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Creating Installation Media

This guide will help you create a bootable USB drive to install GoldenDog Linux on your computer. You will need a USB drive with at least 4GB of capacity.

warning

Creating a bootable USB will erase all data currently on the drive. Please back up any important files before proceeding.

Windows (using Rufus)​

Rufus is a small, reliable tool for creating bootable USB drives on Windows.

  1. Download and run the latest version of Rufus.
  2. Insert your USB drive.
  3. Click SELECT and choose the GoldenDog Linux ISO you downloaded.
  4. Leave other settings at their defaults (GPT/UEFI is recommended for modern machines).
  5. Click START.
  6. If prompted, select Write in ISO Image mode.

macOS (using balenaEtcher)​

balenaEtcher is the most straightforward tool for macOS users.

  1. Download and install balenaEtcher.
  2. Insert your USB drive.
  3. Click Flash from file and select the GoldenDog ISO.
  4. Click Select target and pick your USB drive.
  5. Click Flash! (you may need to enter your Mac password).

Linux​

On Linux, you have several options depending on your preference.

1. Using dd (Command Line)​

The most universal method. Open your terminal and run:

warning

Creating a bootable USB will erase all data currently on the drive. Please back up any important files before proceeding.

list your drives with lsblk or fdisk -l and select the correct drive.

# Replace /dev/sdX with your actual USB device path
sudo dd if=goldendog-2.0.0.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress && sync
danger

dd is a very powerful (and often destructive) tool. Be extremely careful with the of=/dev/sdX parameter. Selecting the wrong drive can result in permanent data loss on your system drives. in the dd tool "if" is the input file (the iso) and "of" is the output file (the usb drive).

2. Using balenaEtcher (GUI)​

Just like on macOS, balenaEtcher works perfectly on Linux (available as an AppImage).

3. Using KDE ISO Image Writer​

If you are already on a KDE system (like GoldenDog), you can use the ISO Image Writer available in the repositories.

  1. Install it via sudo apt install isoimagewriter if not already present.
  2. Open ISO Image Writer.
  3. Select the GoldenDog ISO and your USB drive.
  4. Click Write.