On Sun, 2021-01-10 at 18:13 +0100, Thomas Schmitt wrote: > Hi, > > Lou Poppler wrote: > > If you want to recommend rufus, please do so ONLY with a prominent, > > un-ignoreable warning explaining that the user MUST select rufus' > > "DD mode" at the prompt immediately before writing the media. > > I understand that manual selection of this mode has been removed in > favor of automatic detection of dd candidates: > https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/issues/1148#issuecomment-395562137 > > I don't use Rufus myself but it is my answer to users of MS-Windows when > they ask what to do with an ISO that is bootable from USB-stick. > > > Have a nice day :) > > Thomas > Hi Thomas,
Your github link references changes made in 2018. In September 2020, I tested the latest rufus on a windows system, and found that the ISO mode was still default, DD mode only an option. I corresponded with rufus's author Pete Batard, including some logs from #debian discussing my testing of rufus, and he kindly returned a lengthy response to my email. Everything below are excerpts from his email: On Thu, 1 Oct 2020, Pete Batard <p...@akeo.ie> wrote: [...] Unfortunately, the Syslinux people have made their modules incompatible from one version to another, and you can't get a core USB/HDD Syslinux bootloader, that is compatible with the Isolinux El-Torito core bootloader, from the ISO itself, so, if the version of Isolinux used by the ISO is different from the one of the USB/HDD Syslinux that Rufus embeds, we need to download it. We will therefore prompt a dialog to do so, to let users know that Rufus is planning to download extra components from the internet. But this is a standard prompt, not an error. Now the one thing that might have thrown this user off is that Rufus always prompts to download these components BEFORE it asks to choose between ISO and DD mode, even as these components are only used for ISO mode, on account that I find it better for users to have the extra Syslinux or GRUB components needed to write in ISO mode available on their machine for subsequent runs. But I can understand how some people may *WRONGLY* assume that, if Rufus asks them to download these, then it's not going to ask them between DD and ISO mode, which is incorrect, as this is really the very next prompt. [...] Finally, I'm not sure why that user is so hell bent on using DD vs ISO. Rufus does actually recommend ISO mode over DD (which is part of the reason why I want to nudge users into downloading the extra remote Syslinux/GRUB components they need) because, if you pay attention to user reports from the internet, especially on social media sites like reddit, you will find that DD-mode image writing does often throw Windows people off, as they think that their drive has been reduced in size to just the ESP since Windows will not mount the main, larger installation partition. This, I'm afraid, is not something that Linux distro maintainers and power-users tend to see, who, I will assert, see ISOHybrid as some kind of panacea, whereas they need to realise that there really exist a lot of Windows users, who are trying to install Linux for the first time and are not familiar with file systems and partitioning that assume, when seeing that the Linux USB they just wrote has apparently been "reduced" to a 16 or 32 MB ESP, that there is an issue with their boot media and do not proceed to attempt installation as a result (a bit like the user below assuming that if they are prompted for files that apply for ISO mode, then it must mean that Rufus will not prompt them for DD mode, which is incorrect). And since I believe that this is ultimately damaging with regards to helping people try Debian or other Linux distros, this is why Rufus tends to recommend ISO mode over DD mode. I therefore have to stress out that distros that are concerned about helping Windows users try or install Linux in the best conditions not put all their eggs in the ISOHybrid "DD" basket, but also ensure that their live or installer system can function with a single FAT32 partition (which, thankfully, the Debian and Ubuntu maintainers seem to readily understand, as far as I can see). So, to summarise: - The DD vs ISO prompt is there. But it only appears after the download Syslinux component prompt, and will obviously not show if you cancel the whole operation on the first prompt. So far, I've had very few reports of users being thrown off by this. [...]
