Tails - Replacing balenaEtcher with Rufus as installer for Windows
tails.net

I am shocked by this - the quote in below is very concerning:

“However, in 2024, the situation changed: balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties.”

Can’t see myself using this software anymore…

  • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    203·
    2 days ago

    Just use dd. It’s not that hard. You pass it 2 arguments: if= the file you want to flash, and of= the destination. If you’re feeling fancy, pass in some status=progress. And don’t forget to prepend it with sudo. That’s it.

    • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
      11·
      2 days ago

      I just tried this the other day and was unable to boot from the USB. Any chance you could shed some light on what I might have screwed up?

      The command was:

      dd if=fedora.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=4M status=progress

      The USB stick was not mounted and the fedora image was verified. The command completed successfully but I couldn’t boot from it. When I used fedora writer to burn the same image to the same USB stick it booted no problem.

      Edit: spelling & capitalization

          • Rogue@feddit.uk
            16·
            2 days ago

            You didn’t screw up, you beautifully proved why the CLI is never a simple solution.

            • Abnorc@lemm.ee
              2·
              2 days ago

              This is why people trying to pass this as a primary option baffle me a bit. dd is not that bad in isolation, but all of these little commands add up.

              If we want Linux to be mainstream, we need to accept that most users aren’t going to be linux enthusiasts. They just want a PC that works normally.

            • admin@sh.itjust.works
              1·
              2 days ago

              It reminded me when I told a coworker he could force the Windows shutdowns with the command 'shutdown -p -f" from either a Run.exe or a cmd window.

              Then he said it wasn’t working, and that the cmd window would just open and close quickly but no shutdown.

              Imagine my surprise when he was doing shutdown -pf .

      • Maiq@lemy.lol
        3·
        2 days ago

        Did you make sure that the of is correct? lsblk to make sure.

        If your sure it wrote to the right drive i would make sure that you have a good download. Did you run your checksums?

        I think fedora works with secureboot but you might want to disable it just to see if that is the issue. I believe you can reenable it after install.

        Make sure to go into the bios and boot from external drive/usb.

        Out of 15 years of using dd i have never had a problem.

        • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
          2·
          2 days ago

          I did verify with lsblk, with a listing before and after plugging in the stick to be absolutely sure.

          I also did verify the checksum of the ISO.

          I’ll double check SecureBoot, but as I mentioned, the same ISO written to the same stick with Fedora writer did boot in the same machine it wouldn’t boot from with the dd version.

          I know it’s something I did or didn’t do to make it work correctly, so this is not me trying to dunk on dd, just trying to understand what I did wrong.

          • Maiq@lemy.lol
            1·
            2 days ago

            just trying to understand what I did wrong.

            You might not have done anything wrong.

            There is also the possibility of a bad USB drive or write memory failure. There is lots of things that could go wrong that’s not your fault. Might try a different USB or a different USB port on your machine.

            You might want to try zeroing out the USB, if=/dev/zero. Then you might need to make a new partition table. You can use something like gparted. Or https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-manipulate-partition-tables-with-fdisk-cfdisk-and-sfdisk-on-linux

            You can try GPT or DOS. I dont think it matters.

            Not sure if the ISO will have the partition table so you might want make the new partition table just to be sure the stick defiantly has one. If dd overwrites it from the iso no harm no foul.

            Thats all the troubleshooting steps I can think of right now.