Live USB Creator Review

The Live USB Creator comes under two entries in Ubuntu, and both are called the Ubuntu Live Disc Creator

 This application is not a solely developed Ubuntu product, however, and was originally created as just a GTK-compliant graphical tool for creating live-booting USB sticks. The software works somewhat similarly to UNetbootin, but there are some caveats to its use. The interface is still fairly simple, allowing you to add your own images to a list to then burn to USB storage. 

                     You can add multiple distros to this list, although you can only have one actually installed to the stick you want to use. This  seems a little odd, as it doesn’t remember what  images you chose when it was last open, so it’s not like it’s a quick select list or anything. Either way, you can also add persistent storage when installing the ISOs, although you’re forced to use a minimum of 1GB. 

                      For a smaller storage space and a CD-sized ISO, it’s mostly fine, but there’s no choice to turn off the added space. Image selection is where it starts to get limited, though. While we don’t expect every tool to have a selection of distros like UNetbootin to download, we do want them to be able to install all the IMGs and ISOs we throw at it.

                        Live USB Creator only seems to be able to accept images for Debian- and Ubuntu-based systems. While this perhaps makes sense for software that was originally created for Debian/Ubuntu systems, what doesn’t make sense is that we couldn’t get any Debian distro to actually install.  On top of that, Live USB Creator would complain at just about every turn. USB not plugged in, error message; USB not formatted properly, error message; try to format the USB, error message… 

                   After trying to wipe the storage in the app a couple of times before doing it manually, it became clear that the instance of the creator was not being properly exited. When actually installing the software, it radically slowed down the system. The results for Ubuntu-based distros were fine. However, it’s not better than UNetbootin in any way and offers absolutely no extras.