Tails started recommending Gnome Disks and Rufus.
I see Zorin recommends Rufus, Popsicle, and USBImager as alternatives to Balena Etcher. Install Zorin OS - Zorin Help
I am suggesting it'd be nice if Rufus or some cross-platform imager were the default recommendation. And that Balena Etcher were removed from recommendations.
Hoping to open a discussion on alternatives here too, I'm sure we want to avoid having two different imagers recommended, one for Linux/Mac and one for Windows. So it'd be nice if there was a simple-to-install cross platform option.
I stopped recommending Balena Etcher long before that, because it has a tendency to destroy flash drives. That alone gave me pause, but now their pushing ads too, which is ridiculous.
I recommend the use of Popsicle made by System76. It is a far better USB flasher tool, that actually works great, without destroying your USB stick. Its very simple, light weight, and no ads!
Yeah, recommendation to avoid Balena Etcher will find a fair bit of support on the forums. We relatively recently had another thread that temporarily derailed into a discussion of Etcher problems, and even aside from privacy (and that's a huge aside), the consensus was that it's the last thing to suggest. Nobara Linux used to recommend Balena on its website but now also suggests Ventoy.
ventoy is indeed a good one indeed, started to use it because you recommended it + it can add alot of iso’s which you can chose from during boot. Popsicle and rufus are good flashing tools too, i would love to see Zorin would recommend one of those.
rufus is really for Windows users. Ventoy is for Windows and Linux Users. Sadly, Balena Etcher (afaik) is the only USB image loader available for Mac Users. Not aware of any other USB image writers that caters for Mac Users. USBImager appears to be the current cross-platform contender, but there are others too:
I closed the other topic in light of your suggestion.
Initially, I was about to undergo the merge, but opted to close the extra thread instead. The reason for this was that merging them would change the O.P. to another member and the premise.
Re-reading and examining each point; I have reopened the thread. While the O.P. of the other thread asks about other etcher options; there is an underlying issue for an installation question that is separate from simply giving feedback about etcher software.
Yeah I use Popsicle as Appimage (so no install needed) and it's really simple and a way faster than Balena, and I also like too much my USB keys to not kill them
I have already destroyed 4 USB sticks with Balena Etcher and now only use Impression to create boot USB sticks. I no longer have any problems with Impression.
I feel you. I have been in the same situation. I hope what you said was a metaphor and didn't actually throw away 4 USB sticks?
Even though they may seem broken, all you have to do is to re-format them to the proper filesystem and they should be quite usable again.
While I'm at it, i might as well mention what i prefer. I went from being an all-time supporter of Rufus, i loved it. Sadly they don't have linux support, so i ended up switching to etcher when i entered the linux space. Down the road i ran into issues with that and have fallen in love with Ventoy since then, which has not disappointed me one bit! Ventoy has served me well for about 3 years now, imo its the best we have for now.
Etcher killed my usb drive 3 times i think before i switched to something else. I actually used diskpart to fix it. Let me do some digging and see if i can get you some more information on this. I am 120% confident that they are not broken.
I wouldn't be using Impression as it is a flatpak. I still have MultiSysten floating around somewhere, but not likely to cope with recent .iso's as it was built on Ubuntu 16.04.
