Raspberry Pi Forums

For burning a new SD image, Windows users have their Win32DiskImager. Linux PC users, depending on their distribution, have the equivalent USB-ImageWriter. (So why do all the howto's only describe making SDs in linux with dd?)

And USB-ImageWriter works fine on the raspbian version of Pi, provided you manually install it. It's not on the standard raspbian distribution. But it's just python script that runs on the Pi!

I simply copied these files from a working imagewriter on my Mint Nadia laptop:

/usr/bin/imagewriter
/usr/lib/imagewriter/ - 3 files
/usr/share/applications/ImageWriter - the one gnome .desktop launcher **
/usr/share/imagewriter/ - 2 files

I put them into same locations on Pi, ** except I left the launcher .desktop file on "pi"'s Desktop.

usb-imagewriter is available on at least Ubuntu and Mint machines. I had it on lmde. (I,ve recently gone "back" to Mint Nadia because lmde refused to come up on my new Tosh C850.) But I would presume the same files from
https://launchpad.net/usb-imagewriter/+download
would be fine too.

Now, at the Pi, I can plug in a USB flash stick with ".img" file, and a $1 SD read/writer, and I can burn fresh SD cards without any PC. It "just works".

It's too easy. Have I missed something?

I don't have a "USB-ImageWriter" installed on any of my Linux systems.

I can't see that it would do anything that I can't already do with a very simple, standard, command line app. ie. dd.

blavery wrote:Now, at the Pi, I can plug in a USB flash stick with ".img" file, and a $1 SD read/writer, and I can burn fresh SD cards without any PC. It "just works".

Well, I can do that with dd too. That "just works".

>> I can't see that it would do anything that I can't already do with a very simple, standard, command line app. ie. dd.

Of course it can't. I know how to use dd. I do use dd.

But I happen to be tutoring a dozen seasoned Windows users who are linux-naive (so far, but learning fast!). I choose to start them directly on a gui OS (raspbian fattened up, and auto-login). They get immediate success and comfort. It feels like a quaint version of XP. Same as (what WAS) the Canonical approach.

Progressively we dig deeper into the more geeky sides of linux, command prompts, LEDS on GPIO, the loss of C:\ and D:\, and repositories, and sudo vs pi, etc.

At this stage, if I can offer my class an imagewriter gui app instead of dd, then I will. Sorry, but I don't need linux purist talk of "the real way is this ..." Otherwise I might be convinced to revert to my old stacks of punched cards -- I mean, block moves of code lines in those days were much more manual -- that must have been the "real" way.

I think rpdom was asking the question: "(So why do all the howto's only describe making SDs in linux with dd?)"

It works and you can find the command in every single linux distribution. You can use it even if you have a headless machine without X and the odds of being unmaintained in several years are almost none.

It is nothing with being purist, but the goal of a quick start tutorial is to setting up things to work as effortless as you can. Having to search and dowload a script that could need to be adapted to work in your environment, need an instalation and need optional things that can be not found (X, gtk, glade) in some of them, need more effort than using a standard command that works everywhere. In fact, as far as I know, it is just a dd frontend. From the source:

output = Popen(['dd if='+source+' of='+target+' bs=1024'], stdout=PIPE, stderr=STDOUT, shell=True)

Of course, if you know your environment and have a more appropiate tool for your case, you can use it. At least you have the choice.