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Installed Linux for the fist time in Feb, I've now started saving ISO's (media.piefed.social)
submitted 1 day ago by Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social to c/linux@lemmy.ml
48 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So it begins.

I've been flashing my USB often enough that it's now worth it to keep all my ISO's neatly to use them when I need them. I plan on buying 10 USB sticks to just have ready when ever I need a specific version.

I'm visiting family now, so time to upgrade their Linux Mint to Kubuntu

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[-] thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 9 hours ago

Maybe not Kubuntu? It's not de-Canonical'd like Mint or Pop!_OS, so it'll have weird bad things like Snap or the not-yet-ready Rust coreutils.

[-] FourThirteen@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

What's wrong with Debian?

[-] Sunsofold@lemmings.world 3 points 11 hours ago

If you're wanting to use software that's most easily available on different distros, why not just use Distrobox? If you are just wanting to change the UI, why not just switch DEs? If you really need to be able to randomly switch away from/to system level differences, what are you doing? What would necessitate that?

[-] grue@lemmy.world 38 points 19 hours ago

Uh... you do know that people don't literally save a bunch of Linux ISOs, right? It's a euphemism for collecting less legit things, like pirated media or porn.

By the time you want to install the same distro again, it's likely that a new version will be out and you'll want to re-download it anyway.

[-] janNatan@lemmy.ml 10 points 10 hours ago

Speak for yourself. I have ISOs saved for my virtual machine "OS Museum" full of all kinds cool stuff like Damn Small Linux, TempleOS, Haiku, Hannah Montana Linux, the version of Mandrake Linux that came with the Sims 1 installed ... Etc.

[-] Digit@lemmy.wtf 8 points 11 hours ago

551GB of ISOs here. Most are very old.

[-] Labna@lemmy.world 74 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)
  1. you need Ventoy to stop formatting you're USB sticks
  2. Keeping lot of ISO is a bit useless just the few that you use daily.
  3. If you're keeping this ISO anyway, get them by torrent and keep sharing for helping the community
[-] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Also if you have a fast internet connection, check out https://netboot.xyz/

[-] transending_the_binary@piefed.blahaj.zone 14 points 22 hours ago

Another important point 4. Always check checksums (sha256 etc)

[-] smeg@feddit.uk 6 points 21 hours ago

Is there a simple guide to checking checksums? It doesn't seem like it should be complex but half the time the distro's instructions don't work for me!

[-] Kory@lemmy.ml 10 points 20 hours ago

First you need to download the provided file from the distro page. Something with Checksum in the name most of the time. The website should provide instructions. Please note that does not validate the gpg key.

Quick Method Terminal: Open the terminal at the location of the ISO file or go there with cd. Type sha256sum NameOfIsoFile.iso - it takes a moment depending on your system. Copy the output (some long numbers/letters). Compare it with the downloaded checksum-file - open the file, press ctrl-f or whatever you have for find and paste it. If it's found, it's the same.

Method KDE: Right click the file, open properties, then go to tab "Checksums". Paste same number/letter combination from above into the provided space "Expected checksums..." - if it's green, it's correct.

[-] smeg@feddit.uk 5 points 20 hours ago

Thanks, that does sound familiar. Maybe it was the gpg bit that confused me before.

[-] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 20 hours ago

Just use the appropriate command for the hash type, i.e. sha256sum <filename> (iirc, might be wrong, man is your friend)

[-] Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world 10 points 22 hours ago

Ventoy is great, it’s my go to tool, boots on basically everything (even my MacBook) but… wasn’t there a scare about possibly being compromised because it builds itself from hundreds of modules on github or something like that?

[-] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 20 hours ago

Afaik the maintainer(s) have provided a reasonable explanation and cleared up the reproducible builds part

[-] Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago

Oh that’s good to know. Thanks!

[-] bizdelnick@lemmy.ml 66 points 23 hours ago

Your family will hate you if you'll change their distro and DE every time you visit them. Distro hopping is normal for the first couple of years, but do it on your own machine.

[-] erebion@news.erebion.eu 5 points 13 hours ago

First couple of years? I was in my early teens when trying out many distros within a couple weeks, for example Puppy Linux, Ubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, OpenSuse... Then I settled on Ubuntu and used that from 2008 to 2022, when I was fed up with Canonical shoving snapd down my throat and me having to uninstall it all the time. Since then I've used Debian exclusively, previously I only had it on some machines.

(I've also toyed a bit with the BSDs, but was missing systemd, so those never stuck with me.)

[-] Camille_Jamal@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 hours ago

what is bsd?

ive heard of it, but not really seen or used it

[-] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 10 points 21 hours ago

I've been using Linux for like 18 years and I still hop. I got a better idea of what I like to use for different situations though...but there are so many great builds/derivatives now. I'm pretty well settled into Bazzite and Nobara, or regular Fedora and Fedora Blue, depending on specific needs now though.

[-] muhyb@programming.dev 26 points 21 hours ago

Are they Linux ISOs or "Linux ISOs"?

