What's your solution to create bootable USB drives for multiple isos?

[Neo_78]

If you want to create a bootable USB drive that contains the ISOs of multiple OS, what is your favourite solution?

Ventoy seems to be a popular choice:

https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html

Looking forward to your ideas.

[rockedge]

I use ISObooter as a solution although most of the time set up the USB to be be boot-able and the multiple distro's each as frugal installations.

[williwaw]

limine is actively developed, supported on this forum, and barry has recently wrote an installer you can run each time you add a new iso

or extract the isos to your folders manually and edit the config file manually. the syntax is quite simple

[stevie pup]

There have been countless articles in this forum regarding Puppy and Ventoy. It isn't usually a problem booting them up, the headaches come when you want to create a save folder, and then for the save folder to be recognised when you reboot. There is a work around that works with Fossapup, but it interrupts the boot process while you enter something manually, which I couldn't be bothered with. I then found it didn't work with BionicPup.

If you just want to boot a few Puppies (or other distros) to try them out then Ventoy is fine. But for creating save folders I found YUMI to be a better option. With YUMI you can create a save folder just as simply as if the Puppy was on it's own USB stick. Which is why I have two USB sticks, one with YUMI for Puppies and one with Ventoy for other Linux distros.

The other thing to bear in mind is that YUMI is Windows only, although it is claimed to work ok in WINE.

[wiak]

Well, I don't like Ventoy. I don't understand Ventoy (maybe the reason I dislike it) so I am not able to make it work well with WeeDogLinux (WDL initrd) creations - I have arranged the WDL initrd such that it can boot Ventoy, albeit a messy process really, (and I think I managed to put in a complicated way to get some kind of WDL save persistence working with it but it was a mess).

I think SG2D is pretty good, and put some special support for persistence into WDL initrd for that one (though you need to read my docs - somewhere - on how to get the best from that - it is pretty good). My issue with SG2D was that months went by and no further commits to its development, so I considered it a dead duck and it used an old version of grub2... However, work has been undertaken on it again in the past month or two and beta including newer grub2, so that is promising. I like the product as not bad at all, and hope it continues to be maintained.

I don't know anything about ISObooter - I have never tried it, but I imagine it might be fine since its author tends to do a good job of matters concerned with booting. I should try it; just in case it proves to be best of these three - but I don't know at the moment.

Personally, I tend to prefer traditional frugal installs (or full installs actually - they have their advantages too), and frugal installs can be automated quite successfully and were designed with their save persistence mechanisms (all supported modes) in mind, so tends to be the best at the end of the day when you don't want to mess around trying to get save persistence to work with boot-from-iso mechanisms (though as I say, it isn't too difficult to get pretty good save persistence support with SG2D - then again... it is really pretty trivial to make traditional frugal installs, so why bother doing otherwise aside from relatively quick initial boot-from-iso tests?).

[mikeslr]

To obtain your FIRST boot-able Puppy, some other means --rufus, ventoy, SG2, yumi, isobooter-- may be easier, even required. Once that hurdle has been overcome:

Because of the flexibility it provides, I prefer the "manual" approach --although there only needs to be a limited amount of manual labor to it not required by other methods. It can be done from any running Puppy. Downloading and installing (to RAM, Save not required) grub2config is required if not already present. [Frugalpup can be used as an alternative to grub2config].

(1) Partition a stick with gparted, small (<100 Mb) first Fat32 partition; balance Linux Ext3.
(2) Mount a Puppy's ISO and copy its system files into a uniquely named folder on the 2nd Partition. [That's the 'manual' part.] Run grub2config or Frugalpup.
(3) Optional: Install latest grub2config or Frugalpup into a Puppy on the USB-Stick. Keep it up-to-date.

For additional Puppys, repeat step 2.

Flexibility: no problem creating SaveFiles or SaveFolders. 'Though not often required, no problem swapping kernels. Beyond obtaining them, no additional problem should installation of drivers or firmware be necessary.

No problem installing nicOS-Utilities-Suite*, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 983#p12983 or --having converted it into an loadable SFS-- loading it into any Puppy from which the following can be accomplished:
Remaster that Puppy.
Capture the contents of its SaveFile/Folder (and installed applications not already Saved**) into a READ-ONLY adrv.sfs or ydrv.sfs so that SaveFile/Folder can be deleted and thereafter, after booting into such Puppy-on-the-USB Key, the USB-Key can be unplugged.
-=-=-=-=--
* Untested, but I don't think either the Remaster or Save2SFS components will work when overlay rather than aufs is employed. The Save2SFS code might serve as a template for such procedure. Something for wiak or rockedge to investigate.
** The Save2SFS component of nicOS-Utilities-Suite can be used from the outset: a SaveFile/Folder never having had to be created. Untested, this might also work if -- despite the availability of overlay's procedure for obtaining persistence-- that procedure is not used.

[gychang]

(1) Partition a stick with gparted, small (<100 Mb) first Fat32 partition; balance Linux Ext3.
(2) Mount a Puppy's ISO and copy its system files into a uniquely named folder on the 2nd Partition. [That's the 'manual' part.] Run grub2config or Frugalpup.
(3) Optional: Install latest grub2config or Frugalpup into a Puppy on the USB-Stick. Keep it up-to-date.

