We have all been there, at least the one who had to install a new OS on either a new machine needed something called Live USB to be able to install a new OS or maybe we need incognito that is real incognito like say...I don't know, using Tails on someone's PC for god knows what, we generally also use Live USB.
What's Live USB Anyway?
In simpler terms, Live USB is a USB(hard drive, flash drive) that contains an OS image that can be booted on someone's PC and can be used as if that OS is installed already.
Not you Windows, naah
It's usually a Linux distro or something derived from that that is used as a tool like Clonezilla or Gparted.
Back then we used a CD, burn the iso to the CD then use it to install the OS.
How Useful It Is??
Live USB is very useful, it not only makes it easy to install OS but also very cool to "try out" a new OS, make sure we like it so we don't regret installing fresh and then regret that the OS is not too our expectation.
It's also useful to be incognito, Tails(The Amnesic Incognito Live System) is one of the OS designed to be used on Live USB and leaves no traces whatsoever once you shut down your session, perfect if you are either a journalist or idk, searching for stuff in the dark web that I won't talk about here.
You can watch old vids from LTT about Tails
How is Live USB usually Created?
Usually, most tutorials have you use either Rufus or Balena Etcher to burn the ISO that you downloaded to your drive, giving you a warning that it will need formatting of your drive to process, and then you get your Live USB ready to be used.
Many of us know this, many of us tried it, is it bad? no, it's not, it's almost foolproof.
however, it had one simple flaw, and that is
WE ONLY HAD ONE ISO ON EACH DRIVER
It's fine if you only need it to install a new OS and then be done, but what if you need more than one OS say Arch and Kali at the same time, or maybe you gonna want to compare a few OS at the same time, or just maniac at distrohopping, are you gonna create new live USB or you gonna bring one drive for one ISO? hope not yeah?
Victorinox of Live USB! or Leatherman idc!
That's where Ventoy comes to the rescue, it allows us to have one drive, to be a Live USB for multiple ISOs at the same time, which's quite neat especially if you do not want to bring a desktop or have few utilities ISO in hand to check the conditions of server, maybe.
How to use that????????????
First, download the tool of course, there's an exe for Windows and tar.gz for Linux and Mac, I'll use Linux as an example, and I'll use the web GUI they have for ease of use.
Optionally, if you want to make sure that the file you download isn't tampered you can do sha256sum to verify it.
once you are done verifying you can extract the file, and then see the content.
Since I will use Web GUI to demonstrate how easy it is I will type
sudo sh VentoyWeb.sh and yes, they need sudo permission.
Installing Ventoy to Your Drive
Since I will only give a look at the basic installation, I won't talk about the advanced stuff Ventoy has.
as you can see it detects my drive, installs, and updates (yes you can update the same way), and I will just click install, It's going to give you a double warning, and then bada-bing bada-bung it's done.
How to add your ISOs then?
Simple, Just copy-paste your ISOs to your installed drive, that's it.
then once you have your toys, you can boot from the USB and you will greeted by something like this.
cool isn't it??
Did I tell you it's open source??
well now you know, give the dev some love.
Ventoy
Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files.
With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk over and over, you just need to copy the image files to the USB drive and boot it
You can copy many image files at a time and ventoy will give you a boot menu to select them.
You can also browse ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files in local disk and boot them.
x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI and MIPS64EL UEFI are supported in the same way.
Both MBR and GPT partition style are supported in the same way.
Most type of OS supported(Windows/WinPE/Linux/Unix/ChromeOS/Vmware/Xen...)
1100+ ISO files are tested (List). 90%+ distros in distrowatch.com supported (Details).
Official Website: https://www.ventoy.net
Tested OS
Windows
Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server…
What can I do with it?
Well since you have multiple ISOs in your hand you don't need to worry whether you bring this drive if you need multiple ISOs.
or you can give your friends lists of choice right now if they want to switch to Penguin.
Personally, I bring a few popular ISOs like Fedora, Ubuntu LTS, EndeavourOS my personal choice and then Tails, and with OS-that-shall-not-be-named Windows and then a few Utilities like Gparted and Clonezilla, and since Ventoy is fine for me to bring other programs I bring some portable exe like Putty if I need to open SSH on random computer.
What do you think? I think it's quite cool, let's discuss it in the comment sections
cheers
Top comments (1)
Yeah it's frickin useful, and if you have dedicated drive for Live USB you can give it a spin