Etcher

fox · May 16, 2017, 03:47:55 PM

Etcher is a relatively new application for burning images to SD cards or USB drives. Very user friendly and it seems to give more consistent results for making live USB drives for distros than other applications I have tried. (I also used it once for burning an image on an SD card.) Etcher is available for Linux, MacOSX and Windows; get it here. For Linux it comes in 32 and 64 bit versions in .dmg format. Click on the file and it installs itself.

Jason · May 18, 2017, 11:01:19 PM

Thanks! This looks cool. Don't think it's a .dmg file though. It doesn't end in that extension and Linux identifies it differently. But unzip it and it does install as easily as you mentioned. I assume that means you have to get a new version when it's available. Cool format. Hadn't heard of it before (or I did and just have forgotten which is just as likely).

fox · May 18, 2017, 11:51:46 PM

When you go to download it, it downloads as a .dmg. But I think you're right that once it is actually downloaded, it transforms itself into an appimage (.img?).

Jason · May 19, 2017, 01:42:09 AM

Quote from: fox on May 18, 2017, 11:51:46 PM
When you go to download it, it downloads as a .dmg. But I think you're right that once it is actually downloaded, it transforms itself into an appimage (.img?).

Really? That wasn't my experience at all. This screenshot is what I get when I click to download it. As you can also see in my previous terminal screenshot, it has no extension once unzipped.

An AppImage isn't a .img file; .img files are used for creating disks (floppies, CD/DVDs, and usb disks, basically like an .ISO. From Wikipedia:

"AppImage is a format for distributing portable software on Linux without needing superuser permissions to install the application. It tries also to allow Linux distribution-agnostic binary software deployment for application developers, also called Upstream packaging."

Not sure how I feel about letting apps be installed without superuser privileges but I guess since it can't touch the main OS, it's okay.

Are you sure you weren't using a Mac when you downloaded it? DMG is the default for a lot of Mac programs, no?

fox · May 19, 2017, 06:59:32 AM

I guess I must have been seeing things. I tried it again this morning, prepared to take a screenshot, and got the same zip file you did.

fox · May 24, 2017, 07:07:28 AM

Etcher can be used to make a USB installer of Arch Linux. Instructions on the Arch wiki are to use dd to make such an installer, so I'm guessing that Etcher is just a nice GUI wrapper for dd, in which case it should work with pretty much any distro (though maybe not Remix OS). One of the nice things about it, aside from its appearance, it that when it is generating the live USB/USB installer, it is fast and the progress (as shown by the % complete) is steady. This is in contrast to unetbootin, which makes fast progress at first and then stalls for what seems like a long time near the end of the installation.

Jason · May 24, 2017, 07:57:29 AM

It must be good. They added it to the Software Boutique on Ubuntu MATE 17.04

. I haven't tried it yet but I probably will be doing so soon.

Only recently did I realize that the team is constantly updating the Boutique, adding new programs, and occasionally removing some that have issues or finding better replacements.

fox · February 23, 2018, 03:02:43 PM

Etcher also worked successfully in making a live USB with an openSUSE Tumbleweed iso, which I tried today. I have yet to find any Linux distro it doesn't work with. Incidentally, I have used the Linux version of Etcher in all my attempts; never tried it in Windows or MacOS though I suspect it would work the same in either.