Ventoy, the Ultimate flash booter

[pierro78]

for now the installer supports only installing from live environment, it would be nice to have a clone option that would be enabled automatically if you launch the installer from an installed system.

it s really easy to clone your os if it's on a .vhd file : just clone the file

it's off-topic but your words kind of remind me of WinToUsb : I have heard you can clone your current Windows installation to an usb drive with it ...

[Adrian]

You could probably use the same Ventoy trick to boot a Vindows .vhd file? Not sure Ventoy supports booting Windows like that though, on Linux you have to run that command to prepare the image.
Plus you'd probably need a huge USB flashdrive for Windows...

[pierro78]

You could probably use the same Ventoy trick to boot a Vindows .vhd file? Not sure Ventoy supports booting Windows like that though, on Linux you have to run that command to prepare the image.
Plus you'd probably need a huge USB flashdrive for Windows...

it needs an additionnal plugin https://www.ventoy.net/en/plugin_vhdboot.html to trick Windows into booting ... but I tried and it failed booting ... but apparently some people in ventoy forum are able to make windows .vhd that run with ventoy ...

[Buck Fankers]

Interesting tool, if you want to check out other distributions.

Question, do you need a windows to first prepare USB stick? Was watching a video, where someone first runs *.exe file inside windows to prepare usb stick. I don't have windows :) Hope there is Linux version of preparation of USB stick.

Edit: looks like there is Linux install as well, cool:
https://www.ventoy.net/en/doc_linux_gui.html

[Somewhat Reticent]

Ventoy is designed to be installed from either Linux or Windows, and can even boot some BSDs and other OSs.
The latest version (1.0.52) added GTK & Qt GUI tools to its web-browser-based and CLI install apps.
There are some limitations, but it can be a convenience.

[Buck Fankers]

I one of the videos, someone mentioned, you can actually use internal disk instead of USB stick. Great, will start using one SSD for this. I have several older MX snapshots I need to go through, to see, if there is anything I want to keep.

[pierro78]

You could probably use the same Ventoy trick to boot a Vindows .vhd file? Not sure Ventoy supports booting Windows like that though, on Linux you have to run that command to prepare the image.
Plus you'd probably need a huge USB flashdrive for Windows...

it needs an additionnal plugin https://www.ventoy.net/en/plugin_vhdboot.html to trick Windows into booting ... but I tried and it failed booting ... but apparently some people in ventoy forum are able to make windows .vhd that run with ventoy ...

oh I found an howto to boot a windows .vhd from a ventoy drive :
https://forums.ventoy.net/showthread.php?tid=370&page=2

it involves preparing a Rufus WinToGo .vhd drive first ... I tried another method the other day but this WinToGo method seems to be more straightforward ... I am going to try it when I have time ...

PS : I created the WinToGo .vhd in a little more than 1 hour ... the procedure is a little long but easy ... and it's awesome to have cloudready+mx linux in my laptop and windows on a fast USB ssd (thanks to a .vhd file that you can move/copy to different usb drives)

[pierro78]

please see separate topic here : viewtopic.php?f=104&t=66869


hey folks

I made a legacy bios ventoy ( viewtopic.php?t=64700 ) .vhd full installation ( https://www.ventoy.net/en/plugin_vtoyboot.html ) of mx linux ...
... I put this mx linux .vhd on my usb stick along windows wintogo .vhd ( https://forums.ventoy.net/showthread.php?tid=370&page=2 ), iso files of various OS/tools, etc ... very convenient to be able to carry your personal mx linux and toolkit everywhere ...

I am wondering : would it be also possible to add uefi boot on this mx linux legacy bios "portable" installation so that I can boot it (almost) everywhere ???
(I think it s probably possible but my google powers were not strong enough ...)

thanks folks for your help !

[fehlix]

I am wondering : would it be also possible to add uefi boot on this mx linux legacy bios "portable" installation ...

Not sure about "to add" to an existing legacy BIOS-mode installed onto DOS-partition table.

You would install MX Linux within a dual bios/uefi setup which I normally do on VM's and real hardware this way:

* Boot in UEFI mode

* prepare partitions:
-> create GPT partition table
-> create bios_grub (1MB) partition unformatted (!) ( mark flag as "bios_grub" )
-> create ESP ( 256 ... 512 MB) format fat32 ( mark flag as "esp,boot")
-> create root, home .. etc

* run MX Installer, do install EFI-GRUB to ESP; do not reboot when finished

* install BIOS-GRUB:
-> Either open MX-Boot Repair and (re-)install GRUB onto MBR
or
-> run chroot-rescue-scan, select the freshly made install and run
grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sd?
to install bios-grub into MBR of /dev/sd? drive

That's it: Now you can boot the installation either in BIOS mode or in UEFI-mode

[Eadwine Rose]

Please keep it in one topic, it gets very confusing have info in both. Closing the other one.