Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today I am starting a new series where I drop a beginner-level tip whenever I have a project change direction last minute. Let’s get started!
Multiboot USB
The biggest barrier to entry for installing Linux is creating your first installation media and booting to it. These days, it looks like downloading a program like either Rufus or Balena Etcher and burning a USB thumb drive with a 1 to 4 GB .ISO file, almost always turning the rest of your 8 to 64 GB USB drive into dead weight. If you intend to continue exploring Linux, it’s easy to get in the habit, and soon you will have a collection of spent USB drives mucking up your search for the one drive you saved to transfer text files or pictures.
The solution is to get a large USB and multiboot it using a utility like Ventoy or YUMI. My experience was with installing Ventoy from Linux, and it was as simple as creating any other USB-based bootable media. Since then, whenever I am instructed to “burn” a .ISO file to disk, I just copy it to Ventoy and it shows up.
What’s more is while I was researching for this post, I learned that it even comes with a Windows installer. As usual, be sure to offload any files you wish to keep as they will be lost while setting up Ventoy.
Takeaway
I consider my Ventoy USB to be the most useful tool in my possession. I highly recommend it for anyone learning Linux.
Final Question
With the entire array of Linux distributions to try out, which ones do you keep around on your master USB drive?
I look forward hearing your answers in the comments below or on my Socials.