Thanks, Liam. I was looking for the complicated one. :)
Aitor On Sun, 19 Mar 2023 at 17:22, Liam Proven <lpro...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, 18 Mar 2023 at 18:12, Aitor Santamaría <aitor...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > To those that have used/experience with RUFUS: what is the concept > behind it? > > Um. I am not sure I understand the question. Either it is a very very > simple question, or a very complicated one. > > Simple answer: > > Rufus is a Windows tool for making bootable USB keys from ISO images. > > Complicated answer: > > An "ISO" is a file containing an image of an optical disk (typically a > CD or a DVD). They are so named because the standard cross platform > on-disk format for optical media is ISO standard 9660, or ISO9660 for > short. DOS and DOS-based OSes couldn't support a 7-character file > extension when the format was ratified. > > To make a bootable USB, you need to write a bootloader onto a USB key > followed by the payload of the OS to be booted. Linux and other non-MS > OSes usually include this bootloader in the disk image, so you can > just bit-copy the ISO file to the raw USB device and it will boot. > > (This is partly because they use non-FAT-like filesystems so they put > a disk image of their native filesystem in the disk image, and a > bootloader). > > Windows ISOs won't, or not always, so you need a tool to install that > bootloader and then unpack the OS files into an ISO9660 like FS with > long filename extensions. Because the ISO9660 format is close enough > to a Windows format, the boot disk doesn't need the fancy virtual > filesystem stuff, so paradoxically the disk writing tools need to be > smarter because they need to do _more_ work. > > Rufus is a free tool to do this. It is good and reliably makes > bootable USB keys from Windows ISOs, which Linux tools can't always do > in my quite extensive experience. However, you need a running Windows > system _first_ so it poses a chicken-and-egg problem. To install > Windows you need Windows to make the boot media to load Windows. > Secondly, Rufus is very _very_ slow. It takes an hour or so. Linux > takes 5min to write a typical size of disk image. > > I regard it as obsolete since I discovered Ventoy. Ventoy does the > bootup logic internally, so just format a key with Ventoy and copy ISO > files onto it and it generates a boot menu on the fly and boots DOS or > Linux or Windows or whatever for you. > > Ventoy is great and a huge time saver and it just works, so I don't > usually use Rufus any more. > > -- > Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven > Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com > Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven > IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 > Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user >
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