behavior /s

              I honestly didn’t even need to specify tab-completed. It’s still less typing than their comment unless your paths are miles long.

          • dev_null@lemmy.ml
            11·
            19 hours ago

            Let me try: Lmao. Uses a computer, still does stuff the slower way because learning new things is too difficult.

            To be serious, I am looking for the best solutions for my use cases, not adequate ones. Yes dd works perfectly fine and as you noted doesn’t take long to use anyway. But just because it’s fine doesn’t mean other approaches aren’t better.

            A GUI tool can offer or take a list of download URLs for common distros so downloading isn’t a separate step, it can check if the target device is a flash drive and not a hard drive by mistake, it can automatically choose the optimal block size for the device, it can verify the process by reading it back from the device, can show you the current filesystem, label, and usage of the target device to confirm, it can handle flashing to multiple devices at the same time with separate and total progress bars.

            If I wanted to do all that on the command line it’d be quite a lot of commands or a sizeable script to write. Or I can use a simple dd command and lose out on all of the above. Either way it’s a worse option. I will only use dd when a GUI tool isn’t installed, or when I’m on a system without a DE.

            • madame_gaymes@programming.devEnglish
              1·
              11 hours ago

              We will have to agree to disagree.

              At least you came back with reasons beyond “I don’t like typing.”

              ETA: > learning new things is too difficult.

              I could use this argument for folks that don’t want to learn CLI as well, doesn’t really track in either direction.