How to make Linux on a flash drive. Linux Bootable USB Flash Drive - Best Creation Options. Creating a bootable USB flash drive using the Rufus utility
Optical discs- this is already the last century. The same as floppy disks and other similar storage devices. Now flash drives rule and external drives. They are convenient to use for installing systems, so today we will look at how you can use a flash drive to install the Ubuntu distribution from it. We will also look at the method of creating such a flash drive in the Windows 10 operating system (although this also works for earlier OSes).
Creating a bootable USB flash drive using the Rufus utility
The program itself can be downloaded from the link. Latest version Ubuntu distribution - .
- Connect the USB flash drive to your computer and run the program:
- Select the flash drive to record to:
- Check the boxes: “Quick Format”, “Create” boot disk", then in the drop-down list set the ISO image value:
- Select the Ubuntu or other distribution image using the button:
- Click the Start button to start recording:
All that remains is to wait until the end of the rewrite and restart the computer.
Creating a bootable USB flash drive using the UNetbootin utility
- Use the Select Image button to select the desired image:
- Use the Flash button to record. And no housework :)
Creating a bootable USB flash drive using UltraISO
This is a more serious, multifunctional and paid program. Let's take it. It can do a lot of things, but now we are interested in writing an image to a flash drive.
- Connect the USB flash drive to your computer and launch the program.
- Select Boot->Burn Hard Disk Image:
- In the window that appears, you need to select the image file and logical drive of your drive.
Of course, these are not all utilities. There are many more interesting ones, but for starters, we think this will be enough. Don't go far, we will show you how to install Ubuntu step by step.
When there is a need to install or change the operating system on a computer, most users use bootable USB flash drive. This is one of the easiest ways to achieve the desired result. But while recording a Windows image is easy for most, when it comes to Linux, problems arise.
Further in the text you will learn how to make a bootable Linux flash drive both within Windows and Linux. At the end, in a separate block, we will provide instructions on how to create a Windows flash drive in Linux, because for most users this is generally an unrealistic task.
How to make a bootable Linux USB flash drive on Windows
Due to the fact that most computer users use Windows as their main operating system, it would be reasonable to start directly by creating a bootable Linux flash drive in it. Three applications for this will now be considered.
Method one: UNetbootin
Probably everyone who has ever recorded an OS image in Windows knows about a program called UNetbootin. As you might guess, you can also use it to record an image from Linux. Without ranting for too long, let's get straight to the heart of the matter:
- Launch the program.
- Set the switch to Diskimage.
- From the format drop-down list, select ISO.
- Click on the button with three dots, which is located opposite this list, and in the file manager window that appears, select the pre-downloaded Linux image.
- At the bottom of the window, select USB Drive from the list; in the Drive list, select the flash drive on which you are going to write the image.
- Click OK.
After completing all of the above steps, the process of writing files to the drive will begin. All you have to do is wait for it to complete, after which you can close the program and proceed directly to installing the OS from the flash drive.
Method 2: LinuxLive USB Creator
Continuing the conversation about how to make a bootable USB flash drive for Linux Mint or any other distribution, let's move directly to the second program - LinuxLive USB Creator. Its name itself speaks for itself - this software is designed to record a distribution image onto a flash drive, here's how to use it:
- Open the program.
- In the block labeled STEP 1, from the list, identify the flash drive on which you plan to write the image.
- In the second step, in STEP 2, click on the picture with the text ISO / IMG / ZIP written below. An Explorer window will appear in which, as you might guess, you need to specify the system image.
- STEP 3 skip.
- In STEP 4, it is important to check the box next to the text: “Formatting”, select the remaining items as you wish.
- After completing the instructions, press the lightning button.
The process of creating a bootable USB flash drive will begin. Just like last time, you need to wait for it to complete, after which the program can be closed.
Method 3: Xboot
If for some reason the previous programs were not suitable for you to make a bootable USB flash drive from ISO Linux, then you can use Xboot. Its distinctive feature is the fact that you do not have to download the system image to your computer in advance; all this can be done directly in the program. So, let's move on to the usage guide:
- Launch the application.
- Click the File button, select Open from the drop-down menu if the OS image is on your computer, otherwise select Download.
- In the window that appears, from the first list, select the Linux OS distribution that you want to burn, then click Open.
- You will be redirected to the image download page. Download it and in the program click File, and then in the Open menu.
- Select the image you just downloaded.
- In the new window, from the list, click on Add using, and then click Add this file.
- You will be returned to the main menu of the program, where you need to click Create.
- In the new window, leave all the default settings, the program will determine everything for you.
- Click OK.
The process of writing all image files to the USB flash drive will begin. Wait until it finishes and close the program.
