Re: Re: Recommend Balena Etcher for creating bootable disks
On Thu, Aug 19, 2021 at 02:38:39AM +0530, Pirate Praveen wrote:
> > 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
> >>
> >>
>
Hi
> > No - under no circumstances, in my opinion. It doesn't add very much to
> > what we have.
I stand by this - see also below.
>
> 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.
>
If you've got a Mac, you've got software that will deal with it included
in MacOS. (Or just use dd from terminal - it might not be as fully
featured as the corresponding version in Debian - sorry, I can't check.]
> > 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.
>
I mistyped. It's an appimage. It's 100MB of obscured single file for one
simple file copy.
Note: slack, signal are all non-free software and wouldn't be packaged for
Debian.
> > 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 no good means of validating how good or bad the installer is. It's
obviously being well used by people who are writing Raspberry Pi OS images.
I did use this one on a Windows machine to write Raspberry Pi OS and it
worked for me. I also used it to write an arm64 DVD image to a USB stick
so I know that it worked for me to do that.
> > 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.
>
Please look very, very carefully indeed at the security problems with the
Electron framework apps. In my opinion, I'd not want to recommend them but
your choice is your own to make.
> > All the very best, as ever,
>
> > Andy Cater
>
>
All the very best, as ever,
Andy Cater
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