this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
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Privacy

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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...

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[–] Xanza@lemm.ee 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Who tf is downvoting? Ventoy is the best

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[–] llii@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 days ago

Thank you for pointing it out.

[–] kaidezee@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Honestly, if you're using Windows, then you most likely already sent any and all of your secrets to Microsoft anyway. Including that you installed Tails.

[–] Rozz@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What options are there for flashing to SD cards? Something that works on Mac too would be nice. A gui is preferred.

[–] downhomechunk@midwest.social 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

Plug your usb drive in and run lsblk to figure out which letter to use instead of x in /dev/sdx

sudo dd if=image.iso of=/dev/sdx bs=1M status=progress

EDIT: I totally didn't read your request. This is not gui or Mac based, but it still might help someone.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 days ago

I'm pretty sure mac, being based off freebsd, would include dd

[–] Rozz@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 days ago

Thanks for trying.

I'm not against terminal, but I'd just have to look up commands every time that I rarely use.

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[–] TheImpressiveX@lemm.ee 6 points 3 days ago

Doesn't the official guide recommend using GNOME Disk Utility anyway?

[–] bour@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

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

[–] PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Ahh too bad because balenaEtcher just werks for me.

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.”

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[–] DaTingGoBrrr@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago

balenaEtcher never worked for me. No image that I flashed has been usable to boot. The RPi imager has been working flawlessly

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 3 days 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.

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