Ventoy or Easy2Boot? Which is better?

#FreeBSD #OpenSource #Unix #garyhtech #2023 reasons to use freebsd
I have used Easy2Boot in my professional capacity, let's take a look at the main alternative.
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[@oscs4556]

The latest version of ventoy works with FreeBSD 14 now.

[@complexity5545]

Thanks

[@Hid4ri]

I do love your videos Gary, thanks mate and keep up the great work you and your wife are doing!

[@complexity5545]

Jeez, I never heard of ventoy before. Good one. I wrote a comment last week about how I have a very complex set of scripts to boot FreeBSD (because I have to make my own FreebsdISO). The default Freebsd ISOs are not beginner friendly at all. But FreeBSD is still a good kernel.

[@joeking5211]

Great vid, quick, straight forward, and now I know that easy2boot is not just a Ventoy launcher that another vid totally confused me with. So thks for that. A vid on where to get all the used iso's would be good

[@michaelwright2986]

I found that really helpful, thank you: my distro hopping will be easier in the future. And now a language nerd point: the word you want is "simple": "simplistic" means "characterized by extreme, excessive, or misleading simplicity" (from the _Shorter Oxford English Dictionary_ on my phone). A populist politician typically produces simplistic policies (in the US, for instance, the belief that the problems of society could be solved by displaying the Ten Commandments in every classroom) for problems that are neither simple nor easy. That's why people misunderstand what you mean. It may be that the word you really want is "easy": I see no reason to believe that Linux Mint is simpler than any other Linux distro--it seems to have the same number of moving parts. But I do certainly find it easier than anything else I've tried. Simple vs easy is a bit of a hobby-horse of mine, I'm afraid. I have used Ventoy in the past, with occasional problems, and I was interested to see an alternative, and found your conclusion very helpful (I think you found it a bit surprising, yes?) I find it much easier to install Ventoy on a USB drive from Windows than from Linux--is that just me, or is it really the case that the procedure is more streamlined. And I have also occasionally found weird problems with booting going fine from one USB port but not from another: I don't understand anything about this stuff, so I'd like to know if there's a reason, or if it's just random randomness.

[@nycrsny3406]

Unrelated to the main topic, but your differentiation of "simple" and "simplistic" with the example provided really helped me grasp the difference. Thanks!

[@AnotherSkyTV]

On old 32GB stick Ventoy works fine for me, but got newer, bigger one and just won't install so looking for alternatives...

[@steve6375]

Your E2B issues. 1. slow (dont put all files in MAINMENU folder - e.g. use \_ISO\LINUX folder for Linux ISOs, etc.). 2. No UEFI boot (you must boot from UEFI partition 2). 3. Won't boot BSD (It actually tells you that new BSD has a problem and you need to run it as .isoBSD - simply press Y when prompted @2:14).

[@steve6375]

P.S. E2B detects BIOS-visible disks on startup. Was your internal disk visible to the BIOS? Even HBCDPE did not seem to give the internal disk any drive letters?

[@sfuoncall]

Yeah. I have a little bit of experience booting FreeBSD off an external USB drive. Unfortunately, when you move the USB drive to a different port or change what USB devices are plugged in, FreeBSD might not boot. This is due to FreeBSD mounting the volume using the device designation and that designation will change if you change the USB configuration (i.e. what and where the devices are plugged in). Definitely something that needs to be worked on. It makes it hard to use on a laptop when you don't want to install it on the interna; HD (or it won't install on the internal HD and boot). This is on my old MacBook Air.

[@SpookyLurker]

Got a list as to what images and utilities you all have? Maybe a link to a page with the info and maybe links to the ones you're allowed to?

[@brianh.000]

I'm searching for the same.

[@umnumi4]

How to use ventoy on Android, if possible, I want to install apk.file from a flash drive??

[@steve6375]

E2B now includes Ventoy v1.0.97

[@ShiggitayMediaProductions]

FIRST! With that out of the way, I'm glad I'm not the only one to have issues booting FreeBSD 14 via Ventoy. FreeBSD 13.x and below should boot up fine. I really like Ventoy. It's saved my @$$ many a time when I needed to reinstall my Linux distro of choice Arch Linux as well as Windows too. Thanks for this video! I'd never heard of Easy2Boot.

[@dingokidneys]

The last time I tried using Ventoy with a FreeBSD ISO, it failed too. I had to burn the ISO directly to the USB stick to get it running. No idea what the problem was but with the size of USB sticks these days, dedicating a whole one to a single ISO does seem like a huge waste of space.

[@complexity5545]

I think the freebsd guys now only target users that only install via a usb. You better know your way around a command shell, UEFI, partitions, and zfs to get it running. I don't even use the FreeISOs anymore. I have to untar the downloads and do my own partitioning and initiating FreeBSD. Its weird. I've been doing that since 2015. I still use Freebsd + ZFS as primary OS.

[@Shahinc0]

Nice one.. I used for recovery boot menu :)

[@kablammy7]

thanks for the comparison

[@declancottle991]

I like ventoy because it has a GUI for linux that takes a lot less time than easy2boot does on linux, because from my experience making the drive contiguous when you add a new ISO to easy2boot can take quite a while on linux for almost no reason.

[@whoislookup]

Why don’t they put NomadBSD on there. It’s a live booting OS I think.

[@Maisonier]

great video

[@adamzbucki237]

I see you didn’t booot into FreeBSD, but I swear my iso on ventoy boots in… lemme double check actually

[@AnotherSkyTV]

Same