3.6 KiB
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! I encourage you to search for yourself, but I’ve tried to be as impartial as I can for the below.
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Note
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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 |
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Only runs in RAM, so not ideal for RAM-constrained systems |
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Based on/requires an Arch build host |
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Requires an x86_64 build host |
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Has a large amount of dependencies |
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Manual intervention required for build process |
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Minimal documentation |
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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 |
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Documentation is lacking |
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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 |
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Documentation is sparse |
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Full featureset unknown due to ISO not building on Debian Jessie (8.0) |
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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 in order to be useful |
Simple/easy to use |
Full featureset unknown; documentation is sparse |
Limited configuration/customization |
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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 |