Looking for recommendations for a versatile USB stick with Ventoy. I’m trying to create the “perfect, all-in-all” USB stick using Ventoy to store various ISOs and rescue tools. So far, I have the following ISOs:

  • Arch
  • OpenSuse TW
  • NixOS
  • Bazzite + AuroraDX
  • Win10 ISO
  • Clonezilla

I’m looking for suggestions on additional ISOs or tools that are compatible with Ventoy. What do you recommend adding to make my USB stick to make it more useful?

  • @RockyC@lemm.eeEnglish
    16•9 months ago

    Do yourself a favor and skip the USB drive - they are ridiculously slow compared to a compact external SSD. I found a cheap m.2 enclosure on Amazon and put an old SSD in it and the speed difference is breathtaking.

    My SSD has a bunch of Linux distros grouped into folders along with Windows 10 & 11, every macOS from 10.13 to present, along with Rescuezilla, Hiren’s and a few others I can’t remember at the moment.

    Rescuezilla was my #1 go-to during my days of distro hopping. Makes it super easy to try out a distro on bare metal instead of a VM.

  • RandomLegend [He/Him]English
    10•9 months ago

    Looking at my Ventoy stick i have multiple folders for different OS:

    Arch_Based:

    • CachyOS
    • Garuda

    Debian_Based:

    • Debian Bookworm
    • Mint
    • Zorin OS

    Fedora_Based:

    • Fedora Silverblue
    • Nobara

    GamingBox

    • Bazzite
    • ChimeraOS

    ServerOS:

    • Ubuntu Server
    • TrueNAS Scale

    Windows:

    • Tiny10
    • Tiny11

    Tools:

    • Avira Rescue System
    • SuperGrub2
    • UBCD
    • Sips'OPEnglish
      1•9 months ago

      Thanks for sharing! What size is your usb-stick?

        • Sips'OPEnglish
          1•9 months ago

          Ohhh I’ve meant to try out netbootxyz for a while now, thanks for the reminder!

          • RandomLegend [He/Him]
            3•9 months ago

            you’re welcome!

            to be fair, it’s more of a gimmick when using it in your home. I have a notebook that i use to test out new distros on and i can hook it up to my LAN and quickly install something without whipping out the USB stick.

            Also the mini gaming pc hooked to my TV is a victim of being reinstalled every couple months after i tinker around too much.

  • @lorentz@feddit.itEnglish
    6•9 months ago

    Back to the days I was fixing a lot of computers of friends and relatives, my Swiss army knife of Linux was https://www.system-rescue.org/

    Very lightweight but with a full set of recovery tools. I’ve tried it recently and I still find it up to the expectations.

    I’ve also used a fair amount of https://clonezilla.org/ to (re)store images of freshly installed OSes (mostly windows XP and 7 to give you an idea of the timeframe) for people who I know would have messed up faster.

  • @Freddyyeddy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4•9 months ago

    I keep an iodd mini with all the current and past repair isos. Then I have a folder.i keep the tooling income.upmwoth for various repair or automation stuff. I got a batch script (need to move to winger) to auto install all my standard day one software. On mobile otherwise I would pull up the list and throw it in here. If you are curious let me know and I’ll reply with the list when I get time.

  • @beerclue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4•9 months ago

    I’m an arch user, and also have a small proxmox based homelab. I always have a live Ubuntu around, the latest desktop version available. Good for troubleshooting. Also, latest proxmox, opnsense, pfsense, debian.

    Additionally, I have a small USB drive on my keychain with both USB C and USB A, where I keep some encrypted backups of important stuff, and I can access that from both my laptop and my phone.

  • @Cenzorrll@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3•9 months ago

    I don’t keep a Swiss army knife set of distros anymore. I put tumbleweed on a USB. It’s rolling so I update it when I plug it in, then do what I need to do.

    I used to have a USB with Ubuntu LTS and whatever the newest Ubuntu was. Then another would get something else that I needed/wanted. I always ended up wiping the drive and adding the newest release every single time. I was always out of date by the time I needed one of them for boot repair or something. This was also a time when persistence… Wasn’t very persistent. With tumbleweed I can install whatever I need and it’s there next time. I’m sure you can do the same with any other rolling release, but tumbleweed is in my opinion on par stability-wise with incremental distros. It’s my first grab whenever I need to check a PC. If I need another distro or boot USB, I can make it from this one with a second USB. I suppose the only thing I can’t do is make a bootable USB if the computer I’m on can’t access the Internet

  • @linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1•9 months ago

    Test out that Nix, Mine refused to let me install from it when I just shoved their iso in Ventoy.

    Someone got a hackintosh running from ventoy on specific hardware

    • I’ve been trying to get a x86 Android one working, no luck yet.
    • Kali
    • WinPE EasUS partition manager liveboot
    • Gandalf’s win10PE
    • Gandalf’s win11PE
    • Hirens CD PE (debatably useless in this age)