Ventoy, a Feature-Rich Utility to Create Bootable USB

Ventoy is a free, open-source, cross-platform utility for creating bootable USB drives for Linux and Windows. It is feature-rich and supports most system images and computer architectures. This article highlights Ventoy’s best features and teaches you how to configure and use this Rufus alternative.

Ventoy Features

I will not exaggerate if I say that Ventoy’s features surpass Rufus’s features by stages:

• Minimalistic and easy-to-use UI;

• Customizable theme and menu;
• Support MBR & GPT partition styles;

• Compatible with x86, IA32, x86_64, ARM64 and MIPS64EL architectures;
• Support secure-boot: you can easily enable secure-boot support from the ventoy option menu;

• No extraction needed: using Ventoy, you can directly boot from your ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files;
• Local disk browser: you are not obliged to copy your ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files to a USB drive, as you can directly browse and boot files from a local disk;

• Support write-protected USB drive;
• Features expansion through plugins: Linux/Windows auto installation (modifiable scripts), Boot password protection, Linux vDisk boot, and file (drivers, for example) injection plugins.

How to Configure and Use Ventoy?

To utilize Ventoy, you do not need any special skills, solely follow these steps:

1. Install Ventoy using the software center or the command line: Ventoy is available on popular Linux distros’ official repositories;

2. Launch Ventoy (Ventoy2Disk);
3. Click on “Option” to configure partition style and filesystem, enable or disable secure boot support;

4. Select where to install Ventoy: by default, Ventoy shows only USB drives, but you can display all devices by enabling the “Show all devices” option if you want to install it to a local disk (HDD or SSD) or an sd card. The device will be formatted, so check twice.

5. Next, click “Install”;
6. After installation is complete, copy the ISO/IMG files to your USB drive.

7. Reboot, enter your PC boot manager, and boot your Ventoy device.

8. Now, Ventoy lists, in alphabetical order, all the ISO files you copied to the USB drive. Select one using keyboard arrows and press enter to boot it. Also, you can press F2 to browse and boot files on your local disk.

9. Enjoy!

Bonus: How to Update Ventoy & Configure Plugins?

When a new version is released, you can safely update it to the USB drive using the Ventoy2Disk utility without worrying about your ISO files getting deleted.

To add or configure plugins, Ventoy offers a GUI configurator called VentoyPluson. To Start VentoyPluson:

1. Open a terminal window and type lsblk to identify your USB device path:

2. Next, run the following command line:

sudo bash ventoyplugson /dev/sdX

3. Then, open your web browser and visit http://127.0.0.1:24681;

4. Now, on this web page, you can configure the Ventoy plugins.

💬 Which app do you personally use to create bootable USBs?