bdisk/docs/manual/faq/ALTERNATIVES.adoc

I don’t like BDisk. Are there any other alternatives?

First, I’m sorry to hear that BDisk doesn’t suit your needs. If you want any features you think are missing or encounter any bugs, please report them!

But yes; there are plenty of alternatives!

Note	Only currently maintained projects are listed here.

Archboot

Written in Bash

Pros	Cons
Highly featureful	Arch-only live media
Includes an assisted Arch install script	Inaccessible to non-Arch users
Can create tarballs too	Not very customizable by default
Supports hybrid ISOs	Infrequent stable releases
Supports PXE-booting infrastructure	Requires a systemd build host
Supports SecureBoot	Not a secure setup by default
Supports GRUB2’s "ISO-loopback" mode	Builds a much larger image
Official Arch project	Some graphical bugs
	Much more disk space is necessary for the tool itself
	Only runs in RAM, so not ideal for RAM-constrained systems
	Based on/requires an Arch build host
	Requires an x86_64 build host
	Has a large amount of dependencies
	Manual intervention required for build process
	Minimal documentation

Archiso

Written in Bash.

Pros	Cons
Used to build the official Arch ISO	Requires an x86_64 build host
Supports custom local on-disk repositories	Not very featureful as far as customization goes
Supports arbitrary file placement in finished image	Requires an Arch build host
Supports hybrid ISOs	Has odd quirks with package selection
Supports Secureboot	Manual intervention required for build process
Official Arch project	Does not start networking by default
Can run in RAM or from media	Very minimal environment
	Arch-only live meda
	Documentation is lacking

Debian’s Simple-CDD

Written in Bash (some Python).

Pros	Cons
Supports custom packages to be installed	Very limited — no customization beyond package listing
Lightweight; quick to set up	Takes a long time for preparation; requires a clone of many .deb packages first.
	Doesn’t seem to work as according to the documentation
	Documentation is sparse
	Full featureset unknown due to ISO not building on Debian Jessie (8.0)

Fedora’s Livemedia-creator

Written in Bash.

Pros	Cons
Somewhat customizable	Requires manual initialization of chroot(s) via mock
Uses kickstart configurations	Requires a kickstart configuration to be useful
Simple/easy to use	Full featureset unknown; documentation is sparse
	Limited configuration/customization

LiveCD Tools

Written in Python 2, some Bash.

Pros	Cons
Can use kickstarts	Requires a kickstart configuration
Simple/easy to use to use	Limited configuration/customization
Automatically builds chroots	Full featureset unknown; documentation is sparse