[-] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml -1 points 8 hours ago

Don't "upgrade" to Kubuntu. I'm on it and want to upgrade away because Ubuntu. Fedora Kinoite is probably the best bet if you want KDE for a tech novice.

KDE is really annoying though. Kate is a horrible text editor if you're not a programmer, and Kwrite has weird default shortcuts without any preconfigured "Gnome/Windows style" available. The Dolphin File Explorer doesn't allow you to sort and group by different things. And Kparted isn't as easy to use as Gnome Disk Utility. Still, I like how KDE had better themes than Cinnamon and how it actually lets me move programs to different categories in the start menu.

[-] jaypatelani@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 hours ago
[-] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 hours ago

I tried OpenSUSE and I ran into various issues installing software. Plus the immutable variant of OpenSUSE is an external project IIRC.

[-] Kory@lemmy.ml 12 points 20 hours ago

I don't mean to crash the party, I used to love Ventoy too. But then the blob issue came up and it was met with silence for over a year by the maintainer, that made me a bit uncomfortable. They have responded to it a while ago, but it's no trivial task to solve as I understand it: https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/3224

[-] realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 31 points 1 day ago

I can assure you, you will never need them.

I got a USB stick with ventoy installed, got a gparted and an arch linux iso on that thing, I do use those regularly.

[-] rozodru@pie.andmc.ca 26 points 1 day ago

10 USB sticks? why? just use ventoy and throw them all on an external SSD or something. that's what I do. can even use that with specific dotfiles you need for each distro along with ventoy. much easier to deal with than 10 usb sticks.

[-] dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 23 points 23 hours ago

Upgrade Mint to Kubuntu 💀

[-] radswid@feddit.org 8 points 22 hours ago

isn't it the other way? Ubuntu/Kubuntu -> Mint -> Arch-based (Manjaro, ...), Arch ... -> "btw"

[-] thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 hours ago

manjaro -> ubuntu -> most other distros

There are no "outstanding good distros", there are bad ones to avoid, and ones suited or not suited for your use case

[-] Magister@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

Use Ventoy, you can have dozens and dozens of ISO on one stick only, when you boot on it you can select the one you want.

[-] nil@piefed.ca 6 points 23 hours ago

The drawback of using Ventoy is that it doesn't support systems that has too old BIOS installed. Otherwise it's great.

[-] a14o@feddit.org 16 points 1 day ago

If I saw that folder name while using a friend's machine I would know not to click on it to respect their privacy.

[-] WhatGodIsMadeOf@feddit.org 6 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Anal-LTS-x86-64bit.iso

[-] anon5621@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 day ago

Just buy 2.5 HDD put it in USB sata case and use as USB stick with ventoy

[-] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Or if you want to install an entire iso in less than a minute, one of these.

I really like that one. I can move a terabyte in minutes, and unlike some other M.2 enclosures, this one is a heatsink sandwich, which enables sustained full-speed operation.

[-] anon5621@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago

Buying m2 nowadays or any ssd is not cheap thing at all

[-] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

True. But if you have an old one laying around, from a laptop, desktop or whatever, even a low end one will saturate usb while beating 2.5" hdds.

[-] Dojan@pawb.social 2 points 1 day ago

I’d recommend a HDD enclosure with a virtual drive emulator. I personally use this one which I’ve had for about a decade at this point. Lovely device. At some point I think I’ll pop an SSD in it instead, mostly just for durability purposes.

[-] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Sure.

But that's limited to SATA 3 speeds. A "mere" 600 MB/s. Not to mention SATA SSDs often can't sustain their theoretical maximums.

USB3.2x2 can do 2500 MB/s, and with heatsinks on an NVME drive you can actually reach and sustain that transfer speed.

When you're moving more than 500 gigs of something, or if you move ISO sized things often, it's really nice.

When I occasionally have to write an ISO to usb for macOS or when ventoy for some reason wont work, I get annoyed at how I actually have to wait a bit, even though my thumbdrives aren't slow.

They're just not NVME with a heatsink fast. I've gotten used to moving ISOs around like they're text files.

[-] db2@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago

It may not work. I have two ssds like that and they both won't boot ventoy for some reason, but a hdd in a usb case worked no problem.

Also, unless you're using the usb3 interface it doesn't make much difference really.

[-] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

I use this one professionally, yet to come across a PC that wouldn't boot from it.

And yeah, you won't benefit unless the PC also has both fast ports and fast storage.

But half of the time I'm using it to move files from a customers old PC to their new one, and more aften than not, even old one has at least one quick usb C port.

[-] Auster@thebrainbin.org 12 points 1 day ago

Remember to keep Hannah Montana Linux too!

[-] SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml 4 points 21 hours ago

Install Temple OS on your mom's desktop

[-] thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 5 points 21 hours ago

Ah remember when I had this phase

[-] TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org 3 points 23 hours ago

I mean...my connection is so fast it takes like, what, a minute, maybe two to get an ISO? The Internet is my backup device. I can still get copies of Yggdrasil from the early 90s.

[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 points 23 hours ago

Mine is so slow, 1 GB is half a hour.

[-] ninexe@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

Lol.

this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
108 points (90.3% liked)

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