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Do you distro-hop on Linux often? Ventoy might be the tool you're looking for and it's quite possibly my new best friend.

What is it? Ventoy is a free and open source application that you can stick on a USB drive, which allows you to create a reusable system for booting ISO/WIM/IMG/EFI files. Instead of wiping your USB drives over and over with new distributions, Ventoy lets you just dump the files onto the drive, reboot and get an easy list of distributions to boot.

It's a tool that I'm definitely going to be getting plenty of use from. Could end up saving quite a bit of time, all you need to do to test something out directly once setup is just dump the file onto a drive and reboot. During my own testing, it works exactly as described.

However, it doesn't work with everything. It does have a pretty huge set of compatible files but some don't show up or have other issues. It's an evolving project under constantly development and improvements, so over time more and more will be supported it with it, even so it's a wonderful bit of software that's worth highlighting. So next time you're feeling a little of this, perhaps give Ventoy a try.

See the official site here and on GitHub.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Apps, Open Source
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly.
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nitroflow Aug 30, 2020
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: GuestI installed my current system ten years ago, and am still using it exclusively

So, I do not think I qualify as a distro-hopper… I guess I distro-settled a looong time ago.

Thought the same... I had my system over 15 years, until I couldn't figure out a problem... created by 15 years old config files nobody tested against anymore. :-) Reinstalled the same distribution.

So, why distro-hopping when there's [insert your favourite distribution here]? ;-)

This is much more invaluable if you do any kind of support as you only need a single usb drive to recover data, resize partitions, install any version of windows, wipe windows account password, etc.
wvstolzing Sep 1, 2020
Quoting: Hohlraumhttps://netboot.xyz/ wants you to hold it's beer :)

I was about to say that Ventoy sounds like an offline PXE boot server.

I see now that netboot.xyz has a self-hosting option which is very interesting -- because manually setting up PXE or iPXE, a TFTP server, etc. can be a pain in the butt; and some distros don't play nice with it at all (e.g. I've yet to figure out how to make an entry for Debian *alongside* other distros; while Debian does provide a ready made setup, it demands to work alone). If this makes that procedure easy, with the added peace of mind of local hosting, then it could be really useful. Having a couple of live cds that live inside your router is quite useful in case of emergencies.
scirocco Dec 19, 2020
Its updated and now works very well with most distros, I am using ventoy on an external ssd now for fast installs. Its great since I try new distros all the time atleast a couple of installs a week.
winkee Jan 14, 2021
After creating a USB bootable drive using ventoy, I plug the USB drive into a Linux machine and try to mount it, there is an error saying "special device /dev/sdb does not exist.
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