Ventoy makes reinstalling operating systems or testing Linux distros much easier.
Install Ventoy once, then simply copy ISO files to your USB drive, no need to reformat it every time you add another image. It also supports multiple operating systems, Secure Boot, persistence, and many rescue tools.
GitHub: https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy
More details: https://digitalescapetools.com/tools/tool.html?id=ventoy
More privacy-friendly tools: https://digitalescapetools.com/
It is open sourceish. There have been some binaries that have unclear provenance that were committed into the source. The creator was working on fixing those issues though.
Thats still a problem? Damn that seems like it was years ago that it was raised.
Seems to be. There is also 800 issues open, which suggests they might be drowning a bit.
I’m an IT guy and this tool is one of the most used I have for installing bare metal. Very useful indeed.
Is this back in Vogue? I used to love this, then something happened security wise, and everyone got out their pitchforks. I still used it, works great.
Glad to see whatever happened has unhappened 🤣
Ventoy is fucking awesome!
Why do you need an alternative? Rufus is great.
with a ventoy usb stick, all you have to do is copy bootable .iso over. that’s it. you get a menu at boot to pick one.
it’s extremely convenient.
This is the main reason I use Ventoy.
I have a small external drive and I just dump multiple ISO files on it and then select whichever one I want at boot, I don’t have to keep formatting and making new bootable drives.
You can put them all on one USB instead of trying to remember which color thumb drive has which version of which distro… nice.
the iso don’t even all need to be on the same ventoy, either… since you can browse other disks and boot .iso off those, too.
It does mean you have to repackage isos if you want to include/update files.
For example, it made an automated.xml file for windows install a lot more complicated. But now I have a very nicely scripted iso builder for customised windows installations (I work in the events industry, so things like digital signage and show machines can be 95% configured before I even have to interact with it).
It’s still windows, but it’s now hands free from iso boot to being able to use it with the software and settings I want.Ventoy, as far as I know, uses image files only, so if you are making changes to your files then my best guess is you will need to update the ISO or rebuild it.
I mainly use it for distro hopping, I will download the latest version of a Linux distro to give it a try. Got quite a few on my bootable drive. So I never update any files other than replacing the ISO I had been using for a certain distro.
I think Ventoy would work in your case if you needed to carry around more than one version of the automated Windows install you are using.
And you can keep both data and isos on it
- Rufus is windows only
- Rufus still requires formatting the drive every time, and is limited to one OS per drive. An overly reductionist take is that it is basically a fancy wrapper to dd. Ventoy is way more brain-dead to use - format once, just drag and drop multiple isos, and the ventoy menu will let you choose which to iso to boot into.
I have a thumbdrive with Ventoy on my desk at this very moment. It’s super handy. I keep a live CD type distro on it, and my install media for Nixos and stuff.
I have like half a dozen, plus a couple old laptop SSD’s in enclosures with a bunch of software so I can build almost anything - pick an OS, an choose your software. Several different windows versions and Linux distros on there.
That’s hot!
it’s awesome, but there are a few things that don’t boot or boot correctly off one. for those, i just use gnome disks to ‘restore’ an image, and overwrite a temporary usb when i need to.
Amazing! Just when i needed it too
