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Comment by saljam | Hacker News Reader

Why don't distributions provide an image that can be dd'd onto a USB stick? I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds USB mass storage infinitely more convenient than CDs nowadays. Sure, they provide a USB image creator, but you have to have a fairly standard (and graphical, last time I checked) Linux installation first. And sure, you can extract the files and make one yourself, but is that really necessary?

This goes for both Ubuntu and Fedora.

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Can't you just dd the ISO image to the USB stick?

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Installat...

OK, I stand corrected! I should've done my homework...

I think you can just dd the CD ISO into the USB. That's what I do, and it's supported:

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Installat...

I'm sure you can find the same info for Ubuntu.

Yes, you can dd the Fedora iso images directly onto USB. They will boot on BIOS, UEFI and even Macs (newer ones work better than old).

I use: dd if=Fedora-18-x86_64-DVD.iso of=/dev/sdd iflag=direct oflag=direct bs=4M

The bs=4M is important, otherwise dd uses 512b blocks which totally kills the throughput to the flash which is erased in blocks.

I've successfully installed the last two Fedora versions by DD'ing the ISO to a USB stick.

Pre-F18, it was worthless to do this for anything but the net install image, as Anaconda wouldn't locate packages on the USB stick. I don't know if the F18 Anaconda fixed this or not, as I used the net install image.

Ubuntu iso's can be dd'd onto a usb stick as well as fedora.

Well ... I did my last 7 (at least) Ubuntu installs by dd'ing Ubuntu isos to a USB stick without a hitch ...

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