Comment by elmo2you | Hacker News Reader

Comment by elmo2you | Hacker News Reader

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Ventoy is indeed one of the best (if not THE best) tool for this. Even if it does not support absolutely everything (last time I checked), it is by far the most hassle free and sure-fire solution.

For context, I have professionally deployed Linux on USB, ever since around 2004. I honestly don't care to remember all the odd issues/failures I've encountered during those 17 years. The situation certainly got better/easier with the years, but it can still be a gamble if an odd Linux distro will actually boot successfully from USB or not.

Until I discovered Ventoy, about a year or two ago, I would always be hesitant to recommend running Linux from USB, unless I knew the exact setup (or it involved someone with a decent technical skills).

Ventoy is great!!! I'd recommend everyone to at least have a look at it. It's one of the very few tools I endorse without any hesitation or reservation.

I am in no way personally involved with Ventoy, nor do I have a stake in it. I just love the tool for what it is.

I have a couple of old dusty laptops at work, that I think are just old enough to have 32bit uefi (or bios?) and cpu with 64bit support. Are there any current distros that should work, I wonder?

I suppose I could dig up an old Debian Iso-but I'd prefer something with a recent-ish kernel (wireguard) and a half-secure libssl and opensshd.

Hm, maybe openbsd (current) still has support?

Ed: I've been doing Linux installs since the 90s... Around kernel 1.3 or there abouts - but it's been a while since dipped my toes in 32bit/hybrid x86 systems. .

> For context, I have professionally deployed Linux on USB, ever since around 2004.

Could you point to some good sources that explain in detail the whole "bootable USB" world? It seems it's always a hassle to get right, especially when preparing a Windows bootable USB.

rufus is good for preparing a windows bootable usb with uefi boot (so you can later enable secure boot, after install), so stick to that. ventoy is great, might be better than rufus, when you want multiple os's on a stick, but for the average person it's also way more complex than rufus. (rufus only works on windows tough)

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