Trustworthy ISO copiers like Ventoy, Rufus

Questions
1

Hi,

Can we trust both of these tools above or not?

Another similar topic is about 1 single ISO copiers:

  • Unetbootin did not have updates in more then 2 years.

  • Rufus works on Windows only. DD command works on Linux as an alternative of it.

  • Tails team had previously warn about BalenaEther. I never used this.

What about those. Are they trustworthy?

Thank you

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2

There is a noticeable gap in this space. We recommend ISO writers like the Raspberry Pi Imager and the Fedora Media Writer. Otherwise, Gnome Disks has a built-in utility for this if you are already on Linux. You can even install it on non-Gnome desktop enviroments.

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I’m currently using Fedora Media Writer, it’s available on macOS, Windows and Linux. I haven’t seen anything concerning regarding it, so it’s been my choice for awhile.

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Yeah I am going to recommend Fedora Media Writer too. I’ve used Rufus and Balena but I ended up liking Fedora Media Writer more and it works really well.

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Rufus is the best for Windows installs. For anything else, I use Fedora Media Writer. Both are trustworthy.

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Tails team had previously warn about BalenaEther. I never used this.

I never heard about any concerns there but always got cautious when I saw that etcher was at some point owned by a company.

I hence kept a fork on the old version of etcher, no updates on it tho but I thought could be useful some day.

dd is indeed a cool utility but also not the most friendly + a bit dangerous if used with the wrong params. :skull:

Otherwise, Gnome Disks has a built-in utility for this if you are already on Linux.

@KevPham Last time I checked, there was no “burn an .iso” option. :speak_no_evil_monkey:

Fedora’s tool looks very nice, basic and probably get’s the job done. Thanks a lot for the heads up! :folded_hands:t2:

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It seems like Ventoy is finally working to address those concerns which is a good sign, but I’m really disappointed they took 13 months just to acknowledge the issue. The fact they eventually did gives me hope they’re redeemable, but until the issue is resolved I’m not sure if they can be fully trusted considering how long they took to respond and without any explanation.

It’s worth reading why:

balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties. While we have not experienced or heard of any attacks against Tails users stemming from this change, we believe it introduces potential for abuse.

So not a security issue, just a privacy and anonymity issue which might not be a deal-breaker for some. It is the only cross-platform GUI solution so it makes sense why some still recommend it.

Rufus seems perfectly fine and was Tails’ preference over balenaEtcher for installing Tails on Windows. They recommend Raspberry Pi Imager as an alternative to Mac users but I’m not sure why it hasn’t replaced the balenaEtcher recommendation yet. Tails recommends GNOME Disks for Linux.

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