What is your preferred tool for direct booting into ISOs ??

[smallhagrid]

I'm asking this after looking around here - finding lots of general info - and my query centers upon using Linux rather than windoze.

 

Now that I'm a full time Linux user there are some bootable tool ISOs that I really like to have around conveniently for my various tasks.

 

There's as many as a dozen of these ISOs, and keeping a bootable stick made for each one seems rather silly nowadays with the huge capacities of sticks. (I've pretty much moved 100% away from CD/DVD media, of course...)

 

I do not use UEFI, GPT & anything in my hands gets the hideous secure boot baloney turned off altogether - plain olf MBR is good enough for me.

 

The latest tool for this that I've run across is Ventoy, which has been posted about here at the forum many times already.

 

I seek opinions here regarding the best/easiest tool for making such a multi-boot ISO based stick, preferably under Linux as I have no windoze box running here anymore ??

 

Thanks for any education !!

 

PS - Ventoy related threads:

https://www.nsaneforums.com/topic/372817-ventoy-create-the-simplest-multiboot-usb-support-both-uefi-and-legacy/?do=findComment&comment=1586466

 

https://www.nsaneforums.com/topic/376266-how-to-create-multiboot-usb-flash-drive/#comment-1607408

 

 

https://www.nsaneforums.com/topic/375482-guidereview-another-look-at-the-open-source-bootable-usb-tool-ventoy/?tab=comments#comment-1596272

 

[Dodel]

9 minutes ago, smallhagrid said:

I'm asking this after looking around here - finding lots of general info - and my query centers upon using Linux rather than windoze.

 

Now that I'm a full time Linux user there are some bootable tool ISOs that I really like to have around conveniently for my various tasks.

 

There's as many as a dozen of these ISOs, and keeping a bootable stick made for each one seems rather silly nowadays with the huge capacities of sticks. (I've pretty much moved 100% away from CD/DVD media, of course...)

 

I do not use UEFI, GPT & anything in my hands gets the hideous secure boot baloney turned off altogether - plain olf MBR is good enough for me.

 

The latest tool for this that I've run across is Ventoy, which has been posted about here at the forum many times already.

 

I seek opinions here regarding the best/easiest tool for making such a multi-boot ISO based stick, preferably under Linux as I have no windoze box running here anymore ??

 

Thanks for any education !!

 

PS - Ventoy related threads:

https://www.nsaneforums.com/topic/372817-ventoy-create-the-simplest-multiboot-usb-support-both-uefi-and-legacy/?do=findComment&comment=1586466

 

https://www.nsaneforums.com/topic/376266-how-to-create-multiboot-usb-flash-drive/#comment-1607408

 

 

https://www.nsaneforums.com/topic/375482-guidereview-another-look-at-the-open-source-bootable-usb-tool-ventoy/?tab=comments#comment-1596272

 

 

I've no experience using this app, but UNetbootin  seems to be a decent alternative, or Easy2Boot.

 

I've only built my sticks under dozey using Winsetupusb.

[smallhagrid]

Thanks for replying Dodel.

 

UNetbootin is very windoze oriented and is about installing OSes for livebooting on a stick from ISOs rather than just booting the ISOs directly.

 

E2B (under Linux) requires sticks to be partitioned, which can be quite problematic later on - having such an app just reformat & use the stick with 1 partition is much simpler & more reliable IMO.

 

XP was my final windoze & for me there is no going back.

[mp68terr]

Had been using easy2boot for years, recently moved to ventoy. Like their just-put-isoS-there way. AFAIK ventoy has both a win and linux interface (while easy2boot and associated  .exe and .cmd require win), ventoy does not need files to be contiguous. Never used unetbootin or any other tool to directly boot from isos.

https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/releases/tag/v1.0.15

[stylemessiah2]

easy2boot.com

 

Used it for eons

 

Now boots UEFI without needing to create .PTN files for most ISO's like it used to

 

Total win, havent had a single issue booting UEFI yet

[neofita]

+1 for Ventoy

[smallhagrid]

As mentioned before - Easy2boot does not seem like a great option for this Linux user.

 

Zero UEFI - don't touch it except to shut it off - BIOS ONLY for me !!

 

Desired process=>

1. Make the stick as simply & easily as possible;

2. Copy in ISOs as desired;

3. Boot into any ISO chosen.

[haris_sane69]

+2 for Ventoy

List of tested ISO files:

https://www.ventoy.net/en/isolist.html

 

Regards.

[smallhagrid]

Such a wonderfully helpful thread this has turned out to be - Thanks !!!

 

So - I finally got my act together, stuck Ventoy on a 16GB stick, and gave it an assortment of 7 ISOs to try - a mixed bag of Linux, WinPE2 & WinPE3 things - then tested 'em all.

 

Wow.

Exactly what I've been hoping for - truly, perfection in its simplicity.

 

The only gripe I found is that even though there is no UEFI in use on that box - Ventoy wants to start in that mode, then fails - so I needed to do an extra few steps at each test to bypass that.

(Its doc file says it defaults to non-UEFI, but that appears to be incorrect.)

 

Even the normally super-slow Macrium boot time I've seen with 'made' media is greatly improved.

 

Now I wonder if Ventoy is able to be installed onto a HDD to use as a boot manager as well, somehow ??

Having the ability to multi-boot with lots of tool ISOs and also an installed OS or 2 would be quite useful.

That would come as close as possible to having a sort of bare metal system with a bunch of bootable VMs, but minus the complications of the very limited technology at present for doing that.

 

Thanks Again for all the helpful replies Folks !!

[uffbros]

Ventoy disappointed me...I went to a customers home to reinstall windows and the computer wouldn't even recognize my USB in startup boot..Yes I even disabled secure boot in the bios. I installed the ventoy with the option for UEFI too. 

[smallhagrid]

My efforts with this tool are unrelated with installing any OS - so I cannot give any ideas about that - except for this:

When installing Linux via USB media into very recent h/w, I ran into the sticks not being seen by a system at all - even though they worked perfectly in a couple of others.

 

Digging into this via searching for terms like unrecognized USB, I found plenty of info about other BIOS settings such as legacy mode & a couple of others that literally took fiddling with to get both USB2 & USB3 ports working both within and outside of the installed OS.

 

The changes to h/w in recent years have proven to be quite unfriendly IMO.

 

As to Ventoy & UEFI - I may have missed a switch for turning it off so I'll have to look again...

What I recall seeing was mention of it defaulting to non-UEFI, which is not what it did for me - but that may have also related with default BIOS settings that cannot be shut off, sadly (I checked).

 

Best Wishes.

[donkey-girl]

As for now I will stick to Rufus, when ventoy is fully tested all in one click I might give it a chance.

[Krinal]

On 7/28/2020 at 9:03 AM, uffbros said:

Ventoy disappointed me...I went to a customers home to reinstall windows and the computer wouldn't even recognize my USB in startup boot..Yes I even disabled secure boot in the bios. I installed the ventoy with the option for UEFI too. 

You should keep another USB made Bootable with Rufus. Because Ventoy is new and there may be many bugs. So it will be wiser approach to keep spare USB for windows installation.

Ventoy is much more useful for PEs and all Bootable stuff.

 

 

 

[uffbros]

Windows 10 installs are from bootable media.....