<story><title>Is it better to use cat, dd, pv or another procedure to copy a CD/DVD? (2015)</title><url>https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/224277/is-it-better-to-use-cat-dd-pv-or-another-procedure-to-copy-a-cd-dvd/224314#224314</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nemosaltat</author><text>The “simple GUI” tool I keep seeing pushed Maker forums is Etcher. I needed to flash something from my work PC so I gave it a shot- 90MB of Electron bloat, while offering no extra functionality over dd . Plus, dd doesn’t advertise to me during the flash, and certainly doesn’t phone home to balena.&lt;p&gt;For folks just getting started or more comfortable with a GUI, I’d recommend giving USBimager[0] a look. It does exactly what’d you’d expect based on the name, it performant, and they have native apps. No affiliation, just a fan of a KISS app done right.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gitlab.com&amp;#x2F;bztsrc&amp;#x2F;usbimager&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gitlab.com&amp;#x2F;bztsrc&amp;#x2F;usbimager&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>AdmiralAsshat</author><text>The prospect of using dd for imaging terrifies me to this day, primarily because you &lt;i&gt;still&lt;/i&gt; hear horror stories of people trying to write a Linux installer to their flash drive to try out, and accidentally overwriting their main drive instead because they mangled &amp;#x2F;dev&amp;#x2F;sda instead of &amp;#x2F;dev&amp;#x2F;sdb.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know why dd remains the standard for so many tutorials when there are competent GUI tools that can take all the guesswork out of it. It&amp;#x27;s like a perpetual hazing ritual for new Linux users.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sp1rit</author><text>I can also recommend Fedora Media Writer[0]. It can, despite the name, install other images too and it&amp;#x27;s fairly intuetive.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;flathub.org&amp;#x2F;apps&amp;#x2F;details&amp;#x2F;org.fedoraproject.MediaWriter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;flathub.org&amp;#x2F;apps&amp;#x2F;details&amp;#x2F;org.fedoraproject.MediaWrit...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Is it better to use cat, dd, pv or another procedure to copy a CD/DVD? (2015)</title><url>https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/224277/is-it-better-to-use-cat-dd-pv-or-another-procedure-to-copy-a-cd-dvd/224314#224314</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nemosaltat</author><text>The “simple GUI” tool I keep seeing pushed Maker forums is Etcher. I needed to flash something from my work PC so I gave it a shot- 90MB of Electron bloat, while offering no extra functionality over dd . Plus, dd doesn’t advertise to me during the flash, and certainly doesn’t phone home to balena.&lt;p&gt;For folks just getting started or more comfortable with a GUI, I’d recommend giving USBimager[0] a look. It does exactly what’d you’d expect based on the name, it performant, and they have native apps. No affiliation, just a fan of a KISS app done right.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gitlab.com&amp;#x2F;bztsrc&amp;#x2F;usbimager&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gitlab.com&amp;#x2F;bztsrc&amp;#x2F;usbimager&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>AdmiralAsshat</author><text>The prospect of using dd for imaging terrifies me to this day, primarily because you &lt;i&gt;still&lt;/i&gt; hear horror stories of people trying to write a Linux installer to their flash drive to try out, and accidentally overwriting their main drive instead because they mangled &amp;#x2F;dev&amp;#x2F;sda instead of &amp;#x2F;dev&amp;#x2F;sdb.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know why dd remains the standard for so many tutorials when there are competent GUI tools that can take all the guesswork out of it. It&amp;#x27;s like a perpetual hazing ritual for new Linux users.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>trinix912</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s also Rufus, sadly it&amp;#x27;s Windows-only.</text></comment>