I’m curious what the difference is between Balenca etcher and Ventoy for writing isos to a live USB for distro hopping purposes. I see both recommended in fourms. Is there any advantage to using one over the other? Are they both equally safe/secure?

I’m also curious about trying out new distros. I’ve been using LMDE for about a year now and it’s been fine, but I want to expand my knowledge and see whether LMDE is my favorite distro or not. I’m not the most well versed in Linux and don’t have any prior programming experience so a beginner/mid level distro is what I’m looking for. I want something I can test out without connecting to WiFi (so not arch).

  • @merthyr1831@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    63 months ago

    ventoy is nice in that I can just dump ISOs to a single USB and take it around, but balena is one of many boot media tools that’s useful if you need a single ISO for a system - fast.

    • @IceFoxX@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      13 months ago

      What is faster about always flashing the required ISO instead of selecting it more quickly in the boot loader?

      • nanook
        link
        fedilink
        13 months ago

        @IceFoxX @merthyr1831 I just keep a handful of color coded thumb drives. I know the red one for example is Ubuntu-Mate 24.04, the black one Win10, the yellow, Gparted Live disk, the Green Boot-Repair, etc.

      • @merthyr1831@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        13 months ago

        Eh nothing really, but if you don’t have a Ventoy set up and you just need an image burned it’s more convenient to just use balena or something else.

        • @IceFoxX@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          13 months ago

          Ah ok. Haven’t used anything other than ventoy for ages. I may have used drivedroid on the side because you can boot from Android (requires root) and you always have the smartphone with you anyway. But I haven’t used it for ages either.