UNetbootin Review

Just because it’s popular doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best

uNetbootin is near enough the standard by which we’re comparing all of these tools – a popular, simple tool used across all platforms to put a single image file onto usB storage and make it bootable. It’s more than likely that if you’ve made a live USB of some kind in the past, you probably used this. 

             So what makes it so great in the first place, and does it stand up to the rest of the competition? One of its biggest strengths is the sheer simplicity of the graphical interface. The start screen offers two options: download an ISO from a selection of Linux distributions directly via UNetbootin, or select your own image file. 

                         The downloadable selection of ISOs is a little limited: the package for it on Ubuntu 12.10, for example, doesn’t contain a download link for 12.10 itself; same with other modern distros. You can of course download more up-to-date versions of UNetbootin, but it’ll still only include the most popular distros. Sure, the list does have quite a few of them, but it’s by no means a complete list.

                                                        Once you’ve selected a distribution, you may also have the option to add some persistent storage for the install. Unfortunately though, it’s dependent on the distro being Ubuntu-based (or Ubuntu itself). Either way, you have full control over whether or not you want no extra storage or to fill up the USB device. 

               This extra storage is not immediately accessible from a USB stick if you just plug it into another operating system,  since it is locked inside a specific file that is mounted during boot. The installation of the files can be fairly quick, although this is related to the size of the image you’re trying to use, and can also be affected by your hardware. 

             We found that it can take longer to set up the actual persistent storage than it does to add an image of the same size. Booting up the image is about the same speed as with a CD or DVD, and UNetbootin even adds its own boot menu, allowing you to choose the options from the image or to boot straight from the  hard drive.