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Balenca vs Ventoy? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm curious what the difference is between Balenca etcher and Ventoy for writing isos to a live USB for distro hopping purposes. I see both recommended in fourms. Is there any advantage to using one over the other? Are they both equally safe/secure?

I'm also curious about trying out new distros. I've been using LMDE for about a year now and it's been fine, but I want to expand my knowledge and see whether LMDE is my favorite distro or not. I'm not the most well versed in Linux and don't have any prior programming experience so a beginner/mid level distro is what I'm looking for. I want something I can test out without connecting to WiFi (so not arch).

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (15 children)

Balena Etcher is a writer that does one ISO at a time. Other similar options are Fedora Writer, Rufus, etc.

Ventoy is one that can do multiple ISOs and is generally easy to manage.

However, be aware that Ventoy has a lot of unknown code involved. There's binary blobs that the maintainer refuses to open source, so there's a big question over whether it's hiding some malware or is using unpatched packages. Nobody knows except the maintainer, and it's just his word saying it's safe. You could use it to test out ISOs, but I wouldn't personally use it to actually install a system.

Also, the Ventoy fanbois are pretty insufferable, and they tend to brigade anyone that speaks ill of Ventoy or its dev.

If you want something similar that's open source, Glim works and could be a good option; YUMI has been around for a while, but I dunno if it's still a good project or not.

Edit: typo

[–] AbidanYre 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (9 children)

Can you point to some discussion of the ventoy blobs? I had never heard about that and can't find anything that says it's not GPL3.

[–] Nibodhika 17 points 2 months ago (2 children)

This thread made me look at this issue. Realistically it's not a big issue, the VAST majority of the binary blobs are accounted for and have a script or a readme file that shows where they're downloaded from.

That being said I will take a serious look at alternatives.

[–] AbidanYre 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, that's pretty much where I landed after reading through it.

[–] AlphaAutist 1 points 2 months ago

Maybe they are thinking of iVentoy which is not open source but is by the same dev