I’m an educator, and my Windows PC crashed during my first period class.

I had a cinnamon mint USB drive in my bag. I booted to it, and it saved the day!

I don’t have anybody to tell just how much of a godsend that was, but I figured you guys might appreciate it!

  • folekaule@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    2 days ago

    Glad to hear it saved the day and that you’re trying Linux full time. Love a good success story!

    For you or anyone else who want to keep an emergency kit on a USB drive on hand, I recommend checking into Ventoy. With it, you can keep multiple ISOs on a single bootable USB drive and choose which one you want at boot time. Keep an emergency Linux desktop, rescue disks, etc on it and you’ll be good to go. You can easily add more or update existing images just by writing files to the drive. No reformatting required.

    • rozodru@piefed.worldEnglish
      17·
      2 days ago

      yeah ventoy has been a life saver for me. I have multipe linux distros and BSDs on there as well as important immediate files I need access to on a fresh install. I know it’s “shoddy or sketchy” but it’s the only tool out there that does exactly what I need it to do. i.e. save my ass.

      • testaccount372920@piefed.zipEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        I’ve never heard of this tool before, but it looks useful. What’s shoddy or sketchy about it? Is something up with the developer?

        • rozodru@piefed.worldEnglish
          5·
          1 day ago

          I can’t remember all the details but it’s not so much the developer but rather rumors being that it’s potentially malware, issues with the AUR version in the same regard, concerns about certain lines of code, etc, etc, etc. nothing really defacto proven but “worries” about it.

          I personally have never had issues with ventoy and i’ve been using it for years.

    • nymnympseudonym@piefed.socialEnglish
      41·
      2 days ago

      Fun nano-side-story: I discovered Batocera Linux while searching for distros that have a dedicated spin for USB.

      It let my kids experience the glory of my youth including the crappy Atari 2600 games

        • nymnympseudonym@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          14 hours ago

          Hmmm… my gamer brother-on-law loves his Steam deck. I run Batocera on a standalone cheapo NUC. It would be a great holiday gift for him to get my classics ROMs collection on a card he can just boot