Bootable USB Creator Ventoy Gets A Native GUI For Linux

Ventoy, a tool for easy bootable USB drive creation (simply copy the ISO to the USB), has been updated recently with a native GUI for Linux.

Ventoy is available for Microsoft Windows and Linux, and it can create bootable USB drives containing Linux and Windows ISO files.

You need to install Ventoy to a USB drive, then every time you want to create a bootable USB drive, all you have to do is copy the ISO to the USB. There's no need to format the USB drive. You can copy as many ISO files as you wish (even combined Windows and Linux ISOs), and when booting from the USB, Ventoy shows a list of available ISO files, allowing you to boot from the one you select. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I'm saying that Ventoy is probably the best bootable USB creator for both Linux and Windows.

What's more, since you don't need to format the USB drive, you can continue to use it for other purposes. So you can copy other files to the USB, and it won't interfere with Ventoy.

Ventoy also features support for legacy and UEFI Secure Boot, it supports persistence for some Linux distributions, it supports ISO files larger than 4GB, and it can be upgraded without reformatting the USB.

Initially, Ventoy was released for Linux as a command line tool. Back in March 2021, it added a web UI, but that was a bit clunky to use, especially since its aim was to simplify things, which it didn't fully do.

With the latest 1.0.52 though, Ventoy has added a native GUI for Linux, which you can use to install Ventoy onto USB devices, which is similar to the one that's been available on Windows since the early Ventoy releases. Once you install Ventoy on a USB stick, all you have to do is copy some ISO files to the USB, and you'll get a bootable USB drive.

The release notes mention that the new GUI uses either GTK or Qt, depending on what you prefer (I'm not sure which one is used in the precompiled binaries).

You might like: How To Login With A USB Flash Drive Instead Of A Password On Linux Using pam_usb (Fork)

The new Ventoy Linux GUI lets you choose the USB device, shows the current Ventoy version and the Ventoy version installed on the USB drive, and it has various options that allow you to:

Enable Secure Boot support
Choose the partition type (MBR or GPT)
Set the partition configuration (align partitions with 4KB and preserve some space at the end of the disk)
Remove Ventoy from a USB device
Choose the user interface language

When you download the latest Ventoy binary, you'll notice some Ventoy GUI executables: VentoyGUI.x86_64, VentoyGUI.aarch64, VentoyGUI.i386, and VentoyGUI.mips64el. To run it, all you have to do is double-click the VentoyGUI executable corresponding to your OS architecture (if you're a desktop user, chances are you're using an x86_64 architecture, so double click VentoyGUI.x86_64).

In case double-clicking the executable doesn't work, open a terminal, navigate to the folder where you've extracted Ventoy and run it using, e.g. for the x86_64 architecture:

./VentoyGUI.x86_64

Other changes in Ventoy 1.0.52 include:

Add support for Emergency Boot Kit
Continue to boot when the ISO file size is invalid.
Fix a bug when booting puppy-4.3.1
languages.json update

You may also want to check out (includes instructions for creating a bootable USB drive with persistence): Create A Bootable USB Drive By Simply Copying The ISO To The USB With Ventoy (Linux And Windows)