How to Make a Bootable Linux Flash Drive in Linux
We found out how to make a bootable Linux flash drive in Windows, now let's figure out how to do it in the Linux operating system itself. Just like last time, below are three applications that are suitable for this.
Method 1: DD
If you don't know how to make a bootable USB flash drive Kali Linux or any other distribution directly in the operating system itself based on the Linux kernel, you can use the “Terminal” and the DD command. To write an image to a flash drive, you need to do the following:
- Open Terminal by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T.
- Enter the dd command with special variables into it. As a result, the syntax will look like this: dd if=<образ дистрибутива>.iso of=/dev/<название флешки>bs=2048 .
- Please note that the if variable must contain full path to the image, and in of - the path to the flash drive, for example, /dev/sdb.
- If you don’t know exactly what the flash drive is called, then run the fdisk -l command, the output will display all the disks connected to the computer.
After executing the DD command, recording of the bootable USB flash drive will begin. The process will not be displayed in any way, so just wait without taking any action. As a result, a message will appear in the “Terminal” notifying you that the recording has ended.
Method 2: ROSA Image Writer
Making a bootable or other distribution in the “Terminal” is difficult for many. In this case, we suggest you use the ROSA Image Writer program, which has a graphical interface and is easy to use.
- Download the named software from the developer's website and install it.
- Launch the application.
- Click on the folder icon and in the file manager window that appears, specify the distribution image.
- Select your USB drive from the list.
- Click "Record".
As you might guess, all you have to do is wait until the creation is completed, after which the drive can be used to install the operating system on your computer.
Method 3: Etcher
Etcher is another representative software for creating bootable USB flash drives in Linux, which has graphical interface.
- Go to the official website of the program and download the package from there.
- Install the program and then run it.
- Three stages will be displayed in front of you. On the first one, click Select image and file manager select the image to burn.
- In the second step, you will be asked to insert the USB flash drive into the computer.
- On the third one, you need to press the Flash button to start recording.
All you have to do is wait for it to finish, after which the program will notify you about this by displaying the message Flash Complete on the screen.
How to make a bootable Windows USB flash drive in Linux
We already know how to create a bootable USB flash drive with Linux both in Windows and in Linux itself, but what if we need to write Windows image on Linux? The fact is that most programs, especially those listed, are not suitable for this. That is why it was decided to include this instruction as a separate subtitle. So, we will use a program called WinUSB, but first we will install it.
- Launch "Terminal".
- Add the repository containing this program with the command sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8 .
- Update the list of all repositories: sudo apt update .
- Now run the command directly to install the application: sudo apt install winusb.
The program is installed, you can proceed to creating a bootable flash drive:
- Using the file manager, unmount the flash drive on which the image is supposed to be written.
- Launch the program.
- Set the switch to From a disk image and click on the folder button.
- Select the Windows image in the file manager.
- In the list at the bottom of the window, select the flash drive.
- Click the Install button.
All you have to do is wait until the image is written to the flash drive, after which you can turn off the program.
Conclusion
So we figured out how to make a bootable Linux flash drive. Now you are aware of how to do this within Windows, but also Linux. Among other things, you learned how to create such a USB flash drive with Windows on computers running Linux.
In this article, I will look at the process of creating a bootable USB flash drive (LiveUSB) in operating systems - Linux, Windows and MacOS. I will burn an ISO image of a Linux distribution onto a flash drive, but you can use the programs described below to burn any Live images.
As a rule, the user is faced with the task of writing an ISO image to a flash drive in order to obtain a LiveUSB as a result. For example, let's say you decide to install Ubuntu. To do this, you download an ISO image with the system, write it to a flash drive, boot from the flash drive, and the Live system or installer starts.
To boot from a LiveUSB flash drive, you must set boot from USB to first place in your computer's BIOS settings. For many motherboards When you turn on the computer, you can call up a menu in which you can choose which device to boot from. In this case, change BIOS settings not required. For example, for me this menu is called up by pressing a key F12.
Creating a bootable USB flash drive (on Linux, Windows and MacOS)
To create a bootable USB flash drive I will use free program Etcher. This is a very simple and understandable program. Creating bootable media is extremely simple.
The program is cross-platform and can be used to create bootable flash drives in Linux, Windows and MacOS. It works the same on all systems.
The program can be downloaded from the official website https://etcher.io
Note: IN Linux installation not required, just download the file etcher-1.2.3-x86-64.AppImage and run it.
Let's look at the process of creating a bootable USB flash drive in the Etcher program.
