Looking for Unetbootin alternatives for creating bootable USB pen drive on Windows & Linux using ISO images, here are some solutions to ponder upon.
What is Unetbootin?
UNetbootin (Universal Netboot Installer) is an open-source application to create a live bootable USB system for different OS booting. It is a cross-platform means available for Linux, Windows and macOS.
It is available for Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, CentOS, Gentoo; Linux Mint, Arch Linux, Mandriva, MEPIS, Slackware as well as FreeDOS, FreeBSD and NetBSD.
The Unetbootin is not the only application for creating bootable drives to install various Linux distributions and other operating systems without the help of DVD or CD. There are some other good Unetbootin alternatives let’s see the list of tools to create Live USB systems…
Best Unetbootin alternatives
Rufus
Rufus is the best alternative to Unetbootin because of the lightweight and free & open source license. It is fast and precise to job what it made for. IT automatically detects the attached USB drive to create a bootable system.
However, it has a bit downside that it is only available to run on Windows 10/8/7 but there is a good side too. We don’t need to install it, just download the application and run it just clicking the setup.
Rufus support any bootable ISO image to create a Live USB drive for Linux and Windows OS installation including support for Raw disk images (compressed one too).
Furthermore, while creating a Linux Live bootable drive, if need it can download and install the bootloader such as SYSLINUX & GRUB to make USB drive bootable.
Rufus supports FAT, FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, UDF or ReFS filesystems.
Price: Free and open source
Platform to install: Windows 10/8/7
Fedora media writer
Fedora media writer which is earlier known as Fedora Live USB Creator which has a nice interface and easy to use the process for creating bootable USB drives.
From the interface of the Fedora Media Writer, we not only can download the latest version of Fedora Workstation & Fedora Server 29 to create Live bootable Fedora drive; also custom ISO images can be used. Under the Custom image option, this Unetbootin alternative offers support to .ISO, .Raw and .XZ images.
After selecting the ISO or other bootable images, it will automatically select the attached USB drive and gives the option to write images.
Price: Free and Open Source
Platforms: Mac OS X, Windows and Linux
Universal USB Installer
Universal USB Installer aka UUI is another best alternative for Unetbootin bootable USB maker. The user can choose a wide range of Linux distribution from the list given on the interface of Universal USB including WIndows and it will create bootable pen drive accordingly.
Simply select the type of Linux Distribution, then ISO and drive which you want to use and rest of work will be done by this software.
Platform: Windows
Price: Free
YUMI – Multiboot USB Creator
Do you want to create a Multi-OS bootable pen drive? Then try YUMI (Your Universal Multiboot Installer). It is really one of the best alternatives to Unetbootin that can use single USB flash to create multiple bootable operating systems or tools such as antivirus utilities, Linux OS and more…
Platform: Windows
Price: Free
Deepin Boot Maker
Deepin Boot Maker is a bootmaker which is a part of Deepin Linux Distribution developed by Deepin Technology also available for Windows, macOS and Linux.
Nothing is complicated in this Unetbootin alternative, just download & install, plug the USB, insert the ISO files and run the Deepin Boot Maker; no strings attached, pretty simple, isn’t it.
OpenSUSE imagewriter
If you want a Linux USB maker on Opensuse then go for their own one called Imagewriter. It was also ported for Windows here is the link for that SUSE Studio ImageWriter Windows.
It is very simple and just meant only for one this load the ISO image and write the same.
For Linux based on Redhat here is package link.
balenaEtcher
balenaEtcher which also known as Etcher again a free and open-source Unetbootin alternative. It has the capability to support both .ISO and .IMG files along with zipped folders to create SD card and USB flash drives.
The interface of the Etcher is quite modern but with simplicity. It has been developed using the Electron framework and can be installed on Windows 10/8/7, macOS and Linux. See: How to use blaneEtcher to create bootable Pendrive
LinuxLive USB Creator
Note: It has not been updated since 2015, that’s why it is here in the last for an alternative option to Unetbootin. And just for Knowledge give here
LinuxLive USB Creator also known as Lili is another Unetbootin alternative for creating Linux distribution bootable drives including Windows and other bootable systems like Vmware Vsphere.
The best part of the LinuxLive is its interface which is very attractive and divided into step by step cards design to easily understand the process of creating bootable USB drives.
Another useful feature is after creating a Live Linux bootable drive, we don’t need to restart our PC to test whether the USB is bootable or not. LinuxLive USB creator comes with virtualization features that let us run our Linux bootable drives directly on the software itself.
If you don’t have the latest version of Linux that you want to use to create Live USB then Lili can download them for you too.
From the interface of LinuxLive we can download Linux Mint, Kali Linux, Fedora, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, HandyLinux, Debian Live; OpenSUSE, PCLinuxOS, CentOS, Damn Small Linux; Puppy Linux, GParted Live, Clonezilla and more…
Other few features are the hidden installation of Linux on a USB drive to use it for some other purpose without touching the files of OS; File integrity to check ISO files; can format disks bigger than 32 GB, auto-updates when new Linux distributions are available and .IMG files support to some extent.
im a beginer iv not made a disk or any drive bfor iv a dell laptop on windows7 iv locked my admin login witch can i download on a mobile fone then transfair if possible or witch will be easyist for some1 thats clueless & wot do i need
Thank You need much help
You can go for Unetbootin which can be used on both Windows and Linux or Rufus that is only available for Windows platform. Both can be easily downloaded on the smartphone using the browser and then just transfer the file to a laptop or PC for creating a bootable drive.
The only application I would add to this list is Ventoy, which is a multi-installer tool. It provides a simple menu at the boot for the user to choose which installer to run. The number of ISO’s you can add to the USB is limited only by the size of its storage capacity; Just copy the ISO to your Ventoy drive – no content re-writing USBs or wasting yet another DVD.