Re: Re: Recommend Balena Etcher for creating bootable disks
> On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 10:21:18PM +0530, Pirate Praveen wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> At https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#write-usb I think Balena Etcher
[1] should
>> be recommended either replacing win32diskmanager or in addition to
it. This
>> is very easy to use and also works on Mac OS.
>>
>> [1] https://www.balena.io/etcher/
>>
>> Thanks
>> Praveen
>>
>> Note: please cc me on replies
>>
>>
> No - under no circumstances, in my opinion. It doesn't add very much
to
> what we have.
Support for Mac OS does not count? See the target audience here is not
people who already have Debian or a GNU/Linux. The main audience is
people who are currently using Windows or MacOS. For GNU/Linux users cp
or dd already covers.
> It is not stable software. It's distributed as a flatpak so anybody
who
> really wants it can install it. It's an Electron app which means
that it's
> huge and has interesting security problems.
This is quite normal and widely used, element, slack client, signal etc
there are so many popular electron based apps. We are giving it as an
additional option. Yes, there are people who hate electron based apps,
but they are still widely developed, used and loved by people. Same for
flatpak or appimage or docker.
> It works relatively well for SD cards: I am not yet convinced that it
> works as well for USB sticks.You might as well suggest Raspberry Pi
imager
> from the Raspberry Pi Foundation - their Ubuntu package sadly doesn't
> work at all on Debian :(
Again add this as another option.
> I have used it, but, to be honest the potential downsides massively
outweigh
> the benefits.
I don't think being electron based is enough to disqualify a useful
software.
> All the very best, as ever,
> Andy Cater
Reply to: