How to create bootable USB thumb drive with iso file

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 30 Apr 2020 at 22:36, Sheemon Lists <sheemon.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> i wonder what/how this application is different from dd(1).

And get this. My installed copy of Balena Etcher for macOS is 265MB.

Two hundred and sixty-five megabytes, for an app that writes an ISO
file to a USB key, which can indeed be done in a single command:

dd if=linux.iso of=/dev/sdb

Of course it has fancy autodetection for finding a USB key attached to
your system, a nice UI for picking it, picking the ISO, progress bars,
updated-version detection and self-update, etc.

But to be honest, if it wasn't in Javascript, you could do most of
that in 265 _lines of code_. But because Javasacript is now the #1
programming language, and it was designed to run embedded in web pages
and manipulate their contents, Javascript apps for local execution
often have to embed an entire web browser to render their UI. And a
JIT compiler to improve its rather poor performance. And fonts,
graphics, etc. to make it look nice.

So if you have multiple Javascript apps -- for instance, I use the
Franz multiprotocol messenger, and Rocket.chat, and occasionally the
Atom editor, and Skype -- then you have multiple embedded web
browsers, all with their own vulnerabilities and exploits. Just 4 apps
like Etcher consume _a gigabyte_ of disk space. Four apps.

And people used to reject Mono and .NET apps because they were so
inefficient! People complained that Ubuntu contained Tomboy and
F-Spot.

They are on the order of _a thousand times_ smaller than
Javascript/Electron apps.

Just for fun, go on, guess what language GNOME Shell in GNOME 3 is
mainly implemented in. Go on. Guess.

> The last time I installed Ubuntu was circa version 12.
> One would think this class of "issues" was resolved by now.

You would indeed.

> The dedication to mindless blank filling is admirable, but quite unnecessary.

Agreed.

> I did manage to create a bootable USB SD device and installed Kubuntu 20.04.
> I had difficulty with the default (Gnome based) version; it confused me with the 'custom' partitioning dialog.

Odd. That should not be necessary.

My recommendation is Xubuntu. These days, IMHO, XFCE hits the sweet
spot. It has all the functionality and more of GNOME 3 and KDE, or
even than MATE, but takes less disk space, less memory, is more stable
with fewer bugs and fewer releases. It's smaller, faster, safer and
just as rich, while being more functional and more customisable than
LXQt. Really, what more can one ask?

MATE adds one function I like: you can lock things in place on its
panels. This is useful for newbie users. Otherwise, XFCE matches it in
every way, and handles vertical panels _far_ better, which is very
useful on widescreens.

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