How do I flash multiple ISO files on my usb?

Infamous711

So I have a bad habit of checking and testing out multiple linux distros (although I am never gonna switch away from solus) and I want to flash multiple iso files onto my usb which has 32GB of space and boot from it. Is there any way to do this? If there is, should I do it? And which software should I use to do this?

Solarmass

Infamous711

Maybe it's Ventoy what you are looking for:
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy

Infamous711

Solarmass Oh yeah, this is it. Thank you!

downhill

Solarmass Darn, you beat me to it! :-(

Brucehankins

There's also Multiboot USB

Infamous711

Brucehankins Oh I think this is the one I should use, its in the official solus repo. So I can install it by using eopkg easily. I will check this and also ventoy out today.

cotton

Has anyone used Ventoy to successfully boot Solus 4.3?
It times out for me and goes to a text prompt.

Solarmass

cotton I successfully installed Solus using Ventoy

cotton

Solarmass
So what did you differently? And was it really version 4.3? The Ventoy page only has confirmation for 4.1 and 4.2.
Mine failed with the default setup.

Staudey

cotton @Solarmass Just note that Ventoy is not officially supported, and the last time I saw someone mention a Ventoy installation attempt, it failed, while the official methods worked.

https://getsol.us/articles/installation/preparing-to-install/en/

Solarmass

cotton I just checked, it was Solus 4.2 and Ventoy 1.0.41 (the current release is 1.0.62)
So I downloaded Solus 4.3 and put it on my Ventoy 1.0.41 flash drive. I went to the BIOS and selected USB drive and booted Solus 4.3.

Try maybe put another Linux OS for testing 🙂
or another usb-drive...

cotton

Staudey
Thanks. I was more interested in whether it was possible rather than whether it's officially supported.
I've just tried with 4.2 and that also fails with the latest Ventoy (1.0.62). Maybe it has worked for others using previous versions.
Writing the 4.3 ISO file to a flash drive using Etcher has worked fine, but my objective is to multiboot Solus from a flash drive, along with other distros.
Apparently, it appears the only way to do that currently is to install each in their own partitions (or subvolumes, if using BTRFS) but I don't know how to do that. It also carries the serious risk of corrupting the boot loader on the main PC if I get it wrong.

cotton

Solarmass
Excellent - that was the key.
I installed Ventoy 1.0.41 and Solus 4.3 boots fine. Updated it to 1.0.62 and it just times out whilst booting.
Must be a regression - I'll raise a ticket with Ventoy.
Thanks for your assistance.

Solarmass

cotton Must be a regression - I'll raise a ticket with Ventoy.

Thanks a lot for the bugreport! 👍️