Tails - Replacing balenaEtcher with Rufus as installer for Windows
tails.net

I am shocked by this - the quote in below is very concerning:

“However, in 2024, the situation changed: balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties.”

Can’t see myself using this software anymore…

  • bour@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 months ago

    The MX Linux live USB maker should work well on Debian based distros.

  • Brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    2 months ago

    That’s interesting, apparently it was mentioned on github but nothing seems to have changed in the end

    https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/issues/3784

    Haven’t used that software in a long time but maybe there’s an opt-out somewhere during runtime? Although I don’t see why a user needs to be required to opt out of nonsense like this when just writing firmware to a USB disk.

    Only ever touched balenaEtcher when some project or distro recommended it. Overall prefer Rufus for this sort of thing when working on Windows.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I’ve used Sardu on Windows for making multi-iso bootable USB sticks a long time ago in the past, but I’d admittedly never looked at their ToS or Privacy Policy. My use case was slapping some live boot antivirus scanners, data recovery tools, and one or two lightweight liveboot-Linux ISOs on one USB as a portable toolkit.

      When I’m making anything else from Windows, I’ve always stuck with Rufus. Had never heard of BalenaEtcher before now.

      • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
        0·
        2 months ago

        I"m horrible with names of programs and mess with a lot of junk comps switching out OS’s and just tinkering around so I’m always using crazy utility programs. BalenaEtcher is used in a lot of tutorials or guides for installations, I think recently both Elementary OS and even Ubuntu had instructions pointing towards BalenaEtcher.

        I never thought it was a great program, it was finicky to use and errors out quickly multiple times. Looking back I saw the signs, weird new program being promoted above other “well established” burn programs, ads, and now scrolling down their webpage it’s just a bunch of promotional subscription bullshit. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit looking at the “balenacloud” and “balenasense”, like if they’re collecting your data through etcher then all of that shit is probably compromised. Another fucking google wannabe corp.

    • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      If you actually read the post, you would have known, it does work, but there are some privacy concerns with it:

      “However, in 2024, the situation changed: balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties.”

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    2 months ago

    Glad I saw this. I downloaded the tool on recommendation from a forum post when I was reviving my homelab. I’ll nuke it for sure.

  • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    ♬ Hello dd my old friend
    I’ve come sudo with you again ♬

  • Xanza@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Generally Ventoy is better than both. Choose a dedicated flash storage, flash Ventoy to it, then click and drag as many ISO’s as can fit on your drive and you can boot from any one of them at any time.

    Much better than Etcher or Rufus, IMO.

  • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    i still don’t understand why anyone would use etcher. it’s an electron wrapper over dd. it’s 80MB where rufus is 1.5. when it appeared there were already other programs that did its job better.

    • HelloRoot@lemy.lolEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I like clicking buttons that have a text on them saying what they do instead of trying to memorize a gajillion terminal commands and flags where I have to enter more commands and flags to see what they do.

      • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
        0·
        2 months ago

        plus it’s some some sanity checks like not showing you your system drives. Or warning you when the drive you are about to nuke is suspiciously large and maybe not the usb drive you actually want to use.

        This is basically the main feature. Stopping you from fatfingering the wrong drive

      • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        that’s correct. on windows, rufus is a better tool, and on linux or mac it’s just a built-in command with a manual packed in.

        also, ubuntu ships with startup image creator, and gnome disks ships as a flatpak, if those are more your speed.

        • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          0·
          2 months ago

          Thanks for the info, I’m on linux mint and after checking these out it isn’t immediately apparent from their websites whether or how I could install them. Still think etcher occupies a niche that alternatives don’t fill, its website directs you straight to installing it, it’s cross platform, and using it is very easy, so it’s something that could reasonably be linked to in various install tutorials.

      • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        weird that the installation guide is hosted on a separate website that hasn’t been updated in eight years. that’s irresponsible of them. anyway rufus is a better version of etcher that you can download for windows.

      • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        0·
        2 months ago

        Rufus.

        And who cares if there’s spyware on windows, you’re already using windows so there is, it’s windows. At that point you may as well just use etcher, but I’d use Rufus anyway because let’s be real it’s just better. The only reason not to use Rufus is because it’s windows exclusive, but if you’re using windows that probably doesn’t bother you, so…

      • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
        0·
        2 months ago

        Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize you were on Windows. That’s a Linux command. I haven’t used Windows very much since about 2018, so I don’t even consider Windows anymore unless it’s brought up.

    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      In my early days of Linux, I royally fucked up a USB thumb drive (back when they were expensive) using dd and as a result do not trust myself with it.

      I would use Hannah Montana Linux if it was the only GUI option to burn a USB ISO.

      • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
        0·
        2 months ago

        Weird. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve used that command. But it’s probably been several thousand. And I’ve never screwed up a flash drive that way.

        There has been once or twice where I’ve pulled the flash drive out too quickly after it finished writing and it actually hadn’t finished writing and had to redo it, but other than that, I’ve not actually screwed up any drives beyond repair or anything.

  • renzev@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I remember a while back, years before this surfaced, there was a thread on /g/ with a group photo of Balena’s employees and a caption like “why does it take so many people to develop an electron wrapper around dd”. Obviously it was low effort engagement bait (balena does much more than etcher), but the comments were full of people calling the company a glowie honeypot and the like. Moral of the story: Trust the schizos, they sense spyware form lightyears away.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
      0·
      2 months ago

      Can always use dd but I always go stupid when I need to set boot flags and all that crap, which is so much easier with etcher. I think I’ve done dd with gparted in the past.

      • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        i’ve never needed to set a single flag with dd. i just do if=the_iso of=the_disk. what flags?

        • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
          0·
          2 months ago

          Don’t you need to mark usb disks as bootable if you want to boot from them to install Linux or whatever

          • qpsLCV5@lemmy.ml
            0·
            2 months ago

            i think it depends on the image you get - for archlinux you can simply cat (or dd) the file onto a usb stick and it works perfectly fine, bootable. but i think i have seen an image at some point where it didn’t work, but i don’t recall what it was.

          • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            that’s not something i’ve ever had to do, i’ve only done that for hard drives.

      • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
        0·
        2 months ago

        does gparted set the correct flags too, can it also do windows

        i just want a dumb ui i can dumbly drag the iso file to and it takes care of everything for me.