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Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by kej on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:28PM (#31815458)
Another neat "pick an OS to boot into" tool I discovered recently is Ventoy [1]. You install the bootable menu on your USB drive, and then you just drop ISOs or IMGs on there to add choices.

[1] https://ventoy.net/en/index.html

Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by shantnutiwari on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @05:16AM (#31821933)
Ventoy is one of those "Great in theory, doesnt work in practice" tools.

I spent some trying to boot from it, couldn't get it work. Couldnt find any help anywhere, so went back to the old boring tools that just work.

Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by SahAssar on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @06:52AM (#31822445)
I'm not sure what your issue was, but I've used ventoy across 5-ish computers and with multiple OS'es (various linux distros and win10) and never had an issue. Did you file a bug report or find out what the issue was?
Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by seanw444 on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @10:27AM (#31824315)
Same. Ventoy has been pretty awesome for me. I like to have options for if a friend wants me to set up and show them one of the simpler distros, or if I'm at work and I need to re-install Arch (or just boot the ISO and fix the existing install). Way better than either bringing multiple thumbdrives, or having to just pick one OS to be able to have on the go, and rolling with it.
Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by squarefoot on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @10:52AM (#31824613)
Have you tried it on different USB dongles? There are notoriously crappy no-name ones that fake their capacity or have other problems, but once in a while also legit ones can fail in strange ways: I had this branded USB key bought in a regular shop that passed all data integrity tests but refused to boot. I had bought 3 of the same model the same day and the other two worked fine, but that one would never boot, no matter which image i would flash it with; I never discovered what the problem was, and the dongle still works fine for other uses. So you may want to test other dongles to be sure.
Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by guilamu on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @06:54AM (#31822455)
I don't know how you managed not to be able to make it work. I've been using it on dozens of pcs, never had any issue.
Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by aardvark1200 on Wednesday June 22, 2022 @03:04PM (#31840409)
Was secure boot on? That made it not work right for me as well
Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by mmcnl on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @04:04PM (#31828491)
It works great in practice for me. What issues are you running into?
Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by gsich on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @06:57AM (#31822486)
Also great in practice.
Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by rtp4me on Monday June 20, 2022 @06:05PM (#31816730)
Love Ventoy. Been using for a while now. Makes it very easy to boot a number of ISOs via simple USB drive. My go-to boot tool when doing system rescues.
Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by csdvrx on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:35PM (#31815577)
Not bad, but with questionable choices making it not usable on a dedicated hard-drive partition:

https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/1342

Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by tssva on Monday June 20, 2022 @06:44PM (#31817194)
"Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files."

From the description of the project it doesn't seem running from a dedicated hard-drive partition is an actual goal of the project. I don't know that making choices which don't support a non-goal of a project are questionable.

It works great for my use case of booting from a USB drive and I very much appreciate that it exists.

Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by csdvrx on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @12:17AM (#31819805)
> From the description of the project it doesn't seem running from a dedicated hard-drive partition is an actual goal of the project

This "goal" would require a grand total of 2 changes.

> It works great for my use case of booting from a USB drive and I very much appreciate that it exists.

It's just like grubfm - a few files + a heuristic to use these with isos to make them bootable.

Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by stuaxo on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @04:59AM (#31821842)
I took the time to read the comments on the issue and I can't see anyone refusing to do this.

It seems like the person that suggested it can't compile ventoy as it requires a particular version of fedora.

This needs somebody to compile ventoy and make a PR.

Tabgentially it seems like the solving the issue where it needs an old version of fedora would make it easier for others to participate.

The best way of moving this forward would be to free up a block of time and either work on a PR, or if not that a PR to make ventoy compilable on more distros.

Re:Netboot.xyz: your favorite operating systems in one place by csdvrx on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:22PM (#31826600)
> I took the time to read the comments on the issue and I can't see anyone refusing to do this.

Personally, I see a lack of interest and a lack of desire to expand the functionality

> It seems like the person that suggested it can't compile ventoy as it requires a particular version of fedora.

Yes, that was me.

> This needs somebody to compile ventoy and make a PR.

As you may guess by how I explained the problem and the solution (with code!), I would be happy to make a PR, but I don't want to waste more time by writing code that won't be merged.

> solving the issue where it needs an old version of fedora would make it easier for others to participate

Yes, that too

But given the lack of interest by the maintainer of the low hanging fruit of making ventoy usable on partitions, even when it would bring the side benefit of respecting the block size of removable media (like thumbdrives, SD cards...) I think working on either would be a waste of time :(

> The best way of moving this forward would be to free up a block of time and either work on a PR, or if not that a PR to make ventoy compilable on more distros.

A week ago, someone started a fork for a better integration with other tools.

If you want to join in to fix the compilation issues (so that it doesn't require a specific old Fedora for example) I'll be happy to fix the partition stuff.

My email is my nickname at outlook dot com