Wanting to test several types of Linux? Got Ventoy? (helped me quite a bit)

Hello Frame.Workers:

I’m usually a Windows or Chromebook guy only. However my work team is setting up more and more Linux servers every month it seems. Time for me to start getting familiar with Linux. I decided to buy a half dozen SanDisk Dual USB-A/USB-C 32GB drives so I could create several different Linux flavored Live boot thumb drives. This was slow and tedious. I had a hard time remembering which was which as I didn’t have anything to label the thumbdrives with.

Then I stumbled upon “Ventoy” (may be other companies that make a similar product). It is a free multi live boot thumbdrive utility. You install Ventoy on a decent sized thumbdrive (32Gb - 64Gb is what I tested with). Then you download Linux version install ISO files. Copy them to a folder on the Ventoy thumbdrive and… WOAHLAH! When you boot with the Ventoy thumbdrive inserted it will popup with a list of the Linux ISOs you copied to it. Use arrow keys to select and hit Enter. It boots that version of Linux. I believe you can even create a persistent partition on the Ventoy thumbdrive so you can make changes and perform O/S updates.

Ventoy allowed me to test seven different beginner/transition Linux versions. I finally decided on Zorin which is a great Windows to Linux transition flavor if you are looking for something to try.

I don’t recall what all the limits or requirements were for Ventoy but the link is below so you may look into it at your leisure. I hope it helps ease the burden of testing different flavors or Versions of Linux by making the whole process more efficient and convenient.

Ventoy:
https://www.ventoy.net/

Thanx,
Wio
Texas Citizen

Disclaimers:
*I am in no way associated with Ventoy or it’s subsidiaries. I’m mearly a dumb Windows user who was looking for a better way. (I own a FW16 and preordered a FW13 Core Ultra).

**No animals were harmed during the creation of this post. However there are standing accusations that the author of this post may have given several squirrels a “go to h*ll” look from time to time.

4 Likes

Ventoy sounds interesting - I would have loved it in my distro-hopping days. However, you have windows, and hyper-v is actually really capable as a hypervisor.

Have you thought about just installing a few VMs? What servers is your work using? RHEL, Oracle, Ubuntu, etc…

If RHEL, use CentOS or get a RH Developer license and put RHEL 9 on a VM. The best part about VMs is when you break it, you just create a new one.

Big fan of Ventoy, I have like 10 distros in a single USB