Ways to Make a Bootable Flash Drive in Linux

Fedora Media Writer¶

Fedora Media Writer is recommended for making bootable flash drives for Fedora Linux images.

Use Ventoy¶

Ventoy is the best graphical tool for making bootable flash drives currently. However, Ventoy doesn’t always work. For example, Ventoy is not compatible with Universal Blue Linux images.

Use the Command `dd` or `cat`¶

You can use

dd if=path_to_linux_image of=path_to_device bs=4M; sync

cat path_to_linux_image > path_to_device

to write a hybird Linux image into a flash drive. Note that you must use the whole device (e.g., /dev/sdb) not just a partition (e.g., /dev/sdb1) on the device. For a non-hybrid Linux image, you can make it hybid using the following command if it uses isolinux/syslinux technology.

isohybird path_to_linux_image

Be very careful when you run the above 2 commands (`dd` and `cat`)

, as they will erase the whole target device you specify. Accidentally providing a wrong device will make you lose all data on it!

Use the Command zcat¶

This is an even more manual way, which is not recommended.

`zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sdX
Mount the USB stick and copy a iso image to it.
Umount the USB stick.

Use the GUI Tool UNetbootin¶

Ventoy is a much better tool than UNetbootin now. Please use Ventoy instead.
If you create a boot flash drive for Ubuntu in Windows using UNetbootin or other softwares, then you’d better format the flash drive as FAT instead of FAT32. Otherwise, you might get the error information: “BOOTMGR is missing”.

Use the Universal Online Booting Tool netboot.me¶

Note that you must have an ethernet connection in order to use netboot.me. netboot.me is a fantastic tool for general purposes, but it has problems on some old computers.