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by jnovacho 227 days ago
How does this differ from Rufus [0] or Balena Etcher [1]? [0] https://rufus.ie/en/ [1] https://etcher.balena.io/
4 comments

Both of those write a single ISO to your USB stick, while Ventoy allows you to store numerous ISOs in a folder on the stick and choose which to use at runtime. Also, you can store other files like normal with the remaining space on your stick.
Unlike Balena Etcher, Ventoy is not a bloated Electron app that sends telemetry from your computer: https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/issues/3784
I just cannot fathom how a 450 MB dd frontend is taken seriously, instead of being the subject of relentless mockery.
Rufus and BalenaEtcher are both programs for flashing an image to a disk. Ventoy is flashed onto the disk itself (into a small EFI partition), then the rest of the disk is just a regular file system, where you drag and drop a group of ISOs, then pick between them on boot.
Rufus does more than just flash an image, it's actually quite sophisticated and completely different in ways that copying images with Balena is not.

And Rufus is the product of continuous improvement, maintained brilliantly.

Those let you write one image to a USB stick. With Ventoy you write the bootable part once, and plop as many ISOs on there as you want. You get one bootable device where you can select from a list of ISOs.