Video - How to create a bootable USB flash drive in Etcher
Creating a bootable USB flash drive using UNetbootin
There is a fairly popular program for Linux UNetbootin, which allows you to create bootable USB flash drives. It can burn disk images, as well as automatically download images of popular Linux distributions (although very old versions of distributions are available for download, so this function is unlikely to be useful to you).
The program is cross-platform and can be used on both Windows and MacOS. I only tested it under Linux. But she has one big drawback! Some flash drives created by her simply refuse to boot. For example, nothing worked for me until I formatted the flash drive in FAT16. I formatted the flash drive in the GParted program, the size of the partition on the flash drive was automatically set to 4GB, the rest free space it was simply not involved.
The process of creating a bootable USB flash drive in UNetbootin is described below.
Possible problems
Missing Operating System error
If you receive the message " Missing Operating System ", then most likely the flash drive does not have the flag set Boot. To install it, restart your computer and log into your system. After this, run the command in the terminal (the flash drive must be connected):
Parted /dev/sdb set 1 boot on
Now restart your computer again.
Error No default or UI configuration directive found
I encountered another error while booting the computer - “No default or UI configuration directive found”. This problem was solved only by formatting the flash drive in FAT16 and re-creating LiveUSB.
Video - How to create a bootable USB flash drive in UNetbootin
A bootable USB flash drive with Linux Mint may be needed to install the system on your computer or to get acquainted with it in Live mode. To begin with, you need to visit our website and then follow a simple sequence of actions that is described in this article.
Creating a bootable USB flash drive from Windows
If you have Windows 7, 8 or 10 installed on your computer, then you need to download special program. Here you need to start from your final goals and where you will install the system. If you have new computers with UEFI, then you need to download the Rufus program. If you have older hardware, then the UNetbootin program will suffice. Let's look at the nuances of working with each of the programs.
Creating a bootable USB flash drive with Linux Mint using Rufus
Connect the flash drive to your computer, delete all information from it and run the Rufus program. The following window will appear in front of you:
First, specify the path to the iso image on your hard drive, and then select the “GPT for computers with UEFI” partition scheme. You can leave the rest of the program settings as default and click on the “start” button. Wait until the image is written to the USB flash drive and close the program window.
Creating a bootable USB flash drive with Linux Mint using UNetbootin
The UNetbootin program exists for both Windows systems, and for Linux Mint. Connect the flash drive to the computer, delete all information from it and run the program. The following window will appear in front of you:
Specify the path to the Linux Mint image on your computer and select the media on which this image will be recorded. Click on the "ok" button and wait until the recording finishes.
As you can see, it’s very easy to write Linux Mint onto a flash drive, and in order to boot from it, you need to set the boot priority from removable media in the BIOS. The resulting installation flash drive will be able to run not only on your computer, but also on the computers of your friends and you will be able to introduce them to our wonderful operating system. If you have any questions, ask them on our website.
Probably most of you might have thought about the problem of preparing a bootloader. flash drives with operating system Linux on board and produce in further installation Ubuntu systems from a flash drive. In this article we will be able to look in detail at how to do this in an already installed Linux. Read about how to create a bootable USB flash drive in Windows here:. Well, let's go :)
All we may need is an empty flash drive with a volume of information entered of at least 2 Gigabytes, an image ISO some kind of disk with a Linux system, an Internet connection and some free time.
Well, of course, the first thing we do is (in no case insert a flash drive) we install special software, namely a software application under a somewhat unusual name UNetBootin. This is an excellent software application designed to create bootable flash drives from ISO images. There is nothing superfluous in it, it is easy to manage and it is also available in the repository storage Ubuntu.
Let's install it now:
sudoapt–getinstall unet-bootin
And after waiting for a few minutes, you can already launch this program:
In this software application there is also the possibility create bootable flash drives, even if you do not have an ISO image with the Linux operating system at hand. It will simply copy itself from the Internet and then be transferred to a flash drive. In order to do this in the above software application, it will be necessary to select the top “distribution” checkbox, then select the required Linux distribution and select the version of this distribution. True, we already have our own ISO image. For this reason, we select the second “image” checkbox, select our image format - ISO from the list of formats (in case it suddenly isn’t the default), then click the “…” button and look for it on the hard drive our personal computer.
It is also possible to create an image manually (by specifying your initrd, kernel and usage additional options), but all this goes very far beyond the scope of our article today, and we don’t need it.
That’s it, we have already selected the image, then we must make our choice on the “Type” item – USB drive to indicate our flash drive on which we will record our image “Disk: /nodiv/sdb2” and click on Ok button. That's it, the process has begun! If you have made your choice on the top checkbox, the process of recording the image may take much longer, since the image must first be downloaded to hard drive, and then it will be recorded. This concludes our article. Good luck.