Create Linux bootable USB

Creating Linux bootable USB from an ISO image is straight forward with dd command, which is available in Unix like systems, including Linux and macOS.

An example of the command:

sudo dd status=progress bs=16M conv=fdatasync if=/path/to/your.iso of=/dev/sdc

The command copies the ISO image to your USB stick with the following options:

status=progress shows progress, otherwise no output will be shown

bs=16M sets buffer size to 16MB, a larger buffer size allows faster copying

conv=fdatasync ensures all data is written physically to target storage before exiting the process

if=/path/to/your.iso specifies the input file which should be the ISO image

of=/dev/sdc specifies the output file. The path can be determined by sudo lshw -class disk , which lists out disks with human readable names. The path needed is the logical name of the device.

  *-disk
       description: SCSI Disk
       product: Cruzer Blade
       vendor: SanDisk
       physical id: 0.0.0
       bus info: scsi@10:0.0.0
       logical name: /dev/sdc
       version: 1.26
       serial: 4C532000021006104181
       size: 7633MiB (8004MB)
       capabilities: gpt-1.00 partitioned partitioned:gpt
       configuration: ansiversion=6 guid=a0891d7e-b930-4513-94d9-f629dbd637b2 logicalsectorsize=512 sectorsize=512

Warning: make sure you have set the output file correctly, otherwise your existing data may be wiped out.