Ventoy is an OS.
It’s a live Linux that boots from the USB stick you format/image with the ventoy tool. The rest of the space on the USB stick is configured to be essentially a standard USB drive.
The live Linux’s sole purpose is to boot another image stored on the USB stick.
So, once you have "ventoy"d a usb stick, you can plonk gparted live iso, Ubuntu, Debian, Eos, W10, W11… whatever isos you want. When you boot from that USB stick, you get the ventoy menu screen and select the iso you want it to continue to boot.
Oh yeh, saved my skin a few times.
And you can use it like a normal USB stick once your OS is up, so you can have some installers on there to speed things up
Is it like Rufus but fancier?
Ventoy is an OS.
It’s a live Linux that boots from the USB stick you format/image with the ventoy tool. The rest of the space on the USB stick is configured to be essentially a standard USB drive.
The live Linux’s sole purpose is to boot another image stored on the USB stick.
So, once you have "ventoy"d a usb stick, you can plonk gparted live iso, Ubuntu, Debian, Eos, W10, W11… whatever isos you want. When you boot from that USB stick, you get the ventoy menu screen and select the iso you want it to continue to boot.
Basically, a bootloader on a usb stick
Ventoy should become more popular with sysadmin as having your entire recovery stack on a single usb is a good quality of life change
Oh yeh, saved my skin a few times.
And you can use it like a normal USB stick once your OS is up, so you can have some installers on there to speed things up
Oh that’s pretty slick thank you for the info
Ventoy is just the grub bootloader.
Other useful bootable tools are MS DaRT and Hirens Boot Disc (is that still a thing? Haven’t used it in a while.)
The drive is also still usable for bulk storage, so a big one is still a great option. I’ve got it set up on a nice small form factor 256GB usb.