For additional Puppys, repeat step 2.

any particular reason using ext3, rather than ext4?

[rockedge]

any particular reason using ext3, rather than ext4?

Once in awhile yes. Because using GParted in Bionic or Fossapup will create a 64 bit ext4 that those distro's Grub4Dos can't use.

[puddlemoon]

Another one for frugal installs here. Just too easy compared to the fuss of the iso methods imo.

I only ever had the 64bit ext4-G4D issue when making partitions on linux distros other than puppy.

On the ventoy note.. I also dislike the seemingly over complicated methods in general so it never kept my interest. I did recently discover a kind of hack for the save folder, while tinkering with limine hybrid iso configs trying to get ventoy and limine to work together (was getting 'sfs not found' error).
I put the puppy files in a frugal like folder in the iso instead of at the root of the partition and adjusted the limine config to suit (including psubdir=), which satisfied ventoy and also used my save! With the puppy files in /jackapup of the iso (2nd partition), my save in /jackalpup on sdax was found and used. Seems obvious in retrospect but I was surprised. I didn't yet test making a new one but no reason it wouldn't work(?).
Another hidden benefit was to be able to mount the ventoy iso storage drive which normally is not possible (like unmounting /mnt/home in a frugal install).
Not exactly efficient as the iso would need manual modification and with grub2 that is even more of a chore. Limine is way more straight forward but still doesn't make me want to use ventoy... Just an interesting "discovery"

Just a couple cents

[one]

any particular reason using ext3, rather than ext4?

Once in awhile yes. Because using GParted in Bionic or Fossapup will create a 64 bit ext4 that those distro's Grub4Dos can't use.

Hi @rockedge,

I think you confused sth:

puppy's gparted creates 32 bit ext4 partitions, not 64 bit ...
If you formatted the drive using any Linux other than Puppy, it probably created a 64-bit Ext4 partition. Grub4dos can not handle 64-bit Ext4 partitions.

Edit: @puddlemoon says the same thing.

peace

[Neo_78]

Excuse the question but what exactly is the technical difference between a full hard drive installation and a "frugal" installation?

I only found this explanation, however, I am unsure about the technical implications:

https://www.wikka.puppylinux.com/Frugal ... stallation

What are the pros and cons of each method?

Is it possible to use a Frugal installation for a removable USB pendrive instead of using a fixed hard drive?

[puddlemoon]

Hey @Neo_78
That lingo for full vs frugal is confusing indeed. Full install of puppy is something like installing a stripped down version of the chosen distro the normal GNU/LINUX way. It is really only recommended if you have a specific need to modify permanently base system files etc. No real pros unless you know exactly why you need it.
Frugal install is the puppy way. The base system is kept in read only, compressed file systems. All personal changes are kept in a separate, removable layer so that one can make changes (including any system files) and the original system remains untouched. Frugal installs are placed in a directory as opposed to populating the whole drive as with full install. In this way one can have many frugal installs in one partition. You can boot without the saved change at any point and have several versions of personal changes if you wish.
A very rough summary, the benefits are many...

Frugal install on usb is ideal in many ways.. You can use the entire drive as needed, where writing the iso to a stick consumes the unused space. You can also have many puppy installs on removable media same as internal disks.
It does take a little more tinkering to get used to, especially getting a few pups running, but it all becomes more clear once you try.

Quick and dirty intro, hope that helps. There is loads more info and details around if you want to dig deep.
Maybe someone more organized can offer some good reading (:

[esos]

Ventoy seems to be a popular choice.
Yes, it is for PC only and very complex (not for MAC).

If you looks for alternative, there is so many things to know
-PC spec. BIOS/EFI
-the choice of bootmanager
-Booting from internal or external Media storage
-How many partitions & what type of format to use.
-Exfat, Ntfs, Vfat(ISO size < 4Gb), EXT2/3/4 or any others
-Multi Fullinstall/Frugalinstall/Booting-FromISO

For booting FromISO you can use Exfat, Ntfs, Vfat (sofar I know any linux format can not boot ISO).
If you create your own EXfat partition, maybe iso will not boot also, the iso file must be contiguous. The other problem Exfat you have to have at least windows 10 or linux kernel at least 5.1 to be able to delete file in it.
The SECRET ventoy exfat partition, you can put so many ISOs and the ISO-files will not become fragmented so you do not need defrag-tool.

So I setup my PC using internal Harddrive for multiboot purposes just booting Grub4dos in BIOS-mode (never use EFI even my PC is EFI capable)
One partition for fullinstall windows (still using it at least to defrag the Ntfs partition where all ISOs are)
One Ntfs-partition for booting ISOs,VHDs,IMGs
One EXT3-partition for Frugal
Total more then 100 OSs ready for multiboot.

Nowaday some direct boot FromIso linux distros equipt with save persistence.
You can also convert some isos to frugal install with save persistence as wiak mentioned above it call "weedogit"

I tested also old Macbookpro with 7 fullinstall lightweight linux distros for multiboot setup. Later on I find out frugal install is possible also, so you can boot there tens of frugal OSs.