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Create a Bootable USB from an ISO image

Published: 2025-04-15 19:23:01 +1200
Last Modified: 2025-04-15 19:23:01 +1200

Background

When I first started learning about Linux, I created a dual-boot setup with Windows/Linux. To install Linux I was using Rufus in the Windows OS, which was a relatively easy GUI to use for me at the time. These days I'm on Linux only, and have moved to use the dd command to set up a bootable USB. This is how I do it.

Method

Download ISO

Download ISO from the Debian website. At time of writing I will be using debian-12.10.0-amd64-netinst.iso.

Prepare USB stick

Check USB name:

lsblk

Returns something like:

NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda           8:0    0  29.8G  0 disk 
└─sda1        8:1    0  29.8G  0 part /media/zkbro/ALPINE-STD

Unmount disk:

umount /dev/sda1

Erase disk (actually not required as dd will do this when creating bootable USB from ISO):

sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=4M status=progress

Create bootable USB disk for ISO:

sudo dd if=/home/zkbro/Downloads/debian-12.10.0-amd64-netinst.iso of=/dev/sda bs=4M status=progress

Load disk in BIOS on new machine.

As computer is turning on keep pressing ESC/F12 (depending on what device being used) to load BIOS.

Find option to boot from USB and reboot.

Next steps

Install Debian - This will be included in a separate note.

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