The nice thing about Ventoy—and I didn’t fully appreciate this until I used it—is how simple it makes bootable USBs. You just drag and drop ISO images onto the drive, and it can hold as many as will fit. When you boot from the Ventoy USB, you just pick the image you want to install or run—no re-flashing, no fuss.
It’s honestly wild how convenient it is. Ventoy was the only method that worked for me when I needed to install Windows alongside an existing Linux setup for dual-booting. Everything else I tried failed, but Ventoy handled it perfectly.
Notably Ventoy doesn't work with some Windows install ISOs.
It gets worse. Here is an example of this potentially getting abused, and a response by ventoy that's somewhere between lackluster and negligent. https://github.com/ventoy/PXE/issues/106
This whole HN post is bad news. People shouldn't be using ventoy.
I don't see the linked issue as a valid reason to stop using Ventoy, especially since the repo you linked is for a different piece of software made by the same people. Do we have any evidence of Ventoy itself being in any way malicious?
The rationale for needing a random driver makes some sense. The statement that they found a random build that was signed by some randy is a horrifying prospect.
In perfect world, Microsoft would help to create this tool.
Nope, they don't have time for this. Too much work om security through obscurity, making crap SW which eats RAM like hamburgers and disabling local accounts...
For Windows and FROM Windows.
I swear the most recommended way of creating a bootable Windows USB on Linux changes every year, and usually doesn't work. I keep an old Windows laptop just so I can create bootable Windows usbs, whenever needed.
Making custom Windows install media is insanely painful, even from Windows. I went through the process of creating non-interactive install media for Windows once, and was astonished at how awful it is compared to building custom Linux live media. (Not least of all because of the churn in the XML you have to maintain that basically represents clicking through all the installer menus.)
For as long as Windows has supported UEFI, you've just been able to copy the files from the ISO directly to a UEFI partition.
ramburgers are quite healthy, they've been shown to improve memory
Also, adding Copilot to everything.
Stretching your hate for the company a bit too far, don't you think? I mean all the cool kids do it, but you can't blame them for not having done this.
Love Ventoy! I never have to flash my USBs anymore. Just keep dropping those ISO files in there. Highly recommended.
Same here. You can drop as many ISO files as you want and select during boot...
Both of those write a single ISO to your USB stick, while Ventoy allows you to store numerous ISOs in a folder on the stick and choose which to use at runtime. Also, you can store other files like normal with the remaining space on your stick.
Rufus and BalenaEtcher are both programs for flashing an image to a disk. Ventoy is flashed onto the disk itself (into a small EFI partition), then the rest of the disk is just a regular file system, where you drag and drop a group of ISOs, then pick between them on boot.
Those let you write one image to a USB stick. With Ventoy you write the bootable part once, and plop as many ISOs on there as you want. You get one bootable device where you can select from a list of ISOs.
I really like the idea of this, but I've run into several installers which are just incompatible with it. I don't remember which ones, unfortunately, but they just didn't deal with it well.
I've seen an installer get confused by the presence of an EFI partition on the stick, and not correctly create one on the target drive. There are probably ways to get around that, but I just made a separate USB stick for the installer (I had a spare stick floating around, and the tools handy (including on at least one of the live CDs on the ventoy stick)) and retried that way, which was probably faster than researching another method.
If you have secureboot enabled and in Windows friendly mode, you can get validation failures with Ventoy until you either turn off secureboot, register the Ventoy MOK key, or change your secureboot setting to Generic OS (or whatever).
Kind of a pain, I think any machine that's had windows on it will get this setting enabled.
Agreed, I've run into just enough installers that don't work with Ventoy where I've just defaulted back to using etcher when I need access. The 5 minutes wait is worth it over the frustration of booting into Ventoy and finding it doesn't work with the ISO I'm trying to use.
IME this can sometimes be resolved by selecting 'use grub2 mode' instead of allowing the ISO to boot normally.
Agreed. I have also found that some (dirt cheap) USB drives are incompatible with Ventoy entirely, being that it does not format the drive properly. I can drop ISOs all I like, but if they don't boot once I select them... Unfortunately I have resorted to using my trusty "pile o' flash drives" I've had for a decade.
Ventoy basically breaks openSUSE ISO's. Just mentioning that so maybe it'll show up more in searches.
First I've heard of it, I just installed an openSUSE variant through Ventoy a week or so ago.
It’s mostly obscure ISOs for e.g. ReactOS and KolibriOS that don’t work for me. But normal Linux- or Windows-based ISOs all boot fine.
I wish that I could remember which Linux distribution that balked at it. It wasn't an obscure one, though.
I was going to ask how this would be better than any of the other options out there (like dd, the RPi imager and similar) but after seeing the README I consider this the superior alternative because you don't have to reflash the USB stick over and over again.
It supports multiple images at the same time, unlike the other solutions where one image take over the whole USB stick.
Love it.
I learned about the tool very late. I wish I had known the existence of this tool earlier. I carry a USB stick with Ventoy, which includes 2-3 ISOs. It's a lifesaver.
The only issue with Ventoy is it doesn't work with secure boot turned on.
Otherwise its excellent.
It does, but you need to enroll its MOK key. If that's acceptable for you, it'll work just fine.
Is it possible to boot a full windows install from this (probably using a VHD image)? I know it would be slow but it would be nice to have something with all my utilities.
Ventoy is a lifesaver. I dropped a 2TB NVMe drive into a USB-C enclosure and put it on there, along with all the OS installers, distros, and test utilities I commonly use. Probably used it a few dozen times since then and it's well and truly paid for itself!
This is real good also wfor installing win11, because it at least did the local user and requirements bypass patches last time i used it.
Honestly, an essential piece of kit. I've used it across a couple of different contexts & have only positive things to say about it.
I’ve apparently already starred